The war was inevitable and it led to restoration of justice, international law - President Ilham Aliyev

"I want to express our approaches to post-war situation, to situation related to post-war security in the Caucasus. Azerbaijan won the war. The war was just, the war was inevitable and it led to restoration of justice, international law, and national dignity of Azerbaijani people. Now we talk about peace. I think it’s one of the unique cases in the world that after such a long-lasting confrontation within a short period of time the country which restored justice and defeated aggressor offers peace. If you look at the history of wars not in many cases one can see this picture,"President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said at the opening ceremony of the 9th Global Baku Forum entitled 'Challenges to the Global World Order', News.az reports.

"But why we select peace, because we want stable, sustainable development in the Southern Caucasus. It’s a unique opportunity. Southern Caucasus was disintegrated throughout the years of independence of three countries of Southern Caucasus. For thirty years it was disintegrated because of Armenian occupation. So, now it’s time to establish peace, establish cooperation. And Azerbaijan is working on that. With respect to process of normalization of relations with Armenia, we suggested, it was our proposal to start working on peace agreement. Armenia did not respond. Then we made another step, we put forward five basic principles of international law, including mutual respect to and recognition of territorial integrity of both countries and mutual refrain from any territorial claims now and in the future, and other principles which make the bulk of our proposal. We were glad to see that the Armenian government accepted this five principles," said the head of state.

"So this is positive dynamics but now we need to move to practical implementation. Because we know from the history of times of occupation when we were negotiating that sometimes words even on high-level articulated by Armenian officials do not mean a lot. Because we need steps. Azerbaijan already on its side established Azerbaijani commission on peace agreement and we expect the same to be done by Armenia. As soon as it is done, or if it is done, then negotiations will start. We also put forward a proposal to start the process of delimitation of our border. Because biggest part of our border was also under occupation and never a delimitation took place. Therefore, this process also have started and the first joint meeting of the border commissions of Azerbaijan and Armenia took place last month on the border," said President Ilham Aliyev.

News.Az