“Threats against Armenia in Azerbaijani media channels are unacceptable,” Toivo Klaar, the EU’s special envoy to the South Caucasus, tweeted late on Monday. “Genuine negotiations on border delimitation are needed and all territorial disputes must be settled peacefully and as part of an agreed process.”
Klaar did not specify those threats or explicitly blame the Azerbaijani government for them. Virtually all media outlets operating in Azerbaijan are controlled by President Ilham Aliyev’s regime in one way or another.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry rejected Klaar’s statement on Tuesday. The ministry spokesman, Aykhan Hajizade, said the EU diplomat ignores Armenian media calls for continuing the “occupation” of Azerbaijani lands and deplores instead “the legitimate discourse about the return of Azerbaijani villages.”
In that regard, Hajizade repeated Baku’s demands for unconditional Armenian withdrawal from four ruined and uninhabited border villages that had been controlled by Azerbaijan until 1991-1992. He said they are “not the subject of a territorial dispute.”
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian expressed readiness to hand over those areas to Baku without ensuring the liberation of any Armenian territory occupied by Azerbaijani forces in 1991-1992. The move provoked uproar from residents of nearby Armenian border villages, opposition leaders and other critics of Pashinian.
Meeting with some of those residents on March 18, Pashinian claimed that Azerbaijan will attack Armenia if he fails to make the unilateral territorial concession. His detractors dismiss the claim, saying that the handover would only create additional security risks for Armenia.