Claims of Azerbaijani plans to attack Armenia seek to 'distort reality, deceive international community': Baku

Allegations by Armenia's premier of preparations by neighboring Azerbaijan to attack it are untrue and seek to mislead the international community, Baku said Friday.

"Claims that Azerbaijan is allegedly preparing for an attack against Armenia, as well as that Azerbaijan allegedly is not adhering to international legal norms, are being made in an effort to distort reality and deceive the international community," said a statement by Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry.

Saying the "unfounded allegations" by Armenian Premier Nikol Pashinyan against Azerbaijan, made on French TV, intend to inflict "another blow to the peace process by deliberately inflaming tension in the region," the statement stated the choice of location for the remarks shows "France's continued detrimental influence on the peace process."

The statement added that Pashinyan is misusing calls of the Western Azerbaijani Community to cover up Armenia's "destabilizing steps" that pursue "a policy of mass militarization and disruption of five months of stability in the region," referring to the aftermath of last September, when Azerbaijan regained full control over its Karabakh region.

"We urge Armenia, which continues its aggressive slanderous rhetoric against our country using various international platforms, to abandon statements that undermine the prospects for peace and use the opportunities that have emerged for the transformation of the South Caucasus region into a space of peace and cooperation," it concluded.

In a Thursday interview with French television France24, Pashinyan accused Azerbaijan of preparing a new attack on Armenia.

Relations between the southern Caucasus nations of Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

Azerbaijan liberated most of the region during the war in the fall of 2020, which ended with a Russian-brokered peace agreement, opening the door to normalization.

Baku last September initiated an anti-terrorism operation in Karabakh to establish constitutional order, after which illegal separatist forces in the region surrendered.