Yerevan /Mediamax/. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated that “several issues still remain outstanding” in Armenian-Azerbaijani process.

“One of them is the Constitution of Armenia, which has territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Secondly, an end must be put to Armenia’s groundless territorial claims against Azerbaijan and Turkey. We have already proposed this to the Armenian side, that Azerbaijan and Armenia should jointly apply to the OSCE and abolish the Minsk Group. There is no need for the Minsk Group and it is not functioning now. We will not allow it to operate de facto. It remains for it to be canceled de-jure, legally, and this will show how sincere Armenia is. If Armenia prefers to maintain the Minsk Group, then their territorial claims against us will be continued.

As you know, important events in the direction of defining the borders have recently taken place. Azerbaijan regained the four villages it lost in 1990 and 1992 – four villages located in Gazakh district – without a single shot being fired. This shows that issues can be resolved peacefully. If Armenia had listened to us back in 2020 and returned our lands peacefully, there would be no need for the Second Karabakh War and the anti-terror operation. So this should serve as a lesson for them, and I can already see that they have drawn the right conclusions from that lesson. Because the peaceful return of four villages to us through negotiations and the determination of borders in that region show that we can resolve issues through negotiations,” Aliyev stated at the meeting with the delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic States.

“Our position is based on international legal norms. We have never had any territorial claims against any country, including Armenia. They had territorial claims against us. It is the declaration of independence, which was subsequently included in their Constitution that contains territorial claims against Azerbaijan. It is in their ideology, politics and public discourse that territorial claims against Turkey are incessantly made. From young age, Azerbaijanis and Turks have been portrayed as enemies in their society. It is their society that has been poisoned by nationalists and war criminals. Therefore, they should deal with these issues. Of course, it is simply impossible to conclude a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan while the current constitution of Armenia remains unchanged. At a time when they have territorial claims against us, we cannot conclude a peace agreement with Armenia,” Aliyev stated.

“Simply comparing the military potential, demographic potential and economic potential of the two countries and then making a territorial claim against Turkey is tantamount to committing suicide. Or after the events of 2020 and 2023, making territorial claims against Azerbaijan is absolutely close to suicide,” the Azerbaijani president added.