Azerbaijan slams U.S. for interfering in internal affairs
By Sara Rajabova
The United States' continuous attempt to interfere in Azerbaijan's internal affairs is completely unacceptable.
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev made the remark on October 16 in reaction to a critical statement by the U.S. State Department on the human rights situation in Azerbaijan.
Hajiyev said the rule of law and independence of the judicial system have been fully secured in Azerbaijan.
"The unjustified interference of the United States is a flagrant violation of the rule of law and the obligations undertaken by Washington," Hajiyev said.
He went on to note that the attempts to use human rights as a tool of foreign policy with a purpose of exerting political pressure on others has already discredited itself.
Hajiyev stressed that it is unacceptable to treat human rights politically, selectively and with a policy of double standards.
"It would be more worthy if the states that declare themselves a "herald" of human rights, specifically the U.S., to take a careful approach towards rights of the Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs, who have been deprived of their most elementary rights as a result of Armenian occupation and the cases of the bloody ethnic cleansing committed in Azerbaijan's occupied territories," Hajiyev said.
Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor that caused a brutal war in the early 1990s. Long-standing efforts by U.S, Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.
As a result of the military aggression of Armenia, over 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, 4,866 are reported missing and almost 100,000 were injured and 50,000 disabled.
The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but they have not been enforced to this day.