BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 8. We need to look to the future and to establish a peaceful Southern Caucasus, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said, making a press statement after the meeting with President of Latvia Egils Levits, Trend reports.
"Today, I also informed Mr. President about the situation in the Southern Caucasus, especially with respect to normalization process between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We hope that Armenia will positively respond to our comments on the proposal of peace agreement. We have delivered a while ago our proposal, which is based on the norms and principles of international law. We received comments from Armenia. We sent our comments to their comments. So, it is in the process. We hope that we will see a strong political will also from Armenia, and they will make a right decision and not to try to win time as it was during the times of occupation, when we had negotiations for 28 years, which ended, unfortunately, with a serious military outbreak that ended with the liberation of Azerbaijani territories. We had to do it by force, unfortunately. Though, we could have done it by political means, if Armenia behaved constructively.
So, now when we are now seriously discussing the future peace agreement between the two countries, we expect that Armenia will not lose time and will positively respond to our proposal, which is supported by many international actors. Despite devastation and long lasting occupation of our territories, we think that page of hatred must be turned down. We need to look to the future and to establish a peaceful Southern Caucasus. We see the benefits of close cooperation and integration between Baltic countries. We lived in the same country for many years together. So, they managed to establish a close cooperation. Now they are members of EU for many years, members of NATO. They successfully develop. Unfortunately, in the South Caucasus, we had different picture. We had wars, separatism, terrorism, extremism. Now it's time to put an end to that and if it happens, then Southern Caucasus countries like Baltic countries of former Soviet Union, will also have a chance for peaceful and prosperous development," President Ilham Aliyev said.