The Jerusalem Post: World community should not indulge Armenian President Sargsyan

Baku, September 26, AZERTAC The Jerusalem Post has published an article headlined “World community should not indulge Armenian President Sargsyan”. Written by political analyst Arye Gut, the article reads: “New York has recently hosted the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly to discuss global issues that worry humanity. Addressing the UN GA, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "We're in the midst of a great revolution, a revolution in Israel's standing among the nations. This is happening because so many countries around the world have finally woken up to what Israel can do for them. Those countries now recognize what brilliant investors like Warren Buffet and great companies like Google and Intel, what they've recognized and known for years: that Israel is the innovation nation — the place for cutting-edge technology in agriculture, in water, in cyber security, in medicine, in autonomous vehicles — you name it, we've got it. Those countries now also recognize Israel's exceptional capabilities in fighting terrorism. In recent years, Israel has provided intelligence that has prevented dozens of major terrorist attacks around the world. I stood here last year on this podium and I spoke about this profound change in Israel's standing in the world and just look at what has happened since, in one year: hundreds of presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and other leaders have visited Israel, many for the first time. In the past year, Israel hosted so many world leaders, and I had the honor of representing my country on six different continents. One year. Six continents. I went to Africa, where I saw Israeli innovators increasing crop yields, turning air into water, fighting AIDS. I went to Asia, where we deepened our relations with China and with Singapore, and expanded our cooperation with our Muslim friends in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan." According to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel expands cooperation with Muslim friends. In that case, I think it will be useful for Israel to support these states on the international arena, especially in their rightful cause, recognized by the international community. Azerbaijan occupies a special place among these states, as this country is involved in the conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh. Speech by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev was one of those speeches of the heads of state and government, which attracted much attention of the audience. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev once again clearly reminded the world of the unresolved Armenia-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. As befits a professional diplomat (Aliyev is a graduate of MGIMO), he lined up his speech strategically clearly and concisely. This speech caused the anger in Armenian society, which accused President Sagrsyan of losing the information war. (http://www.armenianreport.com/pubs/167577/?_utl_t=fb) The Armenian media was outraged by the fact that President Sargsyan had nothing to answer to the accusations though several days have passed since Ilham Aliyev's speech. Silence often implies consent – Sargsyan has surrendered, he has accepted everything, so Aliyev is right. In his speech, the President of Azerbaijan stated that Armenia still can afford not to comply with UN Security Council resolutions due to the double standards applied by the international community. "For more than 25 years Armenia occupies 20% of the territory of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh and 7 other regions of our country," the Azerbaijani President said. He pointed out that Nagorno-Karabakh is an ancient and historical part of Azerbaijan. "More than one million of Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced persons," he said. Aliyev stressed that Armenia committed genocide against Azerbaijanis in Khojaly. "On February 26, 1992 Armenia committed war crime killing 613 peaceful residents of Khojaly, among them 106 women and 63 children," he said. Today it is already a historical fact that the Armenian armed forces and mercenary units spared no one of those who did not manage to leave Khojaly and its environs. Because of the brutality of the Armenian armed formations, Azerbaijani women, children and the elderly were taken hostages and subjected to unprecedented tortures, insults and humiliations. The deliberate mass slaughter of the Khojaly residents was carried out for only one reason - because they were Azerbaijanis. I'm asking myself: how do the current Armenian fascists differ from the German fascists of the 1940s, who had destroyed six million of my people? The answer is obvious –they don't differ at all. What ISIL is doing today with captives, the Armenian terrorists did – and worse of it – in 1992 in Khojaly. Together with the representatives of the Israeli media, I met with the Khojaly survivors, who were captured by the Armenian bandit groups. Believe me they told terrible things about Armenian savagery that it is even shameful to write about it. They showed us signs of torture. Then I had meetings with individuals and they told what they were ashamed to tell openly to all the people and the media. I want to recall the avowals of the Armenian publicist and fascist Zori Balayan, who tried to justify the Khojaly genocide in his work called "Revitalizing Our Spirit" (published in 1996). The terrorist Balayan proudly listed the facts of genocide and humiliation committed against peaceful Azerbaijanis by the Armenians in