In a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said America’s recent actions in support of Armenia had jeopardised US-Azerbaijani relations, Baku reported on Tuesday.
Relations between Azerbaijan and the US had long been relatively cordial until Azerbaijani forces captured the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, populated predominantly by ethnic Armenians, in September in a lightning offensive. In the military conflict, Washington provided diplomatic support to Armenia, which backed Karabakh’s authorities, and US officials visited Yerevan in the days after the offensive.
Aliyev’s office said in a statement that Aliyev told Blinken “recent US statements and actions have caused serious damage to Azerbaijani-American relations”. The statement said Baku took note of Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien’s comments at a congressional hearing that Azerbaijan had “no chance of business as usual” after the offensive in Karabakh.
However, Aliyev and Blinken agreed in the interests of normalising relations that Washington would lift the ban on senior Azerbaijani officials visiting the US and O’Brien would visit Baku.
Baku’s military victory in Karabakh has led to the exodus of nearly all of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians living in the territory. The United States and other Western countries have pledged to help Armenia cope with the influx.
