Ilham Aliev chairs UN Security Council Meeting. The Azerbaijani President referred to the Karabakh conflict and accused Armenia of ethnic cleansing.

The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev yesterday opened the 6765th session of the United Nations Security Council in New York and chaired the first meeting. Azerbaijan has the Chairmanship of the Council for the month of May under the system of rotating chairmanship between the fifteeen members of the Council which include the five permanent members (Britain, China, France, Russia and the US) and ten members elected for two years by the General Assembly.

The focus of the current session is the anti terrorist struggle. President Aliev said that  “Azerbaijan strongly condemns all the forms of terrorism. We consider all terror acts as a crime and they should be condemned and punished. Terrorists should not be given pretext for their acts. Terror acts can not be justified regardless of their motivation."

The meeting of the Security Council comes ahead of next month’s review by the General Assembly of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.

In his speech the Azerbaijani leader also referred to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and linked terrorism with "agressive separatism, extremism and organised crime". Aliev also accused Armenia of ethnic cleansing during the Karabakh conflict.

Commonspace.eu political editor said that Aliev's speech "indicates that Azerbaijan will try to use the platform of the Security Council to bring the Karabakh conflict to the attention of the international community. It will however not be possible to push the Council to adopt any meaningful resolution on Karabakh since the Permanent members are still committed to the Minsk Process as the mechanism to deal with the efforts to resolve it, and a role for the UN at this stage is not envisaged. There may however be some humanitarian asspects of the problem that may be taken up by the world body and it is likely that Azerbaijan will have a strategy to push in this direction over the coming months."

source: commonspace.eu

photo: The President of Azerbaijan addressing the opening of the 6765 session of the united Nations Security Council in New York on 4 May 2012 (picture courtesy of the Press Service of the President of Azerbaijan).

Related articles

Editor's choice
News
Indian Foreign Minister meets Aliyev in Baku

Indian Foreign Minister meets Aliyev in Baku

On October 23, the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev met in Baku with Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs of India. This was the highest level visit by an Indian official to Azerbaijan in a long time. According to the website of the Azerbaijani president, Aliyev fondly recalled his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Bishkek and the exchange of views during that meeting. President Ilham Aliyev highly appreciated the visit of India’s Minister of External Affairs to Azerbaijan on the instructions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, stressing its importance for discussing the current state and prospects of bilateral relations. During the meeting, the sides held an extensive exchange of views on the current state of relations between Azerbaijan and India, highlighting ample opportunities to develop cooperation in areas of mutual interest. The sides noted that Azerbaijan and India, as members of the Global South, share similar positions on a number of issues on the international agenda, including matters of concern to countries of the Global South. In this regard, they discussed prospects for bilateral cooperation in political, trade and economic, high-tech, cultural, humanitarian and other fields. The conversation also touched upon the importance of cooperation within international organizations. The sides emphasized the need to intensify political contacts and organize reciprocal visits at various levels, including exchanges involving economic and business delegations, to further advance bilateral relations.

Popular

Editor's choice
Interview
Thursday Interview: Murad Muradov

Thursday Interview: Murad Muradov

Today, commonspace.eu starts a new regular weekly series. THURSDAY INTERVIEW, conducted by Lauri Nikulainen, will host  persons who are thinkers, opinion shapers, and implementors in their countries and spheres. We start the series with an interview with Murad Muradov, a leading person in Azerbaijan's think tank community. He is also the first co-chair of the Action Committee for a new Armenian-Azerbaijani Dialogue. Last September he made history by being the first Azerbaijani civil society activist to visit Armenia after the 44 day war, and the start of the peace process. Speaking about this visit Murad Muradov said: "My experience was largely positive. My negative expectations luckily didn’t play out. The discussions were respectful, the panel format bringing together experts from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey was particularly valuable during the NATO Rose-Roth Seminar in Yerevan, and media coverage, while varied in tone, remained largely constructive. Some media outlets though attempted to represent me as more of a government mouthpiece than an independent expert, which was totally misleading.  Overall, I see these initiatives as important steps in rebuilding trust and normalising professional engagement. The fact that soon a larger Azerbaijani civil society visits to Armenia followed, reinforces the sense that this process is moving in the right direction." (click the image to read the interview in full)