News - Middle East; Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has accused France of preparing the ground for a “new war” in the south Caucasus through supporting separatists, warning that Paris is “destabilizing” the region.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a decades-long territorial conflict over Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region, a mountainous area that Baku reclaimed in September following a lightning offensive that routed Armenian forces in 24 hours and made the separatists agree to lay down weapons, under a Russian-mediated ceasefire.
“France destabilizes not only its past and present colonies, but also our region, the South Caucasus, by supporting separatist tendencies and separatists, arming Armenia, encouraging revanchist forces in Armenia and preparing the ground for unleashing a new war in our region,” said Aliyev in written comments read out by his foreign policy advisor, Hikmet Hajiyev, at an international conference - titled “Decolonization: Women’s Empowerment and Development” - in Baku on Tuesday.
The Azerbaijani president stressed that France is doing this by “pursuing a militaristic policy”, accusing Paris of continuing a policy of neocolonialism and committing “most of the bloody crimes in the colonial history of humanity.”
Aliyev added that talks about “fictitious ethnic cleansing in other countries” instead of “apologizing for the atrocities it has committed.”