BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 14
Trend:
Throughout all these years, I have been saying that a second Armenian state will never be created on our lands, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said during the meeting with the awarded servicemen after attending the inauguration of the Military Trophy Park in Baku, Trend reports.
“However, in parallel with this, preparations were underway. I did not hide it. I have repeatedly said that if the issue was not resolved peacefully, we would resolve it by military means. And this is what happened in the end. We did everything as I promised. Throughout all these years, I have been saying that a second Armenian state will never be created on our lands. I was saying that the first Armenian state was created on our historical lands. One of the first decisions of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918 was to transfer Irevan to Armenia as a capital. I condemned this decision. I said that it was betrayal, treason, an unforgivable act. The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic has done a lot for the Azerbaijani people. However, we should not obscure history. We must know it. We must know that the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic existed in 1918-1920 and our independence was half-hearted. We gave Irevan to Armenia. Representatives from Irevan objected to this but nobody paid attention to them. The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic did not have full power. British generals dictated their will here. An English general was even supposed to issue an order to approve our flag. We must talk about everything the way it is. We can’t make up false history. They invented sufficiently false history for us both in Soviet times and in the first years of independence. We have become hostages of such false history. We must know everything – who played what role in history and what was the result,” President Aliyev said.
“While showing a principled approach at the negotiating table, we were also creating a powerful army. Throughout these 17 years, military spending has been our main budgetary expenditure,” the Azerbaijani president said.
“We have achieved our goal. The combat capability of our army has strengthened and increased, our army was provided with modern weapons, ammunition, and equipment. In order to avoid dependence on one country, we acquired this equipment from many sources. To achieve this, it was necessary to have close ties with partner countries because the arms market is very sensitive. Commercial and business interests don’t decide everything there. Political interests do! We acquired equipment and weapons from partner countries, so that if something happens to equipment from one source, then we will still have reserve capabilities, and the second Karabakh war proved this,” the head of state said.