BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 18. The "lying four," as we call them - the Washington Post, the New York Times, Figaro, and Le Monde – this lying four, together with the State Department toadeaters in the form of various non-governmental organizations, have unleashed a smear campaign, a campaign of daily attacks on us, said President Ilham Aliyev in an interview with Dmitry Kiselev, Director General of the “Rossiya Segodnya” International News Agency, speaking about the campaign of discrediting by certain Western media during COP2, Trend reports.
"The primary difficulty was associated with the fact that we had limited time. Countries are usually allowed two years to prepare. In our case, it was 11 months. This was because just two to three days before the decision was made last December, Armenia was blocking Azerbaijan's candidacy. Since there was no consensus, the question of whether COP29 would be held in Baku was to be decided in the last days. So, we only had 11 months to prepare, and that was the biggest difficulty. We had to create space so that we could host more than 70,000 people. There were 76,000 registered participants. We also had to accommodate them, recertify the hotel facilities because we do not have a hotel infrastructure for such a large number of visitors, and determine the location of their accommodation. For this purpose, different recreation areas were identified, along with finished but not yet commissioned housing facilities. These had to be brought into compliance with hotel standards. It was a huge organizational effort, but we coped with it with dignity. As far as I know, there were 10 complaints about the organization during the entire period of the conference, but they were immediately and promptly resolved, so, as they say, the guests were all satisfied.
The second difficulty, if we can call it a difficulty, rather a certain discomfort, was about the absolutely unmotivated feeling of aggression, anger mixed with envy, and some kind of rejection of Azerbaijan - how is it that such a country was suddenly awarded such a conference? They started to call us a petro-state in various Western media, although there is nothing bad about it. Speaking at the opening ceremony, I said that if we were described as a petro-state in the 19th century, when we supplied more than 50 percent of the world's oil, it would have been normal, but not today, when the fake news of a country that produces almost a billion tons of oil, I mean the United States, as opposed to our 30 million, describes us as a petro-state.
Yes, our oil production is around 30 million in total. When the neighbor of this country, I mean Canada, produces 10 times more oil than we do, and describes us as a petro-state, it is unfair. But a group of such fake news outlets – by the way, this is not my expression, I borrowed it from President Trump and I like it very much, I think it is very concise and very targeted, the “lying four,” as we call them - the Washington Post, the New York Times, Figaro, and Le Monde – this lying four, together with the State Department toadeaters in the form of various non-governmental organizations, have unleashed a smear campaign, a campaign of daily attacks on us. Every day, there were at least a couple dozen articles. This did not cause us any difficulties, it simply caused a feeling of disgust and revulsion. And, of course, it was difficult to achieve a result, because we are not a global actor in this area," President Ilham Aliyev said.