BAKU, Azerbaijan, January 10. France can live without us, and we can live without France, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with local TV channels on January 10, Trend reports.
"I hope that a government will be formed in France in the future that will value the relations with Azerbaijan. Because we have always cooperated with them in our policies only with the intention of friendship. In the previous period, I can say that more than 10 of our cities were twinned, there were exchanges, many representatives came here, President Sarkozy, President Hollande visited Azerbaijan. Now the situation is completely different. I recently said in a closed-door meeting that France can live without us, we can live without France, neither they nor we will feel it. But this is the path, it is their choice and we still haven't done anything against them. We simply responded during the war. Now I don't want to say anything about the high-level contacts during the war. They took place during closed conversations. But during the war, as they say, we had very tense relations. During the war, France openly accused us, slandered us. I now demand an apology from them. They slandered us and said that we had brought jihadists. There is not a single piece of evidence. Have they apologized to us? No!," the President said.