Thank you for the privilege.
For identification purposes, I am a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and director of the energy security program at the NATO Association of Canada. I appear in my personal capacity and the views I express are my own. I matriculated at MIT for my bachelor's degree and earned my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. I have taught at all university levels in Canada and internationally. For over 20 years I was a senior research fellow at Carleton University, as you said.
I will make my opening statement in English.
However, I will answer questions in the language in which they are asked.
Canada has a long history of co-operation with Azerbaijan and Armenia, starting with NATO's partnership for peace program in 1994. Beginning in 2001, tens of thousands of military aircraft and supply trucks transited Azerbaijan, carrying NATO forces and equipment to Afghanistan. Beginning in 2002, the Azerbaijani peacekeeping battalion participated in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. When the northern distribution network was established in 2009, Azerbaijan continued to be a key link until it was closed a few years ago.
Canada has had formal diplomatic relations with both Azerbaijan and Armenia since 1992, when it recognized their territorial integrity within the borders they had before the Soviet collapse. Acknowledging four UN Security Council resolutions from 1993, Canadian policy has always supported Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and opposed separatism, just as it has done in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
Like Canada, Azerbaijan gives tangible support to Ukraine. It sends large cargoes of humanitarian aid. The State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, or SOCAR, owns filling stations in Ukraine that give free fuel to such emergency services as ambulances and fire trucks. Azerbaijan recently provided Ukraine with emergency power generators for winter use.
What can Canada do today? First, Ottawa should do more to help demine the full one-sixth of Azerbaijan's territory—a region more than twice as large as the greater Toronto area—that was militarily occupied over the course of 30 years. Canada's contribution to the demining effort in Azerbaijan has not matched, I'm sorry to say, its international prominence on the issue. Many countries, NGOs and international organizations around the world contribute not just funding but also personnel and training and education assistance to Azerbaijan's long-term demining program.
Around the single destroyed city of Aghdam, no fewer than 80,000 mines were discovered and neutralized. Estimates of the number of mines laid throughout the formerly occupied territories range from upwards of one million. Canada should also encourage Armenia to fulfill its obligation under international law to turn over to Azerbaijan all maps of the mines laid by its forces during 30 years of military occupation, which it has so far refused to do.
Second, Canada should open an embassy in Azerbaijan. The latest crisis on the Lachin road, and indeed the whole political instability in the region, is today engineered by Russia, which seeks to derail the peace process. The European Union, United States and other western powers all agree that only direct bilateral contacts and negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia will succeed in arriving at a definitive settlement. Azerbaijan has many times declared its willingness to embrace Armenia, to reconcile the two civil societies and to build mutually beneficial co-operation, economically and otherwise. Russia alone opposes this, because it does not want to be locked out of the region where it has been so long accustomed to being the sole hegemonic power.
Both Canada and Azerbaijan are genuinely multicultural middle powers that continually punch above their weight in international diplomacy. Both Canada and Azerbaijan have demonstrated their belief in a rules-based international order by their actions, by their conduct of international diplomacy, by their participation in international co-operation and by their leadership of international organizations. If Azerbaijan is not as democratic as we might like, then without diplomatic representation we lose the chance to discover the real pluralism in Azerbaijani society, to engage in open dialogue and to tell official Baku what we think.
Azerbaijan is the most significant local geopolitical player in the broader region. Not only does it provide important support to Ukraine, but it's also a very important ally of Israel, which its neighbour Iran—ironically, like Russia, an ally of Armenia in the conflict—does not like. An embassy in Baku is essential, not only to be better represented in the broader Caspian region but also to get an even-handed view from the ground, sensitive to all the critical nuances upon which the whole future of the region will turn.
Thank you for your attention.