Emmanuel Macron will not go to COP29, despite the major importance of the climate issue for French diplomacy and for his personal image. This is the consequence of a continual deterioration of relations between Paris and Baku, which finds its origin in France's very strong support for Armenia in its territorial conflict with Azerbaijan, and which today leads to mutual accusations of interference in internal affairs.
Baku did not appreciate that Paris referred the matter to the United Nations Security Council in September 2022 and began, in October 2023, military cooperation with Armenia. With the delivery of Bastion armored vehicles, three GM200 radars, Mistral 3 anti-aircraft missiles and Caesar self-propelled guns. The objective is to reconstitute a much diminished army after the scathing defeat inflicted by Baku in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.
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Ulcerated, the Azerbaijani presidency reacted with a virulent anti-French media campaign with overtones « anticolonialistes » aimed at stoking resentment towards the metropolis in New Caledonia and the West Indies. Called the “Baku Initiative Group”, this influence project, coordinated with the Russian intelligence services, has for several months been offering very demonstrative support to all independence movements in the overseas territories and to voices hostile to France in Africa.
Excessive sanction
In December 2023, Azerbaijani justice imprisoned a French businessman, Martin Ryan, accusing him of spying for the benefit of Paris. In 2024, two other French people, graffiti artist Théo Clerc and businessman Anass Derraz, suffered the wrath of justice in separate cases with political overtones and are currently being held in Azerbaijan. The Quai d'Orsay reacted on September 4 by advising the French not to surrender, “unless there is an imperative reason”, in the country due to “risk of arrest, arbitrary detention and unfair trial”. At the end of September, Azerbaijani dissident Vidadi Isgandarli was assassinated in Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin). His relatives and friends are convinced that the murder was ordered by the regime of President Ilham Aliev. An investigation is underway.
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Suspected of wanting to put pressure on France by carrying out arbitrary arrests, the Azerbaijani authorities claim, for their part, to have tangible elements supporting their accusations. In the Martin Ryan affair, the country's internal intelligence services have, according to our information, discovered written exchanges in his telephone with an agent of the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE) stationed at the French embassy, in Baku. For the French secret services, this dialogue had no clandestine dimension, because these meetings were carried out by a DGSE agent duly registered with the local authorities, as is the case for most members of the secret services deployed in embassies. .
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