On April 29, Pres. Ilham Aliyev held an international conference titled, “South Caucasus: Development and Cooperation,” in Baku with 40 participants from 23 countries. The conference lasted over three hours, with a short introductory speech by Pres. Aliyev, followed by lengthy replies to a dozen questions from the fawning foreign guests.
The welcoming remarks were made by Hafiz Pashayev, former Deputy Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan and rector of the ADA University, which hosted the conference. He said that the conference was “dedicated to the great victory and liberation of Azerbaijani lands.” The day before the conference, the participants were taken on a tour of Fizuli and Shushi. Pashayev said, “Our guests were also able to see some parts of the barbarian destruction which have been left after the Armenian occupation.”
Aliyev stated in his remarks that after “capitulating” in the 2020 war, Armenia recently accepted the “five basic principles for peace that Azerbaijan put forward.” He said that Azerbaijan lost the opportunity for peace “for 30 years because of separatism and because of Armenian aggression…Personally, I will never forget the atrocities and barbarism.”
Aliyev urged Armenians to “put an end to their territorial claims from Azerbaijan and Turkey…It is important that the Armenian government and the country’s political spectrum fully understand this and stop trying to take revenge once and for all…It is unproductive, because it will be more painful for Armenia than before…It is absolutely irrational to put territorial claims to Turkey, which is one of the leading economies and one of the very few leading armies in the world.” Armenians must “put down all illusions.”
Aliyev even dared to warn Armenians to “put down all attempts to rebuild the army, become stronger, to have five million population which they announced as their state program, and then to take back their territories. That would be the end of their statehood officially.”
Aliyev accused Armenia of destroying “Azerbaijan’s cultural heritage and renaming all our cities, including Aghdam and Shusha.”
Aliyev disclosed how Azerbaijan blocked the delivery of weapons to Armenia during the 2020 war: “We publicly said many times that arms during the 44-day war regularly — they have several a day cargo planes carrying weapons from Russia to Armenia. We traced all the routes from Rostov and Mozdok. We asked our Georgian friends to block the airspace, and they did. Also, we asked our Georgian friends to block the land route from Russia to Georgia to transport weapons to Armenia, and they did it also, and we are grateful. We sent letters to all Caspian littoral states not to allow Russian cargo planes carrying weapons to Armenia. We sent [letters] to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran. But unfortunately, these planes were using the territory of these countries entering Armenia.”
Aliyev also ridiculed Armenia and the Diaspora for thinking “that the whole world owes them everything, and someone will come and defend them, someone will come and fight for them, someone will come and give them money and everything, and they will sit and exploit their questionable and doubtful so-called tragedy.”
Pres. Aliyev accused Armenians of planting mines right before evacuating the territories they had lost to Azerbaijan in the war, after Armenia “signed the act of capitulation” on Nov. 10, 2020: “We gave them 10 to 20 days to leave the territories they had to leave based on the agreement signed on November 10. But, they used it to plant mines, burn houses they did not build but settled in, cut trees, and [cause] other ecological disasters.” He said that during that same period, Armenians “destroyed 30 hydroelectric power plants.”
Aliyev falsely claimed that Azerbaijan is a tolerant, multicultural country. He cited as an example the existence of an Armenian church in the center of Baku. “There are 5,000 Armenian books” in the church, he said, hiding the fact that the church no longer functions as a house of worship, but a library.
Aliyev assured his guests that “Armenians who live in Karabakh, we consider them our citizens. We hope that they will also soon understand that living as citizens of Azerbaijan, they will have all rights, and their security will be protected. Azerbaijan, unlike Armenia, is a multi-ethnic country. All ethnic groups who live here, including Armenians, live in peace and dignity. We have an Armenian minority and they never had any issue in that respect.” Aliyev is hoping that everyone forgot about the repeated massacres of thousands of Armenians in Azerbaijan.
Aliyev claimed that Azerbaijan “is already getting some messages from Armenians in Karabakh — very positive messages. We already started some preliminary contacts on different levels. Don’t want to go into much details, but it already started, and this once again demonstrates our intention. They can be part of the rapid economic development, they can feel themselves much more safe, secure and comfortable within the unified Azerbaijani state, but they need to put down their separatist trends and separatist aspirations.”
Regarding the upcoming negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan to delimit and demarcate their mutual border, Aliyev claimed that there are maps that show Yerevan and Zangezur were “part of Azerbaijan.”
