France is playing very destructive role in South Caucasus - President Ilham Aliyev

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Iraqi President Abdullatif Jamal Rashid have made press statements.

The President of Azerbaijan made the statement first, Azertac reports.

Statement by President Ilham Aliyev

- Dear Mr. President.

Dear guests, ladies and gentlemen.

Mr. President, once again, welcome to Azerbaijan. I'm very glad to see you again. The President of Iraq visited us earlier this year, during the Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. During our meeting, I invited Mr. President to pay an official visit to Azerbaijan. I'm very grateful that my invitation was accepted and the President is our guest.

I'm sure that the visit will contribute to the strengthening of friendly relations between our countries and will open a new page in our cooperation. By the way, this is the first official visit of the President of Iraq to Azerbaijan throughout the history of our diplomatic relations. So, this visit is historical.

We have covered many issues of our bilateral agenda and identified the main directions for our future cooperation during the tete-a-tete meeting and during the meeting with delegations. We will definitely continue to support each other in international institutions. Iraq and Azerbaijan always demonstrate solidarity in different international institutions. In the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, and Organization of Islamic Cooperation, we always support each other and defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other.

Mr. President will visit also neighboring Armenia. Therefore, I use this opportunity to inform my guest with respect to the current situation between the two countries. Of course, to have a proper analysis of what is happening now, we all need to go back to our past, what happened at the beginning of the 1990s.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Armenia launched aggression against Azerbaijan, which ended in the occupation of almost 20% of the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan, conducted a policy of ethnic cleansing, which resulted in physical expulsion of more than 1 million Azerbaijanis from the territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and the surrounding districts.

So that, as I said, made up almost 20% of our territory, and for many years, they refused to return the territory which did not belong to them. Despite different international mediation efforts, which actually led to zero results, Armenia wanted to keep our lands under occupation forever. So, after 28 years – since the OSCE Minsk group was established, which mandate was to find a solution to end the occupation – Azerbaijan liberated its internationally recognized territories on the battlefield, using military force and the legal opportunity, that was granted to us by Article 51 of UN Charter, the right for self-defense.

We hoped that after this Armenia would comply with its obligations and withdraw the remaining part of the military contingent from Azerbaijani territory, but it didn't happen. We've been very patient for almost three years. We tried, through our direct contacts with Armenia, through international interlocutors, to deliver a message that this is unacceptable. We cannot afford to have an illegal separatist regime even in a small part of Azerbaijan. As I said, a large part of the occupied territories was liberated in 2020. Unfortunately, the Armenian government did not listen to us. It listened to its advisors in the West, and those advisors did not give them good advice. Unfortunately, their advice was to keep the military contingent in our territory as long as they could.

Our patience came to an end this September, and we conducted an anti-terror operation fully in line with international law in our sovereign territory, which lasted less than 24 hours and with zero casualties among civilians. I think what we see in the Middle East now should be considered as an example of how a military operation must be conducted with zero casualties among civilians.

As a result of that, the illegal regime in Nagorno-Karabakh collapsed. Though it was illegal, but anyways, they themselves dissolved this illegal, so-called entity, which they used to call the “Nagorno-Karabakh republic”. We restored our sovereignty, and now, the Azerbaijani flag is everywhere in our territory.

This is a history of the situation. So now, we come to what is the next. And the next is that we expect – I will inform Mr. President – from Armenia the response to our comments to the proposal. Several times, we exchanged proposals on a draft peace treaty. But now we have waited for more than two months since 11 September, for the Armenian government to respond to us about their opinion on those comments, and we didn't get any answer.

I think the reason for that is because they get bad advice, particularly, from France. France is playing a very destructive role in the South Caucasus. Actually, Armenia has become a puppet of the French government now, and this can be a serious threat to regional stability. We don't need any war. We fought on our own territory and restored justice and international law. But the Armenian government and political establishment think about revenge. The wrong messages from the French government actually are creating illusions in the Armenian government, and maybe in the public opinion that they can again launch a military aggression against Azerbaijan. Weaponizing Armenia, which France is proud of and publicly states, will not help Armenia, if they decide to launch another war. The result will be the same. And no one will help them. Did France help them three years ago? No. Did they help them two months ago? No. What they can do here? Nothing.

So, Armenia should plan their future based on their national interest, not on the ambitions of the countries, which are situated far away from our region, especially countries with a bloody colonial past. Their colonial policy was primarily aimed at the Muslim population in different parts of the world.

So, I think that the sooner we get a response from Armenia with respect to our comments, the better it will be. No international pressure can influence the will of the Azerbaijani people and the Azerbaijani government. Armenia now is using its diaspora institutions in different parts of the world in order to attack Azerbaijan everywhere, but the result will be zero for them. We are ready for peace, but for the just peace – the peace based on recognition of territorial integrity and sovereignty of both countries, peace based on common sense and historical justice. So, I informed my colleague about that so that it will be, I think, better to understand the real situation in the South Caucasus.

Coming back to our bilateral ties, I would like to say that we broadly covered the issue of economic cooperation. In two weeks' time, our delegation will visit Baghdad to hold a new round of the meeting of the intergovernmental commission. We have big plans for how to enhance the level of mutual trade. We also discussed today the issues related to cooperation in the energy area. During the visit of our delegation next month, this issue will also be covered.

We discussed the opportunities for cooperation in the areas of defense industry and tourism. We were already informed today at the meeting with the delegations that the first direct flight between our capitals already started, and in the coming weeks probably we will have direct flights to Kirkuk, Erbil, and to Basra. So, we're expecting a large volume of tourism traveling in both directions and, of course, we discussed what additional steps will be taken in order to have visa facilitation. So, I am sure that the visit will have very good results. We once again reconfirm the friendly relationship between our countries. Continuation of our dialogue, I'm sure, will lead to new good results and our cooperation will strengthen. So, once again, Mr. President, welcome. Thank you for being with us today.