Ilham Aliyev, who is hosting this year’s U.N. climate meeting in Baku, or COP29, started the conference saying oil, gas and other natural resources are “gifts from the god”.
He also celebrated Azerbaijan’s victory in its long-running conflict with Armenia over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Aliyev also accused France and the Netherlands of oppressing the indigenous peoples of their overseas territories, rattling off a list that included the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, the birthplace of Napoleon.
Aliyev is in his 21st year of authoritarian rule of Azerbaijan, a petrostate on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan relies on oil and gas for nearly 30% of its economic activity and more than 90% of its exports, among the highest percentages of any country in the world.
When Azerbaijan was chosen last year to host COP29, environmental groups worried its authoritarian bent and oil-soaked history made the country a less-than-ideal place to hold the conference.
Aliyev took over the presidency in 2003 from his father, a former KGB official who seized power in a military coup in 1993, ending a brief attempt at democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Freedom House ranks the country as one of the least free in the world.
Aliyev has intensified a government crackdown on independent media, jailing 14 journalists and other media employees. In his opening speech at COP29, Aliyev also took aim at journalists from the U.S. and other Western countries.
“Fake news media of the country which is number one oil-and-gas producer in the world and produces 30 times more oil than Azerbaijan call us petrostate,” Aliyev said in his opening speech this week in English. “They better look at themselves.”