The Western Azerbaijan Community has issued a statement addressed to US Vice President James David Vance regarding his upcoming visit to Azerbaijan.
According to AzerNEWS, the statement reads:
Dear Mr Vance,
We have learned from the press that you will be visiting Azerbaijan.
Welcome to the “Land of Fire”. Azerbaijan is a peaceful country where, historically, Muslims, Christians and Jews have lived together in peace and security. Azerbaijan places great importance on family values, as well as spiritual and traditional values.
Azerbaijan’s relations with the Christian world and the Holy See are developing successfully. In recent years, numerous high-level visits from Azerbaijan to the Vatican have taken place.
Last year, the opening ceremony of the Baku office of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was held in the capital. At the same time, plans are under way for the construction of a second Catholic church in Baku.
As a result of the criminal negligence of the leadership of the former Soviet Union, beginning in 1987, Western Azerbaijanis living in Armenia were deported. Their villages and ancestral homelands were emptied, burned and looted, while mosques and cultural heritage sites were destroyed. The cultural heritage of Western Azerbaijanis was appropriated and historical facts were falsified. In particular, the original identity of the Blue Mosque in Yerevan, which belongs to Azerbaijanis, was altered.
Although Western Azerbaijanis have integrated into Azerbaijani society over the years, they have never forgotten their ancestral homeland in Armenia and have always lived with the hope of returning there.
Western Azerbaijanis have no territorial claims against Armenia and do not oppose its sovereignty. On the contrary, they fully support the policy of President Ilham Aliyev aimed at achieving lasting peace with Armenia, as well as the Azerbaijan–Armenia normalisation process, which is developing with the support of US President Donald Trump.
We welcome the historic Washington meeting held on 8 August 2025, the Joint Declaration signed by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and the United States, and the initialling of the peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
We also fully support the progress achieved in the normalisation process since the Washington meeting, including confidence-building measures between the two countries and the resumption of trade relations.
We further look forward to the imminent implementation of the “Trump Roadmap for International Peace and Prosperity”.
Dear Mr Vance,
All these achievements, recently attained with the support of your administration, give us confidence that Western Azerbaijanis, after a long period of waiting, will be able to return to their ancestral homelands in Armenia, restore their destroyed villages and homes, revisit their cemeteries, and rebuild their mosques.
To achieve this, we need the support of all progressive humanity, especially that of the United States.
We believe that your visit to the region will make a significant contribution to the normalisation of relations between the two states and peoples, the strengthening of economic and trade ties, and the initiation of new transport links.
