France-Azerbaijan: a contradictory sequence

Against the backdrop of the latest such tension, on October 19, French Ambassador Zachary Gross expressed his position in the essay "Prague: a key milestone on the path to peace", the main idea of ​​​​which is that France sees the basis for resolving the long-term Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in mutual recognition by the warring parties - Armenia and Azerbaijan - territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Gross: “The joint statement adopted in Prague following the meeting of the President of Azerbaijan, the Prime Minister of Armenia, the President of France and the President of the European Council was a significant breakthrough and an important milestone, since the statement states that “Armenia and Azerbaijan reaffirmed their commitment to the Charter of the United Nations and the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1991, by which both states recognize each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty. Azerbaijan and Armenia also "confirmed that this would be the basis for the work of the border delimitation commissions and that the next meeting of the border commissions would be held in Brussels by the end of October."

The reference to the Prague meeting, co-initiated by President Macron along with EU Council President Michel, can be seen as an expression by Mr. Ambassador not only of his personal position, but of France's consolidated view of the strategy for resolving the most dangerous and complex conflict in the South Caucasus.

The history of participation of France in the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, dating back to 1991, was contradictory on the one hand, and unambiguously consistent on the other. The controversy stemmed a) from the historical commitment to the "Armenian issue" and b) geopolitical interests in the Caucasus, where Azerbaijan is the economic and logistical center of the region. The French consistency is dictated by the common policy within the framework of the co-chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group, along with the US and Russia, where, despite the competition, the troika's own interests towards Azerbaijan coincide.

The contradictory-consistent line of France's policy towards Azerbaijan has become dominant from the very beginning of Azerbaijan's independence during the presidency of Mitterrand and Chirac, the baton of which was taken up and continued by Sarkozy, Hollande and Macron. Presidents Aliyevs, senior and junior, built their relations with their colleagues in accordance with a predetermined line, where the amplitude of fluctuations in the political tuning fork was a natural reflection of the Azerbaijani-French relations.

Despite the publicity of the Armenophile position of France, the position of Azerbaijan did not suffer in the course of a protracted confrontation with Armenia over Karabakh, but rather strengthened, as indicated by the outcome of the 44-day war and the effective pursuit of a policy of forcing Armenia to peace, which ended with the Prague Agreement, which Gross mentions not without pride.

Ambassador Gross, who is completing his Baku mission, has received a lot of criticism and confessions, which is a natural state of the line of contradiction-consistency that has been aggravated during the 2020 war, the border battles of the past three months, and smoothed out by the French peaceful and effective mediation..

The Prague agreement is also the result of Gross's mission, which ends with the strengthening of the factor of consistency in French policy towards Azerbaijan. The situation in the South Caucasus region, where the era of the key Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is ending, is developing in such a way that the next envoy of Paris will have no choice but to develop the second part of the line of contradiction-consistency. And this promises good dividends for the Azerbaijani-French relations in the medium and long term.