Yerevan /Mediamax/. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan has delivered a tough response to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s remark that "Armenia heroizes fascism and the former Armenian government erected a monument to fascist executor and traitor Garegin Ter-Harutyunyan (Garegin Nzhdeh – Mediamax) in Yerevan”.

At the restricted meeting of the Council of CIS countries heads in Turkmenistan, Pashinyan said that Aliyev is disrespecting the Armenian people and the heads of CIS states and “it is inappropriate to use this format to distort history in order to create tension during a very important meeting”.

“Ilham Aliyev’s remarks leave an impression that Hitler played a secondary role in the war and Garegin Nzhdeh was a leader of the Nazi movement. The truth is that he was fighting against the Turkish occupation of Armenia and the Armenian Genocide organized by the Turks. By the way, Nzhdeh commanded an extremely important section of the front along with Russian officers in the Armenian-Turkish war in 1918,” Pashinyan said, underlying the importance of objective assessment of historical events.

The Prime Minister also apologized for the tensed situation.

“As you can see, I did not create it,” he noted.