BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 29
Trend:
The essence of the principles developed by the OSCE Minsk Group is that the territories around the former Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region should be transferred to Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev said responding to questions from the hosts of "60 minutes" of the Rossiya-1 TV channel program dedicated to the recent events on the Azerbaijani-Armenian contact line, Trend reports.
“And if he says that Karabakh is Armenia and, in addition, that we have to negotiate with the so-called puppet regime of Nagorno-Karabakh, thereby trying to undermine the format of negotiations that have already existed for 20 years, it means that Armenia deliberately disrupts the negotiations and puts forward unacceptable demands. When the Minsk Group recently began to speak more actively about who is still an obstacle to the settlement, they resorted to provocations like the one on 27 September,” the head of state said.
“Before that, on 12 July, our positions at the state border were attacked. After that, on 23 August, when an Armenian sabotage group was captured, its leader was captured on the line of contact. Everything is being done to disrupt the negotiations, then accuse Azerbaijan, then involve third parties and thereby disrupt the negotiations. Because the Armenian side wants to maintain the status quo. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group represented by the presidents of Russia, France, and the United States have repeatedly made statements that the status quo is unacceptable. And this means that the territories under occupation must be returned to Azerbaijan. We are committed to negotiations, but we see completely opposite actions from the Armenian side,” the Azerbaijani president said.