Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has vowed to assist the independence trigger in France’s abroad territories.
His remarks on the difficulty marked the newest in a collection of incidents pitting Baku in opposition to Paris over long-running conflicts within the Caucasus area.
Aliyev accuses France of interfering in its affairs over its contacts with Armenia, which de facto managed Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh for many years earlier than Baku regained management by means of a battle in 2020.
In current months, Azerbaijani leaders have centered on France’s South Pacific territory of New Caledonia, gripped by weeks of violence over the objections of Indigenous Kanak activists to a contentious electoral reform.
Aliyev made his newest feedback at a media discussion board days earlier than the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris and simply after the staging in Baku of a congress bringing collectively pro-independence teams from New Caledonia and different French territories.
“We will support you until you are free,” Aliyev advised the discussion board, citing French territories that he mentioned have been nonetheless topic to colonialism.
“Some countries are still suffering from this. The Comoros islands, Mayotte are still under colonial rule. It has been our duty to help these countries liberate themselves from this revolting remnant from the past.”
Earlier this week, an “initiative group” staged a congress in Baku attended by pro-independence teams from New Caledonia and different French territories, together with Corsica and Caribbean and Pacific islands.
French media accounts of the assembly mentioned contributors sharply criticized French authorities and an Azerbaijani delegation was invited to go to New Caledonia.
France accused Azerbaijan in May of meddling and abetting unrest in New Caledonia by flooding social media with what it mentioned have been deceptive pictures and movies concentrating on French police.
Azerbaijan has denied the allegations.
Azerbaijani authorities accuse France of bias in favor of Armenia in efforts to attain a peace treaty to finish three many years of battle and in signing protection contracts with authorities in Yerevan. Baku expelled two French diplomats final December.
Source: www.dailysabah.com