BAKU, Azerbaijan, Oct. 27
Trend:
I believe that Italy can play a very important role in the settlement of the conflict, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in an interview to the Italian Rai 1 TV channel, Trend reports.
“I must say that when the Minsk Group was formed, a very long time ago, almost 30 years ago, it was the Italian representative, the Italian diplomat who was the leader of this Minsk Group. That was before the institution of co-chairs was established. After the institution of the co-chairs was created, the Minsk Group as a group of countries did not produce any results because the co-chairs took this activity into their monopoly,” the head of state said.
“We know what this has led to. For 28 years, there has been no progress, no results, only promises, only bureaucratic procedures. In essence, it seems to us today that the activities of the co-chairs were aimed at freezing the conflict, not at resolving it. As for the model that exists in Italy, we have studied it. We also studied the model of the Aland Islands and other successful autonomy experiences. Azerbaijan, unlike Armenia, is a multiethnic state. In Armenia, as you probably know, 99 percent of the population are Armenians. Therefore, this is a very positive experience of self-government which could be applied in our case. In fact, as far as I know, such proposals were made in the mid-1990s. Even groups of representatives of non-governmental organizations and political scientists have visited your country, the region you are talking about, and the Aland Islands. But Armenia has always categorically rejected this. They believed that they would be able to occupy our territories forever relying on military, political and economic support from leading countries of the world, but they made a gross miscalculation. We are proving our case on the battlefield today. We are implementing UN Security Council resolutions and are restoring international law.” Azerbaijani president said.