Foreign policy specialist condemns anti-Azerbaijani remarks by USAID head

Brenda Shaffer, a lecturer at the US Naval Postgraduate School and foreign policy specialist, sharply condemned the anti-Azerbaijani remarks voiced by Samantha Power, head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Azernews reports.

"Have you also spoken to the 12,000 soldiers from Armenia and their families (another 20,000) who were living in Garabagh? They were probably happy to go home," Shaffer wrote on her X page in response to the USAID head's post about her meeting with so-called "displaced" Armenians who left Garabagh.

Meanwhile, Hikmet Hajiyev, assistant to the Azerbaijani president and head of the foreign policy department of the presidential administration, said earlier that USAID's work in Azerbaijan no longer has a place.

"During the 30 years of occupation of Azerbaijani lands by Armenia, when millions more Azerbaijanis were subjected to notorious and bloody ethnic cleansing, the US stood on the side of the aggressor state, Armenia. Today, the same policy continues in the same form and manifestation," he said.

As the permanent representative of the United States in the UN Security Council, Samata Power has never dared to raise the issue of the deplorable situation of Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs and demand the implementation of UNSC resolutions.