Baku, April 14, AZERTAC

“On all international events whether related to war and peace or related to social and economic development, Karabakh was always a priority in my comments. And this is really a new Azerbaijan. Armenians did not know us well. They thought they are going to fight with Azerbaijan of 1992. But Azerbaijan is different, people are different, society is different, motivation is different. They thought, and I know it exactly, their previous leaders thought that we will forget, that time will pass, everybody will be tired, nobody wants war,” said President Ilham Aliyev as he responded to questions at the “New vision for South Caucasus: Post-conflict development and cooperation” conference held at ADA University on April 13.

“There have been such a speculation sometimes in international media that Azerbaijan will never start anything, because their country is developing. They will never risk, President Aliyev will never risk stability for some uncertain advantage. But they did not understand what is inside us, what is in our soil. They did not understand that Karabakh for all of us is more than land. Karabakh is our dignity, is our destiny, it’s our blood. That’s why we demonstrated heroism, we demonstrated courage, and we went until the end and no one could have stopped us. Though you know that there have been many attempts to stop us from different sides but we went until the end,” the head of state noted.

“What happened in July was another provocation of Pashinyan, because Pashinyan was considered not to be part of this military gangster group. Therefore, previous leaders of Armenia were always treating him like a person who did not serve in the army, like a person who is weak, who doesn’t have courage etc. Therefore, he wanted to have a military victory. Especially after they lost in Nakhchivan just months after he came to power, but that was not his blame. Because he just came to power. He wanted a military victory. We know exactly that they were planning to retake Lalatapa, the territory which we gained during the April 2016 war. And he was trying to demonstrate that the previous regime of Sargsyan lost those territories and “brave” Pashinyan, chief commander retakes it. By the way, now, when they themselves start to understand more about the war, they start to publish articles and making statements that their attempt during the war to retake Lalatapa caused them a lot of lives. Actually part of the army was totally destroyed there,” the President added.