Host of the COP29 climate talks Is raining on his own parade

Not Ilham Aliyev, the mustachioed leader of Azerbaijan who is hosting this year’s U.N. climate meeting in Baku.

To kick off the conference, known as COP29, the 62-year-old president said oil, gas and other natural resources are “gifts from the god." He celebrated Azerbaijan’s victory in its long-running conflict with Armenia over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.

He 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.

“They are still suffering today in the 21st century from colonial rule," Aliyev said, citing protests that swept the French territories of New Caledonia and Martinique earlier this year.

The early atmospherics don’t bode well for the main task of the conference: setting a new goal for rich countries to channel finance to developing countries for clean energy and climate projects. The sums being discussed—more than $1 trillion annually—are so large and the politics so difficult that negotiators can ill afford additional negotiating hurdles.

“Azerbaijan is exploiting the fight against climate change for an unworthy personal agenda," said Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the French climate minister, who canceled plans to go to Baku for the home stretch of the talks next week.

Aliyev is in his 21st year of authoritarian rule of Azerbaijan, a petrostate on the shores of the Caspian Sea that 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. The world’s first industrial oil well was drilled near Baku in 1846, a few miles from the site of the U.N. conference.

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.

The host of U.N. climate talks faces the daunting challenge of uniting more than 190 governments, any of which have a veto under the U.N. rules. That typically requires geopolitical rivals to leave behind disagreements in other areas when they begin climate negotiations. The U.S. and China, for example, have agreed to push forward climate agreements—most notably the Paris accord of 2015—despite conflicts in areas such as international trade and the status of Taiwan.

“Regardless of any bilateral disagreements, the COP should be a place where all parties feel at liberty to come and negotiate on climate action," said Wopke Hoekstra, the European Union climate commissioner.

Aliyev hasn’t followed the normal playbook. On the second day of the conference, he lit into France and the Netherlands at a meeting with leaders of small island nations, saying the people in their overseas territories “were often brutally suppressed."

“The regime of President Macron killed 13 and injured 169 people during this year’s legitimate protests of Kanaks in New Caledonia," Aliyev said, referring to French President Emmanuel Macron and the French territory’s indigenous Kanak ethnic group.

The comments drew outrage from France. “These attacks constitute a flagrant violation of the [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] code of conduct," Pannier-Runacher, the climate minister, said.

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.

Aliyev has since ruled Azerbaijan with an increasingly iron grip. Freedom House, a U.S. nonprofit, ranks the country as one of the least free in the world. Aliyev appointed his wife to the newly created position of vice president.

Aliyev has in recent years moved Azerbaijan closer to Russia after the Kremlin appeared to side with the country in its conflict with Armenia. The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and Azerbaijani intelligence chiefs met in Baku last month. The SVR issued a statement afterward saying the two countries would cooperate “to identify the hostile intentions of Western intelligence services aimed at undermining internal political stability in our states."

The government’s relations with France in particular have soured sharply. French officials say Azerbaijan has helped foment the unrest in New Caledonia and other overseas territories this year. They believe it is a response to France’s support for Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan.

Aliyev has recently intensified a government crackdown on independent media, with 14 journalists and other media employees now sitting in Azerbaijani prisons. 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."

Write to Matthew Dalton at Matthew.Dalton@wsj.com