Ilham Aliyev named obstacles to achieving peace between Azerbaijan and Armen

A peace agreement between Baku and Yerevan is possible if Armenia changes its Constitution and eliminates territorial claims against Azerbaijan in it. In addition, Armenia should support Azerbaijan’s proposal for a joint appeal to the OSCE to dissolve the Minsk Group. This was stated by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on July 20 at the II Shusha Global Media Forum.

“As for the peace agreement, according to the information provided to me by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 80-90 percent of the text has already been agreed upon. Armenia had to abandon its reservations and all this terminology associated with the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh, which opened the way to normalization,” Aliyev said.

At the same time, he noted the need to resolve two issues.

“First, Armenia must respond positively to our proposal for a joint appeal by Armenia and Azerbaijan to the OSCE with a request to dissolve the Minsk Group, since for the last couple of years this group has been virtually inactive,” Aliyev continued.

According to him, “the co-chairs (of the Minsk Group) are now actually at war with each other, I mean two against one.”

 “Secondly, France has completely lost the chance to mediate or even be present in the South Caucasus, because they cannot operate in the region without our consent. If they want to do this without our consent, they will fail again. Once again, it will be another painful defeat for them. What is the point of maintaining the Minsk Group de jure in these circumstances? As you know, the OSCE has a consensus mechanism. If Armenia wants to preserve the Minsk Group de jure, then it will remain, but this means that Armenia’s territorial claims against Azerbaijan still exist,” Aliyev further noted.

He believes that Azerbaijan and Armenia should jointly appeal to the OSCE about the dissolution of the Minsk Group.

Another issue that needs to be resolved in order to sign a peace treaty, Aliyev considers changing the constitution of Armenia. “The Armenian constitution contains references to the Declaration of Independence, which clearly poses a territorial threat to Azerbaijan, since it talks about the unification of the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. That is, as long as this point exists, a peace agreement is impossible,” Aliyev emphasized.

At the same time, he pointed out that Pashinyan refused to meet with him on July 18 in London as part of the summit of the European Political Community.

"I cannot say when the foreign ministers will hold the next meeting?" Today, I am less optimistic. Because, as you know, Prime Minister Pashinyan refused to meet me in Britain. It was an initiative of the British Government. The proposal was to hold such a meeting between us, within the framework of that Oxford event. The Armenian side rejected this offer. We were very surprised by this, because four months ago, Chancellor Scholtz organized a similar meeting in Munich. He attended the meeting, was with us for 5-6 minutes, then left the room. That was the details. Such a format was designed so that he would leave the room after the introduction. Thus, our meeting continued bilaterally. The British Government made the same offer. The British Prime Minister would attend the meeting and then leave. Prime Minister Pashinyan refused. That is, if he does not want to talk to me, what kind of peace agreement can be discussed. Why was he visiting London and Oxford if he didn't want to talk to the British Prime Minister? That is, there is a very serious contradiction in a number of issues. But we'll see, as I said, I got back from London yesterday. One direction is the text - the text of the peace agreement, and the other, of course, as I said, is the Armenian constitution," Aliyev said later.