Azerbaijan's Milli Majlis (Parliament) has issued a statement in response to the bill H.R. 9087 adopted by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on July 22, APA reports.
According to the Press and Public Relations Department of the Milli Majlis, the Parliament expressed strong protest against the bill.
"The Milli Majlis of the Republic of Azerbaijan expresses its expresses its strenuous protest against Bill H.R. 9087 that the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives of the US Congress adopted on 22 July 2026 and rejects categorically the unfounded accusations levelled against our country in the said document. This initiative, which is a glaring example of flagrant disregard for the norms and principles of international law, represents yet another attempt to use the United States Congress as a tool of political pressure against Azerbaijan in the interests of the Armenian lobby.
Congressman Brad Sherman, the author of the Bill and a follower of the political line of former Congressman Robert Menendez, is known to be linked to Armenian lobby groups and as someone consistently seeking to implement their political agenda. Evidently, such initiatives, which are being put forward on the eve of the upcoming US congressional elections, are by no means aimed at safeguarding the national interests of the United States but, rather, pursue the goal of securing political and financial support from influential lobbying circles. Such practice, which calls into question the objectivity of the decisions being taken, should be investigated by the law enforcement agencies of the United States seriously and be given an appropriate legal assessment.
This initiative was clearly motioned in the context of the long-standing discreditation campaign of the Armenian Lobby against Azerbaijan. The analogous unseemly mission is being discharged by the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo. The international community are aware that he rigs politically motivated opinions with the financial support from the persons linked to Armenian chauvinist circles including the Russian oligarch of Armenian origin Samvel Karapetyan. The same political line is demonstrable also in the work of a number of European parliamentary entities including the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Individual members of this body, in particular figures such as Frank Schwabe, have long been putting forward biased and prejudiced initiatives against Azerbaijan. All those actions are elements of a concerted campaign being conducted by the Armenian lobby on various international parliamentary platforms.
One unsettling circumstance is that such steps would be taken in the period of the consistent promotion of the Azerbaijan-Armenia peace agenda. The international endeavours aimed at establishing a firm and lasting peace, in particular the mediation initiative and direct support of United States President Donald Trump, have generated tangible opportunities for normalising relations between the two states. Attempts by individual Congressmen to secure the adoption of politically motivated and unilateral decisions in such an environment not only undermine the climate of trust but also hinder the peace process.
Acts of this nature serve solely the interests of radical chauvinist circles within the Armenian Lobby. For decades, those circles have obstructed normalisation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations and have attempted to preserve confrontation whereas they are now leveraging regional tensions to seek their political and financial ends.
It is especially objectionable that the terms such as ‘POW’ and ‘political convicts’ should be used in the Bill as applied to the persons convicted by the courts of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Those persons are neither prisoners of war nor political convicts. Rather, they were prosecuted for committing military aggression, war crimes, enforced disappearances, tortures, terrorism and other crimes as stipulated in the Laws of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the norms of international law alike. Attempts to present them as victims of political persecution constitute premeditated distortion of facts and represent a direct interference in the administration of justice by an independent state.
The Milli Majlis of the Republic of Azerbaijan calls upon the Congressmen of the United States of America to abstain from the practice of passing decisions under the influence of organised Armenian lobby groups as well as to show respect for international law and the sovereignty of the Republic of Azerbaijan and not to become a tool in the hands of forces interested in derailing the peace process and preserving confrontation in the South Caucasus."
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