Los Angeles Council Welcomes Artsakh Foreign Minister
Councilmember Krekorian introduces Foreign Minister Davit Babayan, who addressed the Council prior to passage of Krekorian’s resolution calling for full recognition of Artsakh, and U.S. action to end Azerbaijan’s aggression against Armenia.
LOS ANGELES (September 30, 2022) – Today, the Los Angeles City Council approved a resolution by Councilmember Paul Krekorian calling on “the United States and all other democracies to stand with Armenia in its present danger and immediately suspend all military and economic aid to Azerbaijan.”
The Council’s vote followed an impassioned address from Davit Babayan, Foreign Minister of Artsakh, a small republic formed by indigenous Armenians on their ancient land. The people of Artsakh fought a bloody war of independence from the Soviet Union over 30 years ago. Since invading and occupying a substantial portion of Artsakh two years ago, Azerbaijan has systematically destroyed Armenian historic sites — monuments, cathedrals, churches and schools — in an effort to erase a thousand years of Armenian history in Artsakh.
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Foreign Minister Babayan is visiting the United States in the wake of renewed attacks by Azerbaijan on neighboring Armenia. Azeri forces killed over 150 Armenians in the assault of September 14, and has since repeatedly violated a ceasefire agreement. In the context of Azerbaijan’s occupation of Artsakh’s territory, its past record of war crimes and atrocities against civilians, and the Azeri dictator’s previously expressed territorial ambitions and threats of genocide, Azerbaijan’s recent actions signal the regime’s intent to annihilate the Armenian nation.
Krekorian’s resolution asks President Biden and all members of Congress “to take meaningful punitive action against the Azeri regime to reign in its violent expansionism once and for all,” and further calls on “all nations who respect democracy and self-determination to extend, at long last, full diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Artsakh as a free, independent and sovereign state, and to demand unequivocally that Azerbaijan must respect the sovereignty of Armenia and discontinue its pattern of aggression, violence and war crimes in the region.”
