Aliyev: Pashinyan’s government promised to ‘return the territories’ in 2018

During his speech at the XI Global Baku Forum, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that after the change of power in 2018, Pashinyan’s new government promised Baku to “return the territories”, Azerbaijani media reported.

“There was a chance to reach an agreement in 2018, when the government changed in Armenia. Then we received assurances from the new Armenian government that they would act in accordance with international law and that the territories would be returned. We had such expectations. If back then the new Armenian government had chosen to act as it does now, there would have been no need to forcibly restore our sovereignty,” he said.

According to him, in 2019, the new Armenian leadership put forward “absolutely unacceptable proposals”.

“For example, it demanded that Azerbaijan negotiate with separatists. All our developments on the basics of the peace agreement were to be erased. We would have to start from scratch, and Armenia was not going to return a single inch of the occupied territories. Moreover, the Armenian Prime Minister’s famous slogan that ‘Karabakh is Armenia’ is, firstly, an absolute violation of international law, and secondly, too ambitious for a country that thought it could hold our lands forever,” Aliyev said.