A senior Azerbaijani official has accused Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan of making provocative remarks that undermine the Karabakh peace process.
Novruz Mammadov, head of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration's foreign relations department, made the comments to 1news.az.
He was responding to remarks by the Armenian president at a youth camp on Saturday. "The sooner Nagorno-Karabakh is recognized, the better it will be for everyone, including Azerbaijan," Sargsyan said. "Our goal is never to let Nagorno-Karabakh be under Azerbaijan’s rule."
Novruz Mammadov countered by saying that the Armenian people were deluded about their history and were hostage to the ambitions of their leaders.
“English philosopher John Toland said: ‘The older the lie, the more dangerous it is. This means it has already taken deep root. For centuries the Armenian people have been indoctrinated with the idea of the existence of ‘Greater Armenia’ and that this ‘Greater Armenia’ occupied the areas of modern Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran and so on.
"The Armenians, who have always preferred to live under someone else's protection, have become hostages to the adventurist and absurd ambitions of their leaders,” Novruz Mammadov said.
He said that, as always, Armenia was ignoring the history of the Russian Empire's resettlement of Armenians in Karabakh in the 19th century.
“Stating in the typical Armenian two-faced manner that those lands are Armenian and that they have lived there for centuries, the incumbent president of Armenia even ignores substantial archive material, documents from the early and mid-19th century, which prove the resettlement of Armenians to these lands. These decrees of the tsar, decrees of resettlement and so on, are stored in the archives of Russia, Georgia, Turkey and other countries.
"Sargsyan is right to say that ‘history and time have shown who is afraid, who is an adventurist, who can leave and quit and who is able to stay and die for the homeland. However, I think it is impossible and unnecessary to mislead his countrymen, since the Armenians seem to have spread so far across the world in order to ‘die for their homeland’, leaving a minority behind who really want to escape but are not able to, because they cannot afford it,” Mammadov said.
“As for who is an adventurist, unfortunately, Sargsyan does not understand that everything that has happened to the Armenian people throughout history is the result of the adventurist actions of their leaders, which seem to be continuing.
"The only surprising thing is that academics and the educated part of the Armenian public know full well that the legend about the historical past of the Armenians has been totally falsified and that this approach to history is ineffective and unpromising, but they still continue this way for the sake of their ambitions,” the presidential official said.
Mammadov said he was sure that Armenia's leaders did not want to settle the Karabakh conflict.
“They are evidently satisfied with the status quo. They need talks just to drag out time and mislead the world community.
"I am also sure that the time will come when we will find a key to the conflict settlement and this key will be appropriate to Armenia’s conduct in this process,” Novruz Mammadov concluded.
You can follow Novruz Mammadov's statements on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NovruzMammadov.
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