“France has nothing to do with the relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia – as a co-chair of the Minsk Group, France did have a mandate for mediation, but since the Karabakh conflict has been resolved and there is no need for the services of the Minsk Group,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said as he made a speech at a meeting of the CIS Heads of State Council in Astana on Friday, News.Az reports.

The head of state said that Azerbaijan showed goodwill nonetheless and allowed the French President to participate in the recent meeting. “Despite the goodwill shown by Azerbaijan, just a week after the meeting in Prague, the President of France made insulting, unacceptable, false and provocative statements,” he noted.

President Aiyev said that in these statements, he accused Azerbaijan of engaging in a horrific war, thereby manipulating the facts, trying to mislead the French and world public. “Azerbaijan waged war on its internationally recognized territory. Karabakh is recognized by the whole world as a part of Azerbaijan. We exercised our right to self-defense and restored our territorial integrity by force,” the head of state stressed.

The president said the French president also made biased statements against the Russian Federation, namely, that “Russia played the Azerbaijani game”: “It is up to the French public to decide on how politically correct it is for the President of a great country to use the street lexicon. For our part, we categorically condemn and reject such statements and, given such an attitude of the French government, see no further possibility for France to play a role in the normalization of Azerbaijan-Armenia relations,” the Azerbaijani leader added.

News.Az