In his interview to the French §LA LETTE DIPLOMATIGUE¦ magazine, the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, announced that “Karabakh is an historic territory of Azerbaijan.” “The territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is recognized by the UN and the entire international community. This gives a high status of autonomy to Karabakh. There are national minorities all over the world, but this doesn’t mean that some day minorities should think about segregating certain territories in the state,” said Aliyev. According to him, the government of Armenia must clearly understand that Azerbaijan will not submit to any compromises concerning the issue of territorial integrity. “We hope that the Armenian government will find strength to perform in a constructive manner during negotiations and will remove its occupying forces from Karabakh. Otherwise we’ll have to find other methods to resolve the conflict. At present Azerbaijan is more powerful than Armenia,” threatened Aliyev. The president of Azerbaijan also said that international organizations must also act from a decisive and active position. “After the recent expansion of the EU, the South Caucasus turned into a neighbor of Europe. I think that the EU cannot stay indifferent to conflicts taking place in its neighborhood. These seats of conflict create a threat not only for the South Caucasus but Europe in general,” announced Aliyev.
