France on Tuesday said it had recalled “for consultations” the French ambassador to Azerbaijan, accusing Baku of taking actions that “have damaged the bilateral relationship.”
Quoting the French Foreign Ministry, France 24 reported that President Emmanuel Macron received ambassador Anne Boillon in Paris to discuss the issue, accusing Azerbaijan of “continuing, in recent months, unilateral actions damaging to the relationship between our two countries.” The French side did not elaborate.
Commenting on the decision by Paris, Aykhan Hajizada, a spokesperson for Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Wednesday that France’s “clearly anti-Azerbaijani steps” after the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh are “known to everyone.”
Hajizada denied any “unilateral actions” on the part of Azerbaijan, claiming that Baku’s actions and official statements were just “a response to France’s destructive actions.”
“Despite the slanderous campaign against our country, we have always kept the doors open for dialogue,” Hajizada said, as quoted by Azerbaijani media.
In recent months Baku has been reacting harshly, in particular, to expanding French-Armenian relations, including growing military cooperation between Paris and Yerevan.
Officials in Baku have repeatedly accused France of “undermining stability” in the South Caucasus by arming Armenia and showing a “unilateral approach and pro-Armenian position.” Along with it Azerbaijan has effectively boycotted all negotiations with Armenia where France would be involved as an intermediary.
Baku has cited France’s “pro-Armenian” position and actions like initiating “anti-Azerbaijani” documents and resolutions at various international platforms, including the UN Security Council, as a factor depriving it of the status of a neutral mediator in negotiations between Baku and Yerevan.
“It is obvious that France’s actions to arm Armenia and militarize the region do not promote peace,” Hajizada said.
For nearly three decades France, along with the United States and Russia, has been a key cosponsor of the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan as part of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The format known as the Minsk Group co-chairmanship became effectively defunct after Azerbaijan regained all seven districts around Nagorno-Karabakh and chunks of the ethnic Armenian-populated region proper in the 2020 war, further taking full control of the territory by using military force and effectively driving its Armenian population out in 2023.
The status of the Minsk Group troika was further called into question amid increasing geopolitical differences between its Western members and Russia over the latter’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.