YEREVAN (RFE/RL) — Armenia has called on Israel to put an end to large-scale supplies of Israeli-made weapons to Azerbaijan used by the latter in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
“Arms trade with Azerbaijan is fatal because Azerbaijan never hesitates to use those weapons against civilian infrastructure and the civilian population,” Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan told the Jerusalem Post newspaper in an interview published on Wednesday, July 29.
“We will consistently pursue this issue and it will always be an integral part of our agenda both on bilateral and multilateral platforms,” said Mnatsakanyan. “Israel should stop this deadly business with Azerbaijan.”
Over the past decade Israeli defense companies have sold, with the Israeli government’s blessing, billions of dollars worth of advanced military hardware to Azerbaijan.
The Azerbaijani army used some of those weapons, notably sophisticated anti-tank rockets and attack drones, during April 2016 hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh. It also deployed Israeli-manufactured drones against Armenian military and civilian targets during the recent deadly fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
The Armenian military claims to have shot down or intercepted 13 such unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It demonstrated some of their purported fragments last week.
