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The day before, following the example of the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan Novruz Mammadov, two more Azerbaijani officials, the Press secretary of MFA Elman Abdullayev and another Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Ali Hasanov criticized the U.S. ambassador of Azerbaijan Richard Morningstar.

Note that last week the Deputy Head of Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan, head of foreign relations department Novruz Mammadov sailed against the U.S. ambassador in Azerbaijan Richard Morningstar and against U.S. as a whole. The list of accusations presented by Mammadov was quite lengthy. According to the official, the U.S. ambassador makes attempts to cast a shadow on Baku-Moscow and Baku-Tehran relations and intervenes into internal affairs of Azerbaijan. The U.S., according to Mammadov, is not engaged in the settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict and assists the preparations of “Molotov cocktails” in Baku and so on.

On Monday the official representative of Azerbaijani MFA Elman Abdullayev in his interview with Azerbaijani news agency Trend while commenting on the interview on political situation of Azerbaijan given to the Radio Liberty by the U.S. ambassador, stated that “The intervention into internal affairs of Azerbaijan and the attempts to guide it are unacceptable.”

Abdullayev noted that “Azerbaijan adheres to the position of non-interference into the internal affairs of other countries and therefore believes that other states, including the U.S., should demonstrate the same behavior in respect to Azerbaijan.”

According to the official in Azerbaijan “the independent course of development, successful reforms, the efforts made to establish lawful state and create strong civil society are obvious.” “Azerbaijan in a short period of time conducted such work, that many countries, including the U.S., cannot accomplish even in the course of decades,” the Azerbaijani official said.

As the representative of Azerbaijani MFA stated, such kind of statements and attempts to intervene into the activities of the judiciary “cast a shadow on relations between the countries.”

According to Abdullayev, Azerbaijan’s legislation, which regulates the activities of NGOs and Civil Society is more progressed and advanced than the legislation of many other countries, including the Unites States.
He stated that according to Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations the purpose of the persons who caries diplomatic function is to foster mutual understanding and create friendly ties between the two countries. Intervention into the internal affairs of a country, contradicts to the spirit of Vienna Convention, and aims at harming the friendly relations of the countries, concluded Abdullayev.

On his turn, the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan, head of Social and Political Affairs Department Ali Hasanov as well stated that “U.S. ambassador Richard Morningstar’s statement is inconsistent with the spirit of current Azerbaijani-American relations and doesn’t meet the requirements of Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961.”As the Azerbaijani news agency Turan reports “the government chief ideologist” Ali Hasanov told the agency AzerTAc.

Turan notes that Hasanov pointedly said that the domestic and foreign policy of Azerbaijan don’t correspond to the wishes of “certain cicles” but are based on national interests. He called the ambassador’s viewpoint that the authority in Azerbaijan “is not monolithic” to be “subjective”. “Today in various places around the world with the active participation of the U.S. and the West such kind of events take place, the logic of which is not understandable for the whole world. The “Maidan’s” in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine and in other countries cross out all the progressive principles of modern system of international relations. If some foreign circles want the repetition of these events in Azerbaijan, then surely they will be disappointed,” Hasanov said.

Later he touched upon the opacity of funding provided to range of unregistered NGOs in Azerbaijan. “Azerbaijani legislation requires transparency in the field, when the relevant authorities begin to act, international protectors come into arena claiming that pressure is exercised on Civil Society in Azerbaijan,” Hasanov noted.

The official recalled the former representative of the U.S. National Democratic Institute Alex Grigoriev accusing him of financing “the radical youth group” on March 2013. According to Hasanov the Azerbaijani state authorities were not informed about that funding.

According to Hasanov, “Maidan” movement is a project of some “international forces” and they are responsible for civil strife, chaos and anarchy, split of Ukrainian statehood. “If those circles want to see similar processes in Azerbaijan it is our task and duty to stop it,” Hasanov said.

As Turan notes, the U.S. ambassador Richard Morningstar declared that the Azerbaijani authorities without any grounds, create artificial barriers for the development of Civil Society, persecute and suppress the freedom of speech and media. The continuation of this policy eventually may lead to “Maidan” in Azerbaijan and there is no need to blame the West for it.