Baku – APA. “The rental fee for the Gabala radar station, which covers 300 hectares in one of the most picturesque places of Azerbaijan, in the second tourism center of the country after Baku, was only $7 million. As the people living far from the sea go to the sea to rest, people like us, who live on the coast of the Caspian Sea, prefer to go to the mountains. Therefore, it was our desire to make the rental fee for this facility in compliance with the realities”, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in his interview to Rossiya 24 TV channel, APA reports.
The head of the state grounded the position on the increase of rental fee of Gabala radar station as follows: ‘Firstly, it could have been a sort of compensation for the past 10 years, because over the past 10 years Azerbaijan has never raised the issue of revision of rental prices, though everyone, including Russia understood that this figure, to say the least, was symbolic. The intention to increase the rent was also based on the fact that in the past 5-6 years great progress has been achieved in military-technical cooperation between Azerbaijan and Russia with purchases worth billions of dollars. We purchase Russian military equipment in accordance with the world prices. We believe that if we purchase military equipment in accordance with the world prices, do all the payments in accordance with the world prices, then the rent should have been close to or in accordance with the world prices. The Gabala radar station in itself does not have any importance for Azerbaijan, we do not need the information obtained from this military facility. We simply have no means to counter the information received by Gabala radar station. Therefore, this issue must be regulated on the basis of friendly and commercial relations. We offered Russia to continue the cooperation for another 5 or 10 years at new prices, but this offer was rejected. Today, Russia has a more modern station than Gabala radar station, which is old both physically and morally. In short, this is the essence of the issue. If we do not take into account the media, this issue has not caused any concern in the bilateral relations”.
President Aliyev has denied the allegation that Americans forced Azerbaijan to take this step: "This is not true. Nobody can force us. The history of the development of these initiatives that the forces you mentioned wanted to realize in the region has shown that we do not submit to anyone. Particularly it is impossible to force us to take any step against our strategic ally," he said.
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