Speech by Ilham Aliyev at the VII OSCE Summit

Mr. Chairman,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to President Nursultan Nazarbayev and all our Kazakh friends for excellent organization of this summit, warm hospitality and for chairing the OSCE throughout the year.

I’d like to draw Your attention to the issues of security in our region. The ongoing armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan continues to represent a major threat to international and regional peace and stability.

As a result of the policy of ethnic cleansing conducted by Armenia against Azerbaijanis 20 % of the territory of Azerbaijan is under occupation, 1 mln. Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced persons on their own land.

Armenia continues to occupy not only Nagorno-Karabakh but also 7 other regions of Azerbaijan. Armenia destroyed our cities and villages, our homes and sacred places, graves of our ancestors and our mosques. They committed war crimes, genocide in Khodjaly where hundreds of civilians were killed by Armenian armed forces only because they were Azerbaijanis. Among the innocent victims of Khodjaly more than 100 were children.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a historic part of Azerbaijan. It is internationally recognized part of Azerbaijan. Today Armenia continues to use force to sustain the control over the occupied territories and to hinder the return of the IDPs to their homes. But nevertheless Azerbaijan was always and remains committed to the peaceful negotiations and still hopes that they will bring results. Solution to the conflict must be based only on the respect to the norms and principles of international law, implementation of 4 UN Security Council resolutions, decisions of OSCE, resolutions of European Parliament, the Council of Europe and other international organizations. But Armenia instead of negotiating in good faith with a view to finding a durable solution to the conflict as soon as possible, gives preference to its escalation with unpredictable consequences. Armenia permanently violates the cease-fire regime, conducts military trainings in the occupied territories, tries to rename the historical names of our occupied cities and villages. Armenia illegally settles civilians in the occupied territories, tries to make the situation irreversible and peace process meaningless.

Illegal activity by Armenia in the occupied territories was reflected in the report of the OSCE fact-finding mission to the region in 2005.

The way how Armenia behaves during the negotiation process leads us to the conclusion that Armenia does not want peace, doesn’t want to liberate occupied territories, but wants to keep the status-quo as long as they can and make negotiation process endless.

OSCE Minsk Group was created in 1992, negotiations are held for almost 20 years, but without any results.

Azerbaijan values the proposals that the Minsk Group Co-Chairing countries have elaborated over past six years within the Prague Process. We are ready to continue negotiations and to finalize them as soon as possible and to achieve a solution which will be based on the norms and principles of international law within the framework of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

Thank You.