"We are serious about the process of normalizing relations" - Press Secretary of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry
Leyla Abdullayeva’s interview with French Muslim news
“Azerbaijan doesn’t want more pretend-negotiations with Armenia, which was the case for years before the second Karabakh war,” Leyla Abdullayeva, press secretary of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, said in an interview with online French publication Musulmans en France. According to Abdullayeva, Azerbaijan is serious about the process of normalizing relations.
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“After the the second Karabakh war Azerbaijan liberated its territory in November of 2020, which had been under occupation for almost thirty years,” she said.
Abdullayeva added that despite “the degree of destruction and damage caused by Armenia to this territory, Azerbaijan offered Armenia a normalization of relations.”
“Because Azerbaijan has always maintained that the only thing that prevents peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia is the fact of occupation. Since the fact of occupation has been eliminated, we have declared our readiness to move forward and normalize relations with Armenia. That is why President Ilham Aliyev came up with the idea of signing a comprehensive peace agreement with Armenia,” said the spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry.
The political will of both sides plays an important role in this process, Abdullayeva stressed:
“Azerbaijan has demonstrated that it is a country with political will by putting forward the initiative for a peace agreement. Azerbaijan also proposed the fundamental principles on which this peace agreement should be based.
“We are demonstrating that we are serious about the process of normalizing relations.”
At the same time, Abdullayeva is wary of what she called fake negotiations:
“There is something we want to be clear about right now: we don’t want to see fake negotiations again, because we have seen this for thirty years. If the Armenian side had not been engaged in pretend-negotiations over the past thirty years, then probably there would not have been a second Karabakh war. We would like to see not pretend imitation, but real, concrete results. Because if we want peace to be established in the region, then for this Armenia needs to fulfill its obligations,” Abdullayeva added.
Leyla Abdullayeva’s interview with French Muslim news
