Azeri president says Karabakh never to be independent

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said that breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh (Nagornyy Karabakh) will never be independent, the Azeri APA news agency reported on 23 January.


The president made the remarks while addressing the opening ceremony of a new military settlement of the Defence Ministry in Pirakaskul area in a suburb of capital Baku on 23 January.


"The solution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan-Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is very simple. First, the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan must be restored. We will never allow the second, fictitious Armenian state to be created on Azerbaijan's territory. Independence will never be granted to Nagorno-Karabakh," the president said.


He added that "the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh will only be available within the borders of the united Azerbaijani state".


"Today, we shall openly say that Armenia exists only nominally as an independent state on the world map. Armenia is a dependent country, and it cannot determine its own future" APA cited Aliyev in another report.


The president also said that Armenia ignored the international organisations' resolutions and decisions calling for an end to the occupation.


On 20 January, addressing the demobilised servicemen, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said that "those who live there [in Karabakh] should decide their status on their own. Nobody has the right to force them to live according to their conditions - neither Azerbaijan, nor Armenia, and not even others".


Baku and Yerevan are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, which, along with seven surrounding districts, came under the control of Armenian troops in the early 1990s. The sides signed a ceasefire deal in 1994. The OSCE Minsk Group mediates the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The United States, France, and Russia are the co-chairs of the Minsk Group.



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