Georgia Missed Chance to Regulate Foreign Meddling in Domestic Affairs, Azerbaijani President Says

Georgia missed "the train" of opportunity to regulate foreign media meddling in domestic affairs, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with Russia's national broadcaster VGTRK and RIA Novosti.

"Coming back to external influence, it turned out that there are thousands of non-governmental organizations functioning in Georgia that receive funding from the West," he said.

Azerbaijan, by contrast, has strict regulations on foreign funding of media, when a foreign entity cannot finance a local media outlet by even 1%, the president noted.

"They [Western media] are bad-mouthing our people, our country day and night through their handy resources like Voice of America and Radio Liberty and casting a shadow on our victory with Armenia," he pointed out, explaining the funding restrictions.

Aliyev also criticized French President Macron for interfering in Georgian affairs.

"You see, Macron's ears are sticking out again. A man can't sit calm in his country. He has to meddle into Georgia's deals too," he concluded.

Macron's Gov't's Megalomania Has 'Thrown Relations With Azerbaijan Into Abyss'

"And then [before Emmanuel Macron's inauguration] we actively co-operated, a lot of French companies worked here. With 13 French cities, our cities became sister cities. Twin cities," Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said.

However, France's interference in the affairs of Armenia and Azerbaijan has dragged Baku-Paris relations into a crisis, the top official noted.

"But these exorbitant ambitions and megalomania, the unreasonable Macron government, essentially threw all this into the abyss," he pointed out.

According to the president, France is doing everything to discredit Azerbaijan.

In September, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry responded to Macron's statement at the UN General Assembly on solidarity with Armenia by demanding that Paris "put an end to destructive activities" in the Transcaucasus (a region on the border of Eastern Europe and West Asia).

France's Policies in Africa & Middle East Turn It Into 'Completely Failed State'

"France may have once been a great country of great thinkers, great scientists, great writers. But now it is not. Now the Macron regime is turning France into a failed state," the top official stated.

Aliyev recalled Paris's foreign policy problems in Africa, where some of the Sahel region nations told "adieu" to France's presence in their countries.

"Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, next in line is Chad, which has already told them to leave, and Senegal, where the president has changed and a man of national spirit has come in," he pointed out, adding that under Macron's administration France failed in its relations with Lebanon, Azerbaijan and Georgia as well.

The president also urged the French president to focus on other issues "and not on how to harm Azerbaijan".

"Look at what's happening in [their] domestic politics. That's a mess," he emphasized.

The top official previously stated that France supports Armenian separatism in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of southwestern Azerbaijan.