BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 5. Now we are facing the new challenges but very pleasant challenges to rebuild Karabakh and Eastern Zangazur, President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the First Azerbaijan National Urban Forum in Aghdam city, Trend reports.
"Now we are facing the new challenges but very pleasant challenges to rebuild Karabakh and Eastern Zangazur, to return people, to return life and to create much better conditions for former refugees and IDPs which exist anywhere else in Azerbaijan. And I am sure that these people deserve that. They lived in difficult conditions for many years despite the fact that we resettled more than 300 thousand IDPs providing them with new apartments and flats. And during numerous meetings with them when we were inaugurating this new housing projects they were expressing gratitude for that but at the same time saying that we want you to return us back. And I promised them all the time that I will do it and I am very proud that we managed to do. And already the program of Big Return have started. Relatively recently, this May the first village in Zangilan region was already built and the first IDPs are already back. And I am really very proud, I am sure all the people of Azerbaijan, that not only those who used to live there are going back, but also their children, their grandchildren. This September the school in Zangilan opened and the young Zangilanis are already starting school. They have never seen that land. Because they were born after occupation but it shows that the people of Azerbaijan are strongly committed to their roots, to their native land. And really it’s a source of national pride that based on the survey which we conducted among former IDPs with the question ‘are they going to go back or not’ in order for us to know what should be the scale of housing project, absolute majority responded that they want to go back even those who had never seen those lands. So, this of course creates a very special atmosphere in our society and the feeling of national pride, the feeling of victory, the feeling of restoration of justice, restoration of dignity of the people. These feelings cannot be measured by any scale. This is something which you have to feel. We feel it and we are happy about that and now what we are doing here in Aghdam, in other liberated territories is that we concentrated and mobilized all our potential in order to return the former IDPs as soon as possible. Large-scale infrastructure projects are underway," the head of state said.