BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec. 13
Trend:
Armenia was forced to sign the capitulation act. They would have never signed it voluntarily. We forced them, not Minsk Group, we, and President Putin. This is a reality. And if not for President Putin’s intervention and efforts, today probably the situation would be different, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said receiving the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Stephane Visconti of France, Andrew Schofer of the US, Ambassador of Russia to Azerbaijan Mikhail Bocharnikov and Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk, Trend reports.
“There have been statements of the presidents of the Minsk Group co-chair countries, I think, some ten years ago. And we supported those statements. It created certain hopes. They were saying in the joint declaration, 'status quo is unacceptable.' We said yes, good statement, let’s work on that. Now tell it to Armenia. How many times I was telling you, your predecessors, go and tell Armenia to leave, put pressure on them. How many times I was telling high-ranking officials from your countries, go put pressure on them until it is not too late. But what happened? After certain time leaders of your countries changed this wording. They no longer said status quo is unacceptable. They were saying status quo is not sustainable. That means that for them status quo was acceptable. What other explanation can we have? When they were saying in L`Aquila and in Muskoka the status quo is unacceptable, and then they say the status quo is unsustainable. Obviously, it means that they think the status quo is acceptable,” Azerbaijani president said.
“Many politicians thought that the only way how to preserve peace is to keep status quo and we changed it. And we showed that the status quo can be changed by force, by courage, by wisdom, by policy, by concentration of efforts, by solidarity of Azerbaijani people, by the will of the Azerbaijani government and the spirit of Azerbaijani people and bravery of Azerbaijani soldier. We showed that we were right. And then, of course, Armenia was forced to sign the capitulation act. They would have never signed it voluntarily. We forced them, not Minsk Group, we, and President Putin. This is a reality. And if not for President Putin’s intervention and efforts, today probably the situation would be different. But we achieved what we planned,” the head of state said