President: Political solution can provide security guarantees for Azerbaijanis and Armenians

The security must be provided by political means, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in an interview to Sky News TV, Trend reports.

“Our territorial integrity is recognized by the whole world. All the countries recognize territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, which includes Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenians’ position, actually was also a pretext that [they] are using these seven regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh as an excuse to occupy a security zone. But the recent clashes show that there is no security zone in modern world. Modern military equipment does not provide security even for long distance. The security must be provided by political means,” said the president.

“Therefore, we were always saying that political settlement will provide security guarantees for all-for Azerbaijanis, for Armenians, for other nationalities who live in the area. And the basic principles which Armenia rejected to support and clearly says how the territories are going to be returned back,” he said.

“In the first stage five regions of Azerbaijan which are situated on the south eastern part of Nagorno-Karabakh. Then two regions of Azerbaijan which are situated between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. Then Azerbaijanis return to Nagorno-Karabakh, their rights should also be provided. And they go back to where they lived in the ancient city of Shusha, and other places and we restore normal communications, we restore people-to-people contact, and slowly and slowly I am sure people will reconcile. That’s the plan of the mediators and we support it,” the head of state said.