The Armenian president has criticized Azerbaijan and Turkey during a trip to Slovenia.
Serzh Sargsyan said that Azerbaijan misunderstood European values and considered Europe as an energy consumption market only in a speech in the Slovene capital on Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, the situation in our region is a little different. In fact, not everybody perceives the European path as coinciding with peaceful, prosperous and secure development,” Sargsyan said.
“Our immediate neighbour has misunderstood the European path, considering the European region as a suitable oil and gas market only. It is ridiculous to say that our neighbour has adopted a European path when it threatens to shoot down Armenian civilian aircraft, conducts propaganda on a daily basis and threatens to solve the Karabakh conflict by war,” Sargsyan said.
He was referring to threats from Azerbaijan to shoot down aircraft if Armenia persists with plans to open a civilian airport in the occupied Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian forces occupied Karabakh during a bloody war in the early 1990s.
On Turkey, Sargsyan criticized Ankara for failing to open its border with Armenia.
“Our other neighbour, Turkey, which also inclines towards Europe, does not want to open the border with Armenia, though it has assumed an international obligation to do so. I wonder if our neighbours are aware that the axis of European values is free movement,” he said.
“Despite this, no regional development is capable of holding us back from the path we have chosen. Armenia is insistent in extending cooperation with the European Union and its member states, especial in the framework of the Eastern Partnership [Programme],” Serzh Sargsyan continued.
He told a press conference in Ljubljana at the start of his two-day visit that Armenia would never accept any precondition imposed by Turkey.
“I think we do not need to do more until the Turks ratify these protocols in their parliament,” Sargsyan said, referring to the protocols signed by Armenia and Turkey in 2009.
“It was our desire – a desire that still exists – to establish relations with Turkey without preconditions,” Sargsyan said.
The protocols on the establishment of bilateral relations between Armenia and Turkey were signed on October 10, 2009 in Zurich by the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Armenia and Turkey, Edward Nalbandian and Ahmet Davutoglu.
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