"Azerbaijan initiated the peace process," President Ilham Aliyev said these words during a meeting with participants of the 3rd Shusha Global Media Forum.
The head of state noted that even after the Second Karabakh War ended, the OSCE Minsk Group trio was still active and continued visiting Baku: “I saw that they didn’t know what to do. When they asked me questions, I told them we should work on a peace agreement with Armenia. At that time, the war was over and there was a vacuum. I proposed that a process be started.”
“We prepared the text of the peace agreement and sent it to Armenia. They had various comments, but for two years there was no progress. The main reason was that Armenia wanted to include the issue of "Nagorno-Karabakh" in the text of the peace agreement. We told them: look, first of all, ‘Nagorno-Karabakh’ exists only in your imagination, it does not exist in reality. This is a part of Azerbaijan and since it is an internal political matter, it cannot be included in the text of the peace treaty. For two years, there was no progress,” the President of Azerbaijan recalled.
President Ilham Aliyev emphasized that only after our territories were liberated through the anti-terror operation in September 2022 did Armenia stop insisting on including the “Nagorno-Karabakh” issue in the peace agreement text: “Because the topic was already closed. What would you insist on anymore? We can say that real negotiations began in January 2024. Work proceeded based on the draft we had prepared.”
The head of state recalled that Armenia did not want to accept the last two clauses of the peace agreement: “But as soon as President Trump won, they added those two provisions. I told Pashinyan that you were probably hoping Mrs. Harris would win and that you'd be riding in on a white horse — but that didn’t happen. I am completely sure that if Trump hadn’t won, they wouldn’t have agreed to this. They were trying to grab more than they deserved or could digest. Today, as soon as the Constitution and the dissolution of the Minsk Group are resolved — these two issues — the peace agreement can be signed. The text can be initialed, and it was the Azerbaijani side that proposed this. Initialing does not mean signing. But there is a difference between a verbal agreement and having signatures at the end of each page — that’s what initialing means. I think we are very close. I believe this process has taken on an irreversible nature. It cannot be re-evaluated. We will not re-negotiate anything. If Armenia tries to start new negotiations again, it means they don’t want peace. Therefore, we are on the right path. They must complete their homework, and if that happens, we can sign the peace agreement. That would be a major development and a big change for the region.”
Note that the two points discussed in the draft text of the peace agreement concern the non-deployment of third-country forces on the border and the mutual renunciation of claims in international courts between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Follow us on Telegram
t.me/apanewsaz
Follow us on Instagram
Follow us on TikTok
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on X
