U.S. using human rights as ‘tool of pressure on Azerbaijan’ - ruling party official
The United States is using human rights and democracy issues as a tool of pressure on Azerbaijan, in a bid to influence the country’s independent foreign policy in the region, an official of the Azerbaijani ruling party has said.
Yeni (New) Azerbaijan Party’s (YAP) Deputy Executive Secretary, MP Mubariz Gurbanly’s remarks came after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent criticism of the human rights situation in Azerbaijan.
In her statement issued last Friday on the occasion of the International Human Rights Day, Clinton mentioned Azerbaijan as one of the negative examples in terms of rights abuses, alongside Zimbabwe.
Gurbanly told a briefing Tuesday that geo-political interests, not human rights protection, are behind Clinton’s statement.
"In order to reproach any given country, the country doing so should, itself, be an example [to follow]," the YAP official commented. "The U.S. is not considered an exemplary country in this regard, because to date, it has neither ratified nor adopted as an official document the [Universal] Declaration of Human Rights passed [by the United Nations General Assembly] in 1948."
Gurbanly added that it is "illogical" for a country which has not passed a document recognized internationally as one defining the founding principles of human rights and freedoms to accuse other states of rights abuses.
Novruz Mammadov, the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration’s head of foreign relations, earlier said that Clinton’s statement was "interesting for several reasons". He said that if human rights are important for the U.S, "why does the US Department of State keep silent on the issue of violating the rights of one million Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced persons driven out of their lands as a result of Armenia's military aggression?" He also said it appears that there is "unnatural affection" for Armenia, Azerbaijan’s foe, on the part of the U.S. and that the country seems to have "some serious commitments" to the Armenian diaspora, which prompts media outlets and officials to criticize Azerbaijan, but speak positively of Armenia.