DOOMED EFFORTS

France’s anti-Azerbaijani rhetoric becomes increasingly popular as a factor of regional politics benefiting Armenia, which continues to impede the peaceful post-conflict settlement process in the region because of Yerevan’s continuing territorial claims against Azerbaijan. However, Paris's intention to impose its anti-Azerbaijani trend onto the settlement of relations between Baku and Yerevan is doomed to complete failure. Azerbaijan will then be forced to reconsider mediation efforts of Paris in the normalisation of Azerbaijani-Armenian relations.

As "impartial" as possible

Essentially, France has always supported Armenia, even throughout her long co-chair position within the unsuccessful OSCE Minsk Group. Also thanks to Paris's favourable position towards Armenia Yerevan has been able to implement for almost 30 years its policy of occupation of Azerbaijani territories with impunity. However, Azerbaijan's victory in the 44-day war in 2020, which ended with the liberation of Garabagh and Eastern Zangezur from Armenian occupation, destroyed the regional order also supported by France. The order that allowed Armenia to occupy Azerbaijani lands, destroy the cultural heritage of its people, kill Azerbaijani civilians and expel hundreds of thousands of citizens from their homelands.

During the 44-day war, France has cultivated the perception of Azerbaijan as an aggressor and a torturer of “unfortunate Armenians". A number of French politicians, including the then-Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, accused Azerbaijan of starting the war. The French Senate shortly after Azerbaijan's great victory and Armenia's crushing defeat adopted a resolution urging the French government to recognise the illegal Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Moreover, the French parliamentarians even demanded "the restoration of the 1994 borders", i.e. the reanimation of the former status quo effective in the first half of the 1990s as a result of the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia, but which was eventually overthrown by Azerbaijan "to hell".

The French Senate is currently drafting a new resolution scheduled to be voted on in mid-November. The draft resolution envisages economic sanctions against Azerbaijan for allegedly committing "numerous war crimes against Armenians". Such unjustified accusation is full of falsity and cynicism, granted France's absolute disregard of numerous war crimes committed by Armenia against the people of Azerbaijan both during the thirty years of occupation of Garabagh and Eastern Zangezur and the 2020 war. In particular, France did not condemn Armenia for the genocide in Khojaly in 1992, and for the missile attacks on Ganja and other Azerbaijani villages in autumn of 2020.

One of the paragraphs of the draft resolution attempts to impose an obligation on Azerbaijan to ensure the right of return for Armenian displaced persons. But firstly, Baku has always advocated and continues to advocate the return of displaced persons to their places of permanent residence, which is also reflected in the relevant paragraph of the act of surrender of Armenia in the 44-day war - the November 2020 trilateral statement of the leaders of Azerbaijan, Russia and Armenia. Secondly, Baku rightly demanded and demands the same principle applied to nearly one million Azerbaijanis expelled from their lands as a result of three decades of Armenian occupation. However, France, which considers itself a bastion of humanism and democracy, has a different approach on this issue.

Despite repeated references in UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions to the tragic situation of Azerbaijani refugees and displaced persons, as well as appeals to the international community to provide them with effective support, Paris has always remained silent on this issue since the 1990s. The French Senate has never urged to restore the basic rights of Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced persons, let alone condemned the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia as the main cause of the tragic of Azerbaijani displaced people depriving them of their legal right to live in native lands.

The draft resolution also requires Azerbaijan to preserve the Armenian cultural and religious heritage. However, Azerbaijan needs neither such extraneous appeals, nor demands. Because it carefully protects its cultural heritage regardless of its national and religious affiliation. Also, France is demonstrating its support to double standards by making such demands to Baku. It would be reasonable to ask Paris then why it has never urged Armenia to preserve Azerbaijani cultural and religious heritage during the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani territories and remained absolutely silent about the unprecedented vandalism committed by Armenian invaders, which was discovered in 2020 soon after the restoration of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Entire districts, towns and villages of Azerbaijan have been razed to the ground due to Armenian military aggression, yet the leaders of its patron—France—still prefer to remain silent on the matter.

While the anti-Azerbaijani decisions of the French Senate can be ignored by presenting them as the non-binding opinion of individual politicians, and the attacks of Armenian mobs on the Azerbaijani embassy in Paris can be presented as a failure of French judicial system, the unjust position of the French president cannot be justified by any considerations. The position of President Emmanuel Macron clearly indicates that France is encroaching on Azerbaijan's sovereignty, its national interests and its legitimate right to control its own territory.

Threat to regional peace

Macron's claims that Baku had allegedly waged a terrible war in Garabagh, launched several attacks along the border with Armenia in September 2022, and that Garabagh was allegedly a disputed territory caused indignation in Azerbaijan. As a reaction, President Ilham Aliyev put an end to the story of Paris mediation between Baku and Yerevan: "Given the attitude of the French government,  we do not see any possibility for France to play any further role in the normalisation of Azerbaijani-Armenian relations.”

Indeed, Macron’s statements give rise to thoughts in the context of the Azerbaijani-Armenian settlement, in which Paris is trying so hard to assert its involvement. Macron's "insulting, unacceptable, deceitful and provocative statements," as Ilham Aliyev described them, were made a week after the talks in Prague, where the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia with the mediation of EU Council President Charles Michel and Macron himself reached an agreement to make a rapid breakthrough in the development and conclusion of a peace treaty, as well as the delimitation of the Azerbaijani-Armenian border. Apparently, Macron’s subsequent statements have been deliberately aimed at the collapse of the Prague agreement mainly based on the mutual recognition by Azerbaijan and Armenia of each other's territorial integrity based on the UN Charter and the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration.

Furthermore, with the patronage and direct assistance of Paris, Yerevan instigated an action that also fundamentally contradicts the aims and objectives of the peace process. Thus, in response to an invitation from Yerevan, the OSCE sent the Needs Assessment Mission to Armenia to express its views on the situation in certain border regions of Armenia with Azerbaijan. But the problem is, as also indicated in the respective statement released by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that the dispatch of the OSCE mission to Armenia has not been discussed by any of the organisation's collective bodies. Therefore, the mission has no relevant mandate. During the Prague talks Azerbaijan did not object to the EU mission to Armenia to support the activities of the border commissions and facilitate the delimitation of the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Moreover, Azerbaijan agreed to cooperate with the EU mission on issues that concerned its interests. However, there was no talk of an OSCE mission at the Prague talks.

Meanwhile, the reason behind the dispatch of the OSCE mission to Armenia was reported by French diplomat Jonathan Lacotte, a former ambassador to Armenia. According to him, the decision to deploy an OSCE observation mission to assess Armenia's needs in its border areas with Azerbaijan is a result of steps taken by French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna "following an armed attack by Azerbaijan on Armenian territory". And this decision, Lacotte argues, "will further contribute to Armenia's security and territorial integrity”.

France thus reaffirmed that it cannot remain a neutral party and deserves to be excluded from the settlement of Azerbaijani-Armenian relations.

Obviously, France takes these steps to ensure that the peace process follows the Armenian scenario. A scenario that would take into account the preservation of Armenia's territorial claims to the mountainous part of the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan. However, this approach contradicts the very prospect of a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia. For it is possible only on the basis of mutual recognition of territorial integrity.

The French position also contains anti-Russian and anti-Turkish components. Actions and statements of Paris, including Macron's statement that the Russian Federation "played the game of Azerbaijan with the complicity of Turkey, and then returned there to weaken Armenia", follow the logic of the West's unconcealed intention to oust Russia from the South Caucasus. Moreover, in order to achieve this geopolitical objective, there is a powerful attempt to exploit the weakest regional link—Armenia—with the alleged "security guarantees" provided to it by the West.

At the same time, Paris clearly aims at destroying the new reality in the region regardless of the completion of the Garabagh conflict. One of the characteristics of this reality is the significant strengthening of Turkey, Azerbaijan's closest ally.

However, France is spinning its unbridled anti-Azerbaijani campaign as part of the its geopolitical confrontation with Russia and the clash with Turkey's regional interests, hence making a serious miscalculation. By openly and blatantly supporting Armenia to the detriment of Azerbaijan's legitimate interests, its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and provoking hostility with Baku, Paris in fact nullifies the results of many years of fairly effective cooperation with the leading state of the South Caucasus.

Moreover, French actions undermining its bilateral relations with Azerbaijan on the grounds of "special ties" between the French and Armenians could further damage the interests of the latter. By encouraging revanchist expectations and a sense of impunity for repeated infringements of Azerbaijani sovereignty, Paris is only pushing Armenia to further suffering and defeat.