"If you look at the history of long-lasting wars, occupations, and the devastations, we will see that in our case the move from the finalizing the hostile stage towards peace was very rapid. And that was again based on our proposal because it was us and me personally who was telling for more than a year that we need to have a peace agreement with Armenia and just finally they agreed, Qazet.az reports. Just, finally, weeks before," said President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in his remarks at the international conference under the motto “South Caucasus: Development and Cooperation” held at ADA University.

"Before that there was silence and they had statements again about contesting, statements about contesting our territorial integrity. And at the same time, it was we who said let's start work on the border delimitation, and again there was silence from the Armenian side for more than one year finally they agreed. And soon I would say very soon the joint working groups will meet. Why should they lose one year? It is not understandable. Therefore all our efforts will be aimed at strengthening the positive trends. But we cannot do it unilaterally. We need to see in the Armenian government, a partner which we can trust, which we can agree on long-term peace. I think that it is possible but of course, it will depend on the internal political development in Armenia. Because it is understandable that all the ideological basement have been seriously damaged because all ideology was based on aggression in attempts to legitimize the occupation. Everything that have they done starts erasing Azerbaijani cultural heritage ending with changing the names of our cities including Aghdam and Shusha and others. All were aimed at turning de-facto of occupation into de-jure legitimization of secession. Now, this ideological base no longer exists. And we understand it is not easy for them to find a new goal. In our case, our goal was very clear to strengthen the independence and we always during the time of occupation thinking not only about how to return to Karabakh but also we thinking how to strengthen independence make it irreversible, and not be dependent on anyone whether political or economical financial energy whatever. And we achieve that. we achieved both. Full independence, ability to conduct independent policy and we achieve the return of Karabakh. Armenia lost its chance to be really independent country, I do not want to go into many details, everybody knows the real political configuration there. And they lost the lands that did never belong to them, so they need to understand it and find for themselves a new goal. And I think that it will be peace, benefits of cooperation, and putting down territorial claims to Azerbaijan and to Turkey," noted the Head of state.