France discredited its role as mediator in Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement – Russian Foreign Ministry

Baku/06.07.23/Turan: France has discredited itself as a mediator in the normalization of the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing today. According to her, Paris also played a role in the collapse of the OSCE Minsk Group.

Zakharova drew attention to the adoption by the French National Assembly of a statement against Azerbaijan, its initiation of sending a civilian mission of European observers to Armenia with a dubious mandate without taking into account the opinion of Baku.

"These demonstrative steps, according to Zakharova, are not aimed at helping the parties, but at ousting Russia from the region and achieving its goals," Zakharova said. "Russia has long had no illusions about the abilities of France and its President Macron to make a positive contribution to this issue," Zakharova further stressed.

She also pointed to Macron's statement on June 28 at a meeting with representatives of the Armenian diaspora in France, when he said that he puts more pressure on the President of Azerbaijan than the Prime Minister of Armenia himself and "almost single-handedly keeps this topic on the agenda of the world community." "After such statements, it seems that the modesty of the French president is second only to his masculinity. It is a pity that he did not say anything about the practical results of such fruitful work. There is a process, there is no result, and perhaps he did not say, because no one has ever seen the results," Zakharova said with sarcasm. ---06B--