Azerbaijan hopeless about int’l Karabakh settlement-president
by Sevindzh Abdullayeva, Viktor Shulman

ITAR-TASS News Agency
June 23, 2006 Friday 08:42 AM EST

BAKU, June