During his remarks, Aliyev also antagonized Russia when responding to a question about Ukraine. “We support the territorial integrity of Ukraine…The most important [thing] is never agree to the occupation,” he said.
Finally, taking a dig at Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Aliyev recalled him saying, “‘Karabakh is Armenia.’ Now what [do] they say? Now they say that ‘Karabakh is Azerbaijan.’ And who says that? The same people who said ‘Karabakh is Armenia’ in 2019.”
Harut Sassounian
Thanks Harut for this article,
I encourage you and your readers to review the mobilization of arm forces at Sothern border of Armenia to respond to any act of aggression. Armenian people are not wrong to assume that forces from Iran will come to their aid. Iran’s territory, all its air space, ports and roads are / and will remain open to transfer of any defensive means to aid Armenia. As clearly mentioned by the head of arm forces of Iran, Three branches of Iranian arm forces are in alert mode and received authorization to cross Armenia’s southern borders and restore the balance, if any act of aggression is witnessed.
The fake president of the artificial Azerbaijan, a gas station disguised as country and invented on occupied Armenian homeland in 1918, is a coward and an opportunist charlatan. He is a sheep turned a make-believe lion under the protection of terrorist Turkey. For an insignificant little sheep he sure likes to talk big to unsuspecting foreigners with very little or no knowledge of the history of the region. Then again most of these foreigners being entertained by this sheep’s dog and pony show could care less about what he has to say and are there for their own selfish interests. He likes to hold these conferences to vent out and rant against the Armenians because he is afraid of them. He knows full well what Armenians are capable of doing to him and his manufactured artificial state in absence of terrorist Turkey and half dozen of their other criminal collaborators. He saw with his own eyes what Armenians did to his late and former KGB father. Armenians brought his father to his knees and wiped out his army when this sheep was riding out the war hiding and spending his time in Russian and Turkish casinos while his countrymen were being sent back to Baku in body bags. The more this sheepish dog barks the more he shows how devastating their defeat had been at the hands of the victorious Armenians in the 1990 Liberation War. He has not forgotten how Armenians humiliated his late father and he was too much of a coward to do anything about it. He has found in dishonorable and unpatriotic Pashinyan a stooge he can exploit and does not refrain from denigrating the Armenians under the leadership of this incompetent treasonous clown because he knows he can get away with it. He never dared to speak this way about our people previous to this clown and during any of Armenia’s former leaders. He can’t help himself. It is part of his Turco-Mongol Tatar hyena character.
The Armenian Church in Baku, desecrated and turned into a library, was actually set on fire during the early years of the conflict when his “tolerant” population formed criminal gangs and were out in the streets, under full police protection, hunting for innocent and defenseless Armenians to kill having nothing to do with the conflict. These were the citizens of this terrorist state who instead of being protected by the state were being hunted down and killed with full knowledge of the state. This guy is a LIAR and has no respect for the truth when it comes to the Armenians. If there were any Armenians in artificial Azerbaijan, as he cunningly claims, and being a masterful and proven anti-Armenian propagandist, he would not have wasted a moment to interview and show those invisible Armenians he is talking about. He would have shown how invisible Armenian clergy and worshipers attend this Armenian Church turned into a government property and used as a book warehouse. This sheep is either a fool or takes others as fools. He is his own worst enemy. Here he is claiming there are Armenians and an Armenian Church in the capital of that artificial terrorist cesspool he governs while elsewhere he desecrates Armenian houses of worship, removes their Armenian identities and commits cultural genocide of anything and everything Armenian. In 2005, his sadistic army desecrated a 1,300 year old Armenian cemetery in Julfa, Nakhijevan by breaking and shattering Armenian stone-crosses, destroying the cemetery and building a military training camp in its place to train new terrorists to kill more Armenians. He is a LIAR and anti-Armenian racist, pure and simple. I look forward to the day when this sheep is given a big dose and a bitter taste of his own medicine in the center of Stepanakert!
hilarious that a despot thug dictator, human right violating champion, who is overlooked and ignored by the Zionist run, Israel first at all cost, US corrupt State department, calling Armenians barbaric. Unfortunately we Armenians are the stupidest race on this planet. We haven’t mastered the art of intelligently running a nation or mastered unity. Instead its either the most corrupt self enriching thieves or the worst most incompetent weasel that are “in charge”. How sad.