BAKU. March 9 (Interfax) - There are no impediments to peace with Armenia based on the agreements reached by Baku and Yerevan in October 2022, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said.
"It is time to make peace. Therefore, we proposed peace talks [with Armenia] in November 2020. There are five known principles that could serve as the basis for a peace treaty with Armenia. Hopefully, international actors trying to play the role of an intermediary will seek to convince Armenia not to miss this chance," Aliyev said at the 10th Global Baku Forum on Thursday.
Now there is a chance to build normal, neighborly relations, Aliyev said. "We believe that peace is possible after a war, and the October agreements with Armenia demonstrate the absence of any obstacles to peace with Armenia," he said.
Azerbaijan has done everything possible to settle the conflict with Armenia peacefully, Aliyev said.
"We wanted Armenia to fulfill UN Security Council resolutions and withdraw its forces [from the Azerbaijani territory] without preconditions. Yet, Armenia disregarded those resolutions, which, by itself, is a fact of disrespect for international law," he said.
The OSCE Minsk Group was established in 1992 to settle the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Still, it achieved nothing over 28 years, and Armenia sought to "freeze the process, i.e. wanted the conflict to stay frozen forever," he said.
"We could not agree to that and did what we deemed to be right: we used the right to self-defense, including Article 51 of the UN Charter. We freed our territories, which is our legitimate right," Aliyev said.
Azerbaijan did not commit any military crime, Aliyev said. "In contrast to Armenia, we did not commit genocide but achieved our success on the battlefield," he said.