“With respect to the peace agreement, as I said already, now we’re closer to that because when we initiated the process, one of the issues of disagreement was Armenian side`s efforts to integrate into peace agreement, reference to so-called nagorno-karabakh republic, which, of course, we could not accept,” said President Ilham Aliyev as he addressed the Forum titled “Karabakh: Back Home After 30 Years. Accomplishments and Challenges” co-organized by ADA University and the Center of Analysis of International Relations.
“They tried to integrate it through different wording schemes but it was more or less the same. Our approach was that we cannot specify on that, and the agreement between two countries must be fully reciprocal. Therefore, if they want to reflect in their draft agreement issue of Armenians, who live in Azerbaijan as national minorities, then it must also reciprocally reflect the rights of Azerbaijanis, who were deported forcefully from Armenia, to come back there, and to live there, and their rights and security must be protected the same way like rights and security of Armenians in Karabakh. Unfortunately, the Armenian side always rejected that, which was not very logical, because we did not offer something extraordinary, just reciprocal. Or another option was not to reflect this topic at all. So, after September 19, the anti-terror operation, it seems that this obstacle no longer exists. Either we will reflect both national minorities in peace agreement or it will not be reflected at all,” the head of state added.