Khojaly. This criminal and rabid chauvinist did not hesitate to say that every Armenian should be proud of the actions that the Armenians committed in Khojaly. These facts confirm that the purpose of destroying the Khojaly civilians was mass slaughter only for being Azerbaijanis. This people who gave orders in Khojaly, should face a tribunal. The modern world community should not turn a blind eye to the facts of the revival of fascism, anti-Semitism, frenzied chauvinism and should be ready to oppose its new forms. We bear this commitment not only to the Jewish people, but also to all others who are threatened by the same fate. The most terrible and immoral is that some countries organize cartoon contests about the Holocaust of European Jewry. Unfortunately, each of them has its own morality, saturated with hatred and political interests. However, independent and secular Azerbaijan proves that the pain and suffering of the catastrophe of European Jewry is not only the Jewish people`s pain, but is the pain of the brotherly Azerbaijani people. Why did the slaughter of thousands of innocent people at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century trigger off all collisions, including spiritual, moral, political, and other problems? The Holocaust is a tragedy of my people, a tragedy that was a closed topic for a long time. That's why for me the bloody and barbarous act of genocide in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly is my personal pain, this is my personal tragedy. The head of the Azerbaijani state pointed out that incumbent President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan was one of the perpetrators of Khojaly massacre. Khojaly massacre is not only a crime against the Azerbaijani people, it is a crime against humanity. February is a month of pain and sorrow for the whole Azerbaijani people. This is a sorrow for innocent Azerbaijanis, who had their own stories, families, childhood, dreams and future, which was cut short as a result of this bloody massacre perpetrated by the Armenian armed groups. The relatives of the victims have one common pain: those who had committed this terrible crime against humanity have not been prosecuted by international court and have remained unpunished. Unlike the consequences of World War II, when the majority of the Nazis faced the international court at the Nuremberg trial, ideologists and executors of the mass slaughter of peaceful Azerbaijani citizens in Khojaly live freely in the modern Republic of Armenia. I appeal to a civilized world which is used to talk about human rights and democracy. What was the fault of 63 children who had lived in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly and were killed by the Armenian fascists? They were just innocent children who started to live and some of them even did not have time to make the first steps. They wanted to play toys, enjoy life, hug their fathers and mothers, be happy with their parents, go to kindergarten and school. The Armenian fascists and terrorists took their lives. The only "fault" of these innocent children was that they were Azerbaijanis. Many of the organizers and ideologists of Khojaly genocide even today occupy high positions in Armenia, including former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan, President Serzh Sargsyan and former President Robert Kocharian. Each of the above-mentioned politicians participated in the atrocities and slaughter of the Azerbaijani population in Khojaly, and just like the Nazis, they should answer for their actions in international court. There are a lot of materials and video documents as well as testimonies provided by witnesses of the tragedy, which confirm the participation of the above-mentioned high-ranking officials of the Republic of Armenia in Khojaly massacre. Unlike the Nazis who tried to hide their crimes, some of these individuals gave interviews to foreign media. In these interviews, they justified and boasted their barbarous criminal acts against Azerbaijanis in Khojaly. We are sure that the rule of these so-called "politicians" will also end in failure, as it had happened with the Nazis. All the recent statements and real actions of Serzh Sargsyan, as well as his failed internal and external policy, once again prove that he is an absolutely irresponsible and short-sighted politician. He remained the same terrorist who accidentally rose to the forefront of the political life of Armenia on the wave of Karabakh separatism. In all his speeches far from diplomacy, Sargsyan tries to justify the aggressive policy of his country, proving that in fact he remains the same Sargsyan, who is completely alien to such concepts as diplomacy and international relations, which once again confirms low level of his education and political culture. Ilham Aliyev also stressed that Azerbaijan is committed to a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but unresolved problem causes military provocations of Armenia, leading to casualties on both sides. "The Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be resolved on the basis of international law, UN Security Council resolutions. The territorial integrity of Azerbaijan must be fully restored," the Azerbaijani President said. And this statement was made by the President of the country, the part of which has been occupied and ravaged 25 years ago with one million of its people displaced within their own country. Believe me, if the occupied were Armenian territory, it would not listen to the recommendations of the OSCE Minsk Group or other organizations. Armenia, if it were in the place of Azerbaijan, would blare out to the whole world and would start the war with the invader. It would not only return its land, but would also seize the territory of the occupant. The President of Azerbaijan, of course, spared nerves of some listeners, but the whole world knows the names of the countries that not only stood behind the occupation of Azerbaijani lands, but even today are trying to countenance the aggressor's intention to preserve the status quo in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Official Baku has long made it clear that the current status in this conflict with Armenia is unacceptable. The events of April 2016, when the armed forces of Azerbaijan responded harshly, crushing the Armenian armed forces, once again showed that official Yerevan must understand that Azerbaijan's patience is at the breaking point. In addition, official Baku, according to the norms of international law, has the right not only to defend itself, but also to liberate the territories occupied by Armenia. Unfortunately, present realities of international relations prove that the force factor acts more effectively on the world scene. And this again reminds the words of the one of the leading American political realists Hans Morgenthau that "international politics, like any other, is a struggle for power." In the sphere of the international politics, under the struggle for power, Morgenthau meant the struggle of the states to assert their power, superiority and influence in the world. States try to ensure their own interests, using all the available power at their disposal. Wars and conflicts, therefore, seem to be the inevitable consequences of the international politics, and the hope of achieving universal peace, relying on legal and moral norms, is thought to be an illusion. Then, according to Morgenthau's opinion, does it turn out that the hope for a peaceful solution of the problem in the modern world is an illusion? Are the international community and international organizations that have not been able to ensure the supremacy of international law for over 25 years pushing Azerbaijan to solve this problem by force? Today's Azerbaijan is not Azerbaijan of the 1990s, today's Azerbaijan is the undisputed leader of geopolitical and geo-economic processes in the South Caucasus. Today, Azerbaijan is the country with the strongest and most powerful army in the South Caucasus, which has been waiting for its moment of truth to demonstrate its power. Despite all the sentiments in this context, every state must be ready to protect its security and sovereignty. It is quite clear that the current tension in the South Caucasus region is the result of Armenia's occupation policy, its attempts to violate the negotiation process again. And this is the guilt of the Armenian leadership. I have stated many times that the Armenian President, first of all, thinks about preserving and strengthening his personal power, about the interests of his own clan, and not about the country that is in a difficult geopolitical and economic collapse. It is quite clear that Sargsyan's hypocrisy has no limits. It is said that honesty in politics is the result of strength, and hypocrisy is the result of weakness. President Sargsyan tried to look constructive and tolerant from the UN, but he failed to succeed. Unfortunately, it is a fact that Sargsyan, who accidentally fell on the forefront of Armenian politics, despite the second cadence as the president of Armenia, continues to think like a terrorist deprived of state thinking and a global view of world processes. All these facts once again prove Armenia's unwillingness to live in peace with neighboring states, in particular with Azerbaijan. So, there has been no real breakthrough in negotiations, which have been lasting for more than 25 years. In his disastrous speech at the UN GA, Sargsyan touched upon the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, pointing out that the realization of the right of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to self-determination is of vital importance. "In this issue, I express the unified point of view not only of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, but of the world Armenians." The Armenian President went on lying, stressing that "Karabakh has never been a part of independent Azerbaijan, therefore, aspirations to forcibly hitch Nagorno-Karabakh to this state formation are unfair". How cynical it is to tell lies from the world's proscenium, while everyone understands that the so-called "Nagorno-Karabakh Republic" is a separatist terrorist puppet formation created by Armenia with the help of its patrons. If Armenia takes a reckless step to recognize the puppet formation, first of all, that would be a demonstration of disrespect for the basic norms and principles of international law, disrespect for the negotiation process and the OSCE Minsk Group and its co-chairs. And this will be a challenge to Azerbaijan for war. We know about the deplorable economic situation is Armenia. This country is the most dependent and poor country in the South Caucasus, it depends economically on external aid and the Armenian diaspora's inflow. Under the current circumstances, no one will allow Armenia to make its own decisions. In case of recognizing the "independence" of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia will provoke a conflict itself, thereby entering the warpath. This will once again prove the terrorist nature of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan's current regime. But the question is how long the world community will silently endure the childish pranks of Sargsyan, who, like Kim Jong-un, took on the whole world by breaking the rules of international law.