Azerbaijan on Tuesday warned that France rearming its arch-foe Armenia could pave the way for another war in the South Caucasus.
"The fact that France, despite the warnings of the Azerbaijani side, has supplied Armenia with lethal and assault artillery installations and other types of weapons is further evidence of France's provocative activities in the South Caucasus region," the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a statement after France and Armenia inked a new contract for the sale of CAESAR self-propelled howitzers.
Relations between Azerbaijan and France have long been plagued by tensions focused on the conflict over Azerbaijan's Karabakh, which was illegally occupied by Armenian separatists in a war amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"Although the French Ministry of Defense claimed in an October statement last year that the military equipment supplied to Armenia was of a defensive nature, equipping Armenia with lethal weapons under the current military deal is another manifestation of the hypocrisy of the French leadership," the Azerbaijani ministry said.
It accused President Emmanuel Macron’s "regime" of pursuing a policy of "militarization and geopolitical intrigue" in the South Caucasus region and called the move "an obstacle to normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and ensuring lasting peace in the region."
"The current French leadership, which is excluded from normalization and regional processes due to such a destructive and biased policy, cannot forgive this to Azerbaijan and therefore continues its disruptive policy," the ministry added.
‘Path to war’
Armenia is a country that engaged in "military aggression and occupation against Azerbaijan," the ministry said.
It warned that the "rearmament of Armenia, which has experience in bloody military aggression, by France, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and the Armenian leadership's support for the revanchist policy is a path to a new war, equal to political irresponsibility."
France, as a colonial power, has "historically had a rich hideous experience of creating hotbeds of war and conflict in various parts of the world," the statement said that events in New Caledonia and other coastal colonies, including exploitation of locals, resource plundering, demographic changes from racist policies and forceful protest suppression, reflect the essence of the Macron regime."
"Instead of solving such deep-rooted problems, which are a relic of the shameful colonial legacy, and putting an end to neocolonialism, France is conducting a dirty propaganda and disinformation campaign against Azerbaijan," the ministry said.
"We declare that the leadership of Armenia, pursuing a revanchist policy, and the Macron dictatorship will bear full responsibility for the aggravation of the situation in the South Caucasus and the emergence of a new hotbed of war," it added.
The statement comes as Azerbaijan and Armenia have been working to sign a peace treaty to end their decadeslong conflict over Karabakh.
Azerbaijani forces liberated much of the region in a 44-day war in 2020 and the remaining territories in a lightning offensive in September 2023, ending the region's de facto independence from Baku that it had won in the early 1990s.
Since then, the two sides have been negotiating a peace treaty and demarcating their 1,000-kilometer (625-mile) shared border, which is closed and heavily militarized.
After several months of stalled negotiations, Armenia last month returned four ruined Azerbaijani villages it had illegally occupied since the early 1990s, clearing a major hurdle in the ongoing talks.
The move has sparked anti-government protests in Armenia, with Premier Nikol Pashinyan facing demands for resignation over Yerevan’s defeat in the conflict, which many Armenians see as a national humiliation.