Yerevan /Mediamax/. Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced today that "the reaction to the Armenia-France military-technical cooperation by official Baku causes confusion.”

The ministry has issued a statement, noting that it is the sovereign right of every state to maintain combat-capable armed forces equipped with modern military assets.

“Armenia recognizes the territorial integrity and inviolability of the borders of all its neighbours. Armenia and Azerbaijan on the highest level agreed that they mutually recognize the territorial integrity and sovereignty of each other based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration. The Republic of Armenia is loyal to this principle and does not have any ambitions beyond its internationally recognized 29 thousand 743 square kilometers. The Republic of Armenia has practically proven this approach by the initiative of conducting delimitation in four villages of the Gazakh Region of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Tavush Region of the Republic of Armenia. We call on Azerbaijan to cease the occupation of vital territories of more than 30 villages of the Republic of Armenia.

Azerbaijan’s practice of predicting regional escalations at every opportunity is alarming and comes to prove the analyses made by a number of centers that Azerbaijan will do everything to disrupt the process of concluding a peace agreement with Armenia in order to launch a new aggression against the Republic of Armenia after the COP29 summit in Baku in November 2024. We draw the attention of the international community to this, as well as to the fact that official Yerevan’s proposal to conclude a peace agreement within one month remained without response by official Baku,” the statement reads.

Within the framework of his working visit to France this week, Minister of Defense of Armenia Suren Papikyan had meetings with representatives of a number of military industrial companies during which agreements were reached and contracts were signed. In particular, a military-technical cooperation agreement was signed between Armenia’s Ministry of Defense and the French military-industrial company KNDS.

On June 18, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan, commenting on the contract between Armenia and France on the purchase and sale of CAESAR self-propelled artillery units, stated that Paris “supports Armenian revanchism” and “leads the region to a new war.”