A peace process with Western involvement and mediation is not essential, Azerbaijani presidential adviser Hikmet Hajiyev said Tuesday as the country is negotiating a settlement with Armenia following the recapturing of the long-disputed Karabakh region.
"A peace agreement is not nuclear physics. If there is goodwill, the fundamental principles of a peace agreement can be worked out in a short time," Hajiyev told Reuters.
But on the question of Western involvement, he added: "We need peace in our region, not in Washington, Paris or Brussels."
Relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991 when the Armenian military occupied Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.
Most of the territory was liberated by Azerbaijan during a war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement and also opened the door to normalization. Azerbaijan recaptured the rest in September.
Years of mediation by the European Union, the United States and Russia have failed to get Armenia and Azerbaijan to sign a peace deal. They have yet to agree on the demarcation of their shared border, which remains closed and highly militarized. Border skirmishes, often fatal, remain a regular occurrence.
Azerbaijan, which has close ties to Türkiye, has in recent months repeatedly backed out of peace talks brokered by the U.S. and the EU, both of which it has accused of pro-Armenian bias.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan this week credited the EU with helping to bring a peace deal closer, but said the two sides were still "speaking different diplomatic languages" and accused Baku of potential military aggression – a claim that the Azerbaijani foreign ministry rejected.
Hajiyev said the United States had shown "double standards and an unconstructive attitude". Azerbaijan has also been highly critical of France, which said last month it had agreed new contracts to supply military equipment to Armenia.
In a speech at a conference on decolonization on Tuesday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said France was responsible for "most of the bloody crimes in the colonial history of humanity".
"(France) is pursuing a militaristic policy by arming Armenia, encouraging revanchist forces in Armenia, and laying the groundwork for provoking new wars in our region," Aliyev said in written comments to the conference in Baku.
In a statement read out by his foreign policy advisor, Aliyev said Paris "is disrupting stability not only in its former and current colonies but also in the South Caucasus, where it is supporting separatist trends and separatists."
France, which is home to a large Armenian diaspora, is routinely criticized by Baku for harboring "pro-Armenian bias" in the Caucasus countries' territorial conflict.
Aliyev’s words come after last month, he refused to attend negotiations with Pashinyan in Spain, citing French bias.