Administration of President
Hikmat Hajiyev: Armenia unfairly blasted Israeli arms sales to Azerbaijan
Armenia has unfairly targeted Israel for its sale of military drones to Azerbaijan, Hikmat Hajiyev, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan, Head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration, said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.
“The Israel-Azerbaijan defense cooperation is over exaggerated” by Armenia to deliberately “undermine” the strong relations between his nation and the Jewish state, Hajiyev said.
Earlier this month Armenia withdrew its ambassador to Israel, Armen Smbatyan, for consultations to protest the private arms sales from Israel to Azerbaijan, particularly drones, which have been used by Azerbaijani military in the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Smbatyan told the Post last week he believed Israel would soon halt such sales, but to date there is no public indication that such a step has been taken.
Hajiyev said Armenia had not targeted Turkey or Russia in that same manner.
Azerbaijan’s defense portfolio “is quite wide and quite diversified,” the presidential aide said, adding his country has used Turkish drones on the battlefield and that the bulk of its military equipment comes from Russia.
“Why are they [Armenia] only highlighting Israel,” Hajiyev asked.
The top official stressed that Israel is a strategic partner of Azerbaijan and his country wants to keep that cooperation in the coming months and years.
“We do believe that all Armenia’s attempts to somehow try to effect Israel-Azerbaijan relations will be completely unsuccessful,” Hajiyev said.
The Israel-Azerbaijan ties are not just a “matter of today, but is a matter of 1,000 years of partnership and friendship between Jewish people and Azerbaijani people,” Hajiyev said. These deep roots have been transformed into the cornerstone of the modern relationship between the two countries in all spheres of cooperation, he added.
The Jerusalem Post wrote: “The fighting between the two countries that renewed on September 27, has increased concern that Turkey, a close ally of Azerbaijan, and Russia, which has a defense pact with Armenia, could be sucked into the conflict, thereby regionalizing it. The clashes have also increased worries about the security of pipelines in Azerbaijan that carry natural gas and oil to Europe. Israel receives 40% of oil from Azerbaijan.”
The Azerbaijani official accused Armenia of attempting to internationalize the conflict and said that his country was simply trying to end the occupation of its lands. He noted that the UN also considered that territory to be occupied.
Among the provocations, he said, had been attacks on Azerbaijani cities from the "sovereign territory of Armenia,” he said.
Hajiyev called on the international community to end the conflict by ensuring that the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh was returned to Azerbaijan.