Yerevan /Mediamax/. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev confirmed that US Vice President J.D. Vance during his visit to Baku raised the issue of possible pardoning of former leaders of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

Aliyev said this in Munich in an interview with France 24 television channel, the full text of which is provided by AZERTAC agency.

We present this excerpt from the interview.

- I want to get to a decision by the military court in your country that handed out harsh prison sentences to 13 officials of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, including life imprisonment for the former leader. There were reports that the U.S. Vice President talked about the issue and asked you maybe to grant them a pardon as a way to seek peace in the region. Did he do this, and will you do this?

- During the interaction with the Vice President, which lasted for several hours, among other issues, this issue was also raised by him, and I expressed Azerbaijan's position on this issue, and that was it. We mainly discussed bilateral relations, regional development, TRIPP, and prospects for formal peace with Armenia. With respect to these people whom you mentioned, these are the leaders of the illegal separatist regime, which illegally functioned on our territory, on the territory of the sovereign Azerbaijani state, recognized as such by the entire international community, including Armenia.

For many years, these people were masterminds of all the war crimes against Azerbaijanis and Azerbaijan, and they were brought to justice. They were detained in Karabakh as a result of our military operation and brought to justice. They were provided with lawyers. The trial was absolutely transparent. Their crimes were proven by the testimonies of witnesses, numerous testimonies, and there is no question about suspicion of wrongdoing.

- But could you do something about this, Mr. President?

- What do you mean?

- Turn the page and grant them clemency or something. You could make a gesture. This is within your powers.

- You know, these people committed serious crimes against humanity. Imagine after the Second World War, the Nuremberg trials, and all those Nazi leaders, who were sentenced to death, in two months some would come and say, please release them.

- It's the same for you?

- Yes, absolutely. It's even worse, even worse. Their crimes were even worse than what the Nazis did during World War II.

- But in terms of turning the page, do you also maybe have some compassion for the Armenians who had to leave Karabakh as a result of the latest war?

- Our position on that issue was very clear. It was articulated many times, including publishing on the website that we offered all Armenians who lived in Karabakh to apply for citizenship or to apply for a work permit. We had several rounds of interactions with the representatives of Karabakh Armenians, but they preferred to choose to leave for Armenia. We have hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis who have been deported and ethnically cleansed from the territory of today's Armenia, but never did the Armenian government offer any kind of proposals for them to come back. I think we need to treat this issue from a reciprocal point of view. The right of return is a universal right, and, of course, Azerbaijan will definitely observe this right if we have such an application. But at the same time, taking into account that we were at war with Armenia for 30 years, and for 30 years they were occupying our territory, we expect the same attitude toward hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis, who we call Western Azerbaijanis, to be able to return to today's Armenia.