BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 13
Trend:
Pakistan was among the countries which openly supported Azerbaijan from the first days of the confrontation, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said during his speech at the ‘A New Look at the South Caucasus: Post-Conflict Development and Cooperation’ conference at ADA University in Baku on April 13, 2021, Trend reports.
"Until the last days, Pakistan was always on our side. We are very grateful to the Pakistani government and the Pakistani people for a very consistent approach to the issues related to our territorial integrity. Maybe many of our participants do not know but Pakistan is one of the very few countries which did not establish diplomatic relations with Armenia because of their aggression and occupation. There are only very few countries like Pakistan. So, we are always grateful for that and this is a real sign of our brotherhood. And probably you know that during the war there have been many flags of Turkey and Pakistan in our cities and we, of course, were telling who is supporting us. And that was coming from the hearts of the people,” said President Ilham Aliyev.
“With respect to the war crimes committed by Armenia, it’s not the first time. They committed war crimes during the first Karabakh war but at that time it was a different information environment. And many facts of atrocities and barbarism were not documented or if documented they did not reach the international audience. Therefore, they managed to hide their war crimes. At that time it was not only Khojaly, but many other villages like the village Aghdaban in Kalbajar, not many people in the world know about that. But that was more or less the same. They were killing and burning innocent civilians and many other villages have been victims of Armenian barbarism. And during the second Karabakh war, as you said, it was in front of the eyes of the international community how they bombed our cities and villages and not only with ballistic missiles, they were bombing with artillery and mortars every day. 16 thousand bombs were thrown on Tartar which is a small city. They even bombed the ceremony in the cemetery killing a family. They were bombing Barda, they were bombing Naftalan when they killed a family of five. They were deliberately attacking our cities and villages and they thought that they will stop us by doing that. We did not do the same, we never hit any village or any city. We hit only, yes, military objects which were in Khankandi, but we hit military objects. Using ballistic missiles on the sleeping city of Ganja was a clear indication of their barbarism, because that ballistic missile, had a target. It was not by chance that it hit a residential compound. It was a targeted attack at night when people were sleeping, and not once, several times. What have they done after that? They said it was not them. Officially, Armenian officials said it was not Armenians who did it, but then who did it? Who? Ourselves? You probably know that they even wanted to put the blame for the Khojaly genocide on Azerbaijan. They were inventing these stories and trying to persuade the international community that Azerbaijanis themselves killed innocent victims in Khojaly and they did the same with respect to Tochka U and Elbrus missiles,” the head of state said.
“They even hit Khizi which is situated a hundred kilometers from Baku. They wanted to reach Baku. They were attacking Gabala. Gabala is far away from the area of conflict. So, Barda, Aghdam, Aghjabadi, Fuzuli, Goranboy, Naftalan, Khizi, Gabala. That’s what they were doing. There were no military installations. And, of course, the news about the Iskander attack was a surprise for us. When the Armenian prime minister said that they used Iskander but it exploded by only ten percent, everybody was laughing. Probably he could not properly deliver the message which he wanted to say. And when I was asked at the end of February. I didn’t say they didn’t do it. I said we did not detect it. It is different things,” the Azerbaijani President noted.