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British Ambassador: â€œArmenia should withdraw from the occupied lands and all the lands come back to Azerbaijanâ€

04 March 2014 15:20 (UTC +04:00)

The ambassador initially spoke about the policy and traditions of his country and touched upon the unstable situation in Ukraine and other countries.

Speaking about the relations with Azerbaijan, Irfan Siddiq said that the UK has very strong relations with Azerbaijan particularly on the economic and energy spheres: “Our relations are excellent. The UK is the largest foreign investor in Azerbaijan. Almost fifty percent of all investments are only from the UK. It is productive both for Azerbaijan and the UK.”

“More Azerbaijani students go to the UK to study in British universities than any other countries. And more of them are funded by Azerbaijani state's scholarship program to study in UK than any other country. In terms of visits, we have so many Azerbaijanis visiting the UK for tourism, work and leisure. We have just changed our visas now to improve it. Because there are so many people coming and the embassy is overrun. So we have the private company to improve this service because every year more people come to the UK,” the ambassador said.

As for the debates on the separation of Scotland from the UK and the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, the diplomat said that in the next 6 months we will have a lot of debates about it: “Everyone agrees Armenia should withdraw from the occupied lands and all the lands come back to Azerbaijan. What is happening in UK is interesting. Lots of people don't want to be in the UK. Rather than war, we will have a referendum. Solution for determination of the future status of Nagorno Karabakh has to be some referendum. This is logical compromise for determining of future status. This is direct conflict, some people want to be in Azerbaijan, some don't want. Same focus. Some want to be in UK, some don’t. We will see what happens.”