After the September 13 Azerbaijani aggression against Amenia, fresh graves are being dug at Yerablur Memorial Military Cemetery and more families are grieving the losses of 207 soldiers and civilians. Now, the battlefield has shifted to the United Nations, while a tenuous ceasefire holds on the ground.
There is still apprehension in Armenia’s political circles and amongst the general populace as the news reports about military flights to Azerbaijan, from Israel and other directions, and concentration of Turkish armed forces on Armenia’s borders.
During the 44-Day War, whose second anniversary — September 27 — is upon us, the international community kept almost a complete silence. However, this time around, there is more interest and alarms are being raised against future escalation. The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict was on the agenda of two sessions of the United Nations Security Council this past week. As the 77th session of the UN General Assembly began, the battleground moved to New York, first through the speeches delivered by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, and then by other parties concerned, primarily Iran and Russia.
Pashinyan, in his speech, presented a full picture of the recent aggression, with its grim results, and called for Azerbaijan to sign a comprehensive peace treaty. To this day, Azerbaijan has not responded to Armenia’s call. Instead, Bayramov highlighted the UN resolutions about the conflict, sounding as if the world body had supported uniliteral resolutions against Armenia.
Since the debate was taking place at the UN, Pashinyan did not play up the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, which was created by the UN. That could have scared the hell out of Bayramov, because Baku refuses to recognize the role of the OSCE in the conflict, thereby issuing a direct challenge to the UN.
Bayramov’s speech was crafted in such a way as to cast Armenia as the aggressor, while his nation is cast in the role of the “good guy.” He stated: “After the provocation of the Armenian armed forces on September 12-14, 2022, Azerbaijan is engaged in eliminating the humanitarian consequences and in this context, declared its readiness to unilaterally return the remains of fallen soldiers to Armenia.”