A delegation of Mormons from the US have met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku. The visit coincided with the official registration of the Mormon church in Azerbaijan and the inauguration of what appears to be the first Mormon church in the country.
According to a readout of Thursday’s meeting shared by the presidential administration, the US delegation ‘expressed their gratitude to President Ilham Aliyev for the official registration of the US Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by the Azerbaijani government’.
‘They described this as a manifestation of the care shown to representatives of all religions in Azerbaijan’, the administration further noted.
The readout continued to extol the asserted religious tolerance of Azerbaijan, claiming that ‘tolerance is the way of life for the people of Azerbaijan, and through history, representatives of different religions and nations have lived in Azerbaijan in peace and harmony as one family’.
The claims notwithstanding, the destruction of Armenian heritage sites across Azerbaijan, including in Baku, has been widely documented.
In addition to discussing church-related matters, the delegation also ‘conveyed their congratulations’ to Aliyev for the peace agreement with Armenia initialled in Washington alongside US President Donald Trump and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in August.
In turn, Aliyev ‘highlighted the historical importance of the agreements reached between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Washington, emphasising that they play an important role in the development of the region’.
Following the meeting, the delegation and other unspecified local figures presided over the opening of the new Mormon church in Baku.
OC Media
