AZERBAIJAN’S PRESIDENT PROMISES TO LIBERATE NAGORNY KARABAKH

RIA Novosti, Russia
March 12 2005

BAKU, March 12 (RIA Novosti) – Azerbaijan’s President Ilkham Aliyev
is ready to negotiate on peaceful settlement of the Nagorny Karabakh
conflict but does not rule out other ways of solving this problem.

“We shall hold talks even if we have little chance of success, Mr.
Aliyev said at the ceremony dedicated to the 13th anniversary of the
establishment of the Interior Ministry’s troops of Azerbaijan.

He pointed out recent progress in the talks. The conflict settlement
should meet the principles of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and
the international law, Ilkham Aliyev stressed.

“If this is impossible we shall quit the negotiations and search for
other ways of the conflict settlement,” the head of state added.

“We need no war. A war is a humanitarian catastrophe but we should be
ready for this. We should liberate our territories at all costs,” Mr.
Aliyev emphasized.

In his words, violations of the cease-fire agreement in Nagorny
Karabakh are Armenia’s provocation pursuing certain goals. “If they
take any offensive efforts we shall rebuff them and Armenians will
never want to do this again,” the president noted.

He is ready to meet with his Armenian counterpart Robert Kocharyan
but it is necessary to draft the agenda of the meeting.

According to Ilkham Aliyev, mutual concessions are out of the
question.

Meanwhile, the security of the Armenian population of Nagorny
Karabakh can be discussed, he said.

Speaking about the domestic situation in Azerbaijan, Mr. Aliyev said
that the Georgian and Ukrainian scenarios are impossible in the
republic.

“I am not afraid of such power shift. It is impossible in
Azerbaijan,” the president told journalists.

In his opinion, such revolutions are possible in the countries where
people and authorities are separated by a gap of misunderstanding.

“Azerbaijan’s authorities serve the people,” Mr. Aliyev stressed. He
promised to take all effort to gain people’s support.

Nagorny Karabakh is Azerbaijan’s region with Armenian population. The
armed conflict in Nagorny Karabakh in the early 1990s left dozens of
thousands of people killed. Hundreds of thousands of people became
refugees. Military operations were stopped there on May 12, 1994.