Alwaght- Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said on Tuesday his country has no plans to engage in another military conflict with neighboring Armenia as tensions between the two nations have been running high for months over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“We have no plans of starting a third war [against Armenia],” Aliyev said, commenting on some reports in the Western media suggesting Baku could attack Yerevan’s forces at some point in the future. All those accusing Azerbaijan of harboring such intentions are waging a “dirty and slanderous campaign” against Baku, the president insisted, calling all the rumors “fake.”
Mostly populated by ethnic Armenians, the disputed region broke away from Azerbaijan in 1988 and established its own republic in 1991. Yerevan and Baku have been contesting the area ever since.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Yerevan was ready to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, but only if it served Armenia’s national interests. He also said that an effective compliance mechanism would be needed, should such a document ever come to be. Signing the paper is not enough, he maintained, adding that, in the absence of an effective implementation mechanism, no treaty would prevent further escalation.
