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(Reuters) – Armenia and Azerbaijan, making an attempt to work in direction of a peace treaty after three a long time of battle, traded recent barbs on Wednesday after France pledged to provide new arms to Yerevan.
The 2 international locations within the South Caucasus have in current months sought to make progress on a treaty, together with the demarcation of borders, with Armenia agreeing handy over to Azerbaijan 4 contested border villages.
French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s announcement on Tuesday that Paris would promote CAESAR self-propelled howitzers to Armenia triggered sharp criticism from Azerbaijan.
“We don’t take into account France’s coverage in direction of the South Caucasus efficient. It’s a dangerous coverage,” Hikmet Hajiyev, a prime international coverage adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, instructed Azerbaijani media.
“This can be a blow to regulating relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia.”
Armenia’s international ministry responded that it was “the sovereign proper of each state to keep up combat-capable armed forces outfitted with trendy navy belongings.”
That prompted the Azerbaijani international ministry to retort additional that Armenia’s strikes have been “illegitimate and characterize a menace to Azerbaijan”.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars because the collapse of Soviet rule within the early Nineties, with Azerbaijan retaking massive chunks of territory in 2020.
Its forces final yr captured the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh, the chief focus of the long-running battle. A lot of the area’s ethnic Armenian inhabitants fled to Armenia.
France has a big Armenian diaspora, and is historically one in all Yerevan’s strongest European backers.
Armenia is formally allied to Russia, however has lately pivoted in direction of Western international locations, accusing Moscow of failing to guard it. Russia rejects the criticism and has warned Armenia towards flirting with the West.
Armenia’s territorial concessions — and the lack of Karabakh — have prompted a groundswell of current protests with calls for for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to resign.
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