Pro-government members of Azerbaijan’s Parliament proposed on Tuesday (May 7) that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian be officially invited to visit Baku and criticized the Armenian Apostolic Church, which is increasingly at odds with him.
“We could invite Pashinian to Baku,” said one of them, Zahid Oruj, during a parliamentary session. “At the same time, the road to Azerbaijan must be closed to all individuals who are our political enemies and who call for sanctions against our country. »
Mr. Oruj was referring to pro-Armenian American elected officials and other Western politicians who have accused Azerbaijan of military aggression against Armenia and ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. In recent months, the Armenian government appears to have stopped supporting their calls for sanctions against Baku. A year ago, Mr. Pashinian publicly recognized Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Karabakh.
The Armenian prime minister is increasingly accused by his political opponents and other critics of making significant concessions to Azerbaijan and Turkey to cling to power. They strongly condemned its recent decision to cede several border areas to Azerbaijan without obtaining Azerbaijani territorial concessions in return.
The move sparked angry protests led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian and was welcomed by the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Another Azerbaijani lawmaker, Sahib Aliyev, attacked the ancient church, to which the vast majority of Armenians nominally belong, for “trying to disrupt the border demarcation process.” Aliev called the church a “den of terrorists.”
Source: https://www.armenews.com/spip.php?page=article&id_article=115692&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2RXEFU68vnBuAL5hlI8qOLdZ4-q4wgSy4k9sppXOf7A-GWPPcC00kcFJA_aem_AYZWDdCV95v-RWWUOaiemaVXqqX7lCP4Vu704or23OubuzlkJc1CZFEe24KYlKmSGOh6pc6AuWIdB7W0akfyRQFa