There is no obstacle to peace with Armenia: Aliyev

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev believes that there are no obstacles to peace with Armenia, based on agreements reached between Baku and Yerevan in October 2022, as reported by Interfax.

“Now is the time to establish peace. Therefore, in November 2020, we initiated a peaceful negotiation process (with Armenia). There are five well-known principles that can serve as a basis for a peace treaty with Armenia. We hope that the international participants who are trying to act as mediators will persuade Armenia not to miss this opportunity. Because Armenia missed the opportunity to become an independent country and turned into a colony of other countries, and they lost the real chance to gain independence and shape their own future,” Aliyev stated at the X Global Baku Forum on Thursday.

Aliyev noted that there is now an opportunity to build normal friendly relations. “We believe that peace is possible after the war, and the agreements with Armenia in October show that there are no obstacles to peace with Armenia,” said Aliyev.

He also emphasized that Azerbaijan has done everything possible to resolve the conflict with Armenia peacefully. “We wanted Armenia to comply with the decisions of the UN Security Council and withdraw its armed forces unconditionally. But Armenia has given no importance to this decision, which is in itself a disrespect for international law,” the President noted.

He highlighted that the OSCE Minsk Group was established in 1992 to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, but for 28 years that group has achieved nothing, and the opposing side has sought to “freeze this process, meaning they wanted to leave this conflict in a permanently frozen state.” “But we could not agree to this, and we did what we deemed right, exercising our right to self-defense, particularly Article 51 of the UN Charter. We liberated our territories, and that is our legal right. We wanted to resolve this issue peacefully, but Armenia did not approach this matter constructively, and we liberated our territories by using force. For more than 2.5 years, we have been carrying out restoration work in these areas,” the President of Azerbaijan continued.