THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Azerbaijan asked the U.N.'s top court on Monday to throw out a case brought by its Caucasus neighbour Armenia accusing it of ethnic cleansing and violating a U.N. anti-discrimination treaty.
The case is part of the fallout from decades of confrontation between the countries, most pointedly over the Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan.
Baku's forces recaptured the mountainous region in September after years of ethnic Armenian control, prompting most of its ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia.
Armenia first filed the discrimination claim in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) - also known as the World Court - two years before that in 2021, accusing Azerbaijan of breaching the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
The case accused Azerbaijan of glorifying racism against Armenians, allowing hate speech against Armenians and destroying Armenian cultural sites - all accusations that Baku denies.
Azerbaijan subsequently filed a claim against Armenia, accusing it of discrimination and ethnic cleansing against Azeris and breaching the same treaty.
On Monday, Azeri Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Elnur Mammadov told the court that most of Armenia's complaints related to the armed conflicts over Nagorno-Karabakh and did not fall within the scope of the anti-discrimination treaty.
He also accused Armenia of not genuinely engaging in negotiations before bringing the case to court.
"Armenia's application misuses the (treaty) and tries to escape its obligation to attempt settlement of its dispute with Azerbaijan by way of negotiation before invoking the court's jurisdiction," Mammadov said.
Armenia will respond to the Azeri objections on Tuesday.
Both states have filed legal objections to the other's case which will be heard in the coming two weeks.
In November last year, the court issued emergency measures in Armenia's case ordering Azerbaijan to allow ethnic Armenians who fled Nagorno-Karabakh in September to return.
Armenia accuses Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing. Azerbaijan says it has pledged to ensure all residents’ safety and security, regardless of national or ethnic origin, and that it has not forced ethnic Armenians to leave Karabakh.
The ongoing hearings will cover only the legal objections to the jurisdiction of the ICJ and will not go into the merits of the discrimination claims. A final ruling in both cases can be years away and the ICJ has no way to enforce its rulings.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
