Matthew Bryza: Assistant Secretary O'Brien’s statements merit protests by Azerbaijani MFA

The fact that US Assistant Secretary O’Brien seems to be saying that Azerbaijan has a more aggressive policy is upsetting, and it merits protests by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, international expert, board member of the Jamestown Foundation, and former US Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Matthew Bryza, told Report.

“I completely understand why the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry would be upset by these statements. They're essentially accusations that are false, that Azerbaijan is intending to use military force against Armenia and Armenian territory. In all my years working on the Karabakh question, since, well, dating back to 2001, it's been it's always been clear that Azerbaijan has no desire to attack or seize any territory of Armenia and genuinely wants Armenians and Azerbaijanis to live side by side again each other,” the former ambassador said.

According to Bryza, O’Brien made those statements because he is reacting to the intense pressure in the US Congress from the Armenian diaspora, from the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), that is telling untruths and twisting reality to pretend that Azerbaijan intends to use military force: “You’ll recall how they did that when there was a false report that Secretary Blinken had supposedly warned Azerbaijan not to use military force, and then Secretary Blinken had to come out and say, no, that's false, I didn't make any such warning, and Azerbaijan never threatened to use force. So in this case, ANCA is keeping the pressure on O’Brien.

The United States wants peace. It wants Azerbaijan to pursue peace. And what he's not saying is that the United States knows that Azerbaijan’s goal is a peace treaty, which is the same for Prime Minister Pashinian, and that Pashinian opponents, like the Armenian National Committee of America, are trying to block progress toward a peace treaty because they want continued conflict.”

According to Bryza, it’s much better if the meeting takes place in Washington between the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia: “So I think we’ll see, as President Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinian move toward a peace treaty between the two countries, US-Azerbaijan relations will not only will not only become normal, but they’ll become quite strong.”