We liberated our territories occupied by Armenia, restored justice, and restored our dignity.
According to elchi, this was stated by the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev at the opening of the VII Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations.
“During the 35 years of our independence, we always believed that we would achieve our goals. For the vast majority of these years, our main goal was the restoration of our territorial integrity, the liberation of the lands of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia. As many of you know, years of negotiations yielded no results. In fact, the negotiation format was structured in such a way that it did not envisage the resolution of the conflict, but rather its freezing. Apparently, there was a consensus among the leading powers of the world on this issue. However, their miscalculation was only about what the Azerbaijani people thought and what plans the Azerbaijani government had. We were not going to remain a country under occupation, a people whose elementary human rights were violated forever. We participated in negotiations with all sincerity and hope. But when we saw that this process was not leading to any results, we decided to resolve the issue, taking into account our legal rights, including the UN Charter and the right to self-defense enshrined in Article 51 of it.
We defended ourselves, defeated the enemy, liberated our territories that had been under Armenian occupation for 32 years, restored justice, restored our dignity, and fulfilled the requirements of international law. In doing so, we ourselves implemented the UN Security Council resolutions adopted in 1993, which demanded the immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian troops from our territories. Although these resolutions remained on paper for 30 years,” the head of state noted.