PARIS (ArmeniaNow) — The Armenian community of France is organizing large- scale protest against the visit of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to Paris, accusing him of carrying out a genocidal policy manifested in the latest act of pardoning a confessed killer of an Armenian.
Aliyev arrived in the French capital on Monday to attend the opening of an Islamic art exhibition at the Louvre Museum. He was also scheduled to meet with French
officials, including President Francois Hollande.
Meanwhile, the country’s sizable Armenian community held a rally Tuesday in front of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Paris to express their indignation at both Azerbaijan’s “genocidal policies” and the decision of France to host Aliyev.
Spokespersons for Armenian organizations in France said they believe that France should not encourage the anti- Armenian regime of Azerbaijan. They point at Aliyev’s decision to pardon Ramil Safarov, a man who hacked to death an Armenian student at NATO-sponsored lan- guage courses in Budapest, upon his extra- dition from Hungary last month, as more proof that Nagorno-Karabagh cannot be part of Azerbaijan. That decision led to offi- cial Yerevan’s severing ties with Budapest and demanding a clear stance of the inter- national community to condemn the “Azerbaijani-Hungarian deal.” France, too,
voiced concerns over the possibility of the Safarov affair “seriously undermining the negotiating efforts” in the Karabagh settlement that it spearheads along with the United States and Russia.
