Your trusted source

Azerbaijan wants firm guarantees that Armenia will not try to seek “revenge” after Baku's takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday.

“We need firm, verified guarantees that there will be no attempt at revanchism in Armenia. Why we need it, because we know what’s happening in Armenia, and also we know that Armenia has very bad advisers in some European capitals,” Anadolu Agency quoted Aliyev as saying at an international forum in the capital Baku.

Aliyev added said that peace on the part of Baku signifies guarantees that there will be no more wars between the two countries, that Armenia “totally agrees” with the current situation in the southern Caucasus region, and that Yerevan means what it says about Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.

He also called on Armenia to “forget about the former ‘Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’” and be constructive in delimitation talks between the two countries.

On a prospective peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Aliyev said that the agreement being discussed is some 6-7 pages and is made up of less than 20 articles.

The last remarks Baku sent on the document were on Sept. 11 and they got a response from Yerevan on Nov. 21, he said.

“For such a small document, Armenia needed 70 days … to respond to us. And they responded only after Azerbaijan’s foreign minister publicly disclosed that … So this shows that the side which is delaying the process isn’t Azerbaijan, it is Armenia. Why they delay it, I don’t know … I can only suspect,” he added.

He went on to say that the document is currently being evaluated by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, and that once they comment on it, a meeting of the countries’ top diplomats will be “appropriate.”