BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec. 15
Trend:
Armenia doesn’t want to recognize territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in an interview to the Spanish El Pais newspaper, Trend reports.
“I on several occasions publicly made a statement that Azerbaijan is ready to start peace negotiations with Armenia and to start working on peace agreement. There have been no answer from Armenian leadership so far. Because this kind of statements were made by me for more than six months, several times. So, this shows that they don’t want it. Because peace agreement, if signed, one of the main provisions of this peace agreement will be mutual recognition of territorial integrity of both countries. Armenia doesn’t want to recognize territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. The whole world recognizes Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and recognizes Karabakh as the integral part of Azerbaijan. Armenia doesn’t say they do not recognize, doesn’t say they recognize. Before the second Karabakh war, they were saying and their Prime Minister publicly was saying that Karabakh is Armenia-period. That statement actually has ruined the negotiation process and was one of the elements of their bitter defeat last year. But now from Armenia as if they have no position on that. We say that openly, we want to start immediately negotiations on peace agreement with Armenia, comprehensive agreement, which will be as you said not a ceasefire but a full peace agreement. But I hope that probably European partners will persuade Armenia that this position has no future. If they don’t have peace agreement with Azerbaijan, I think they may suffer again in the future,” the head of state said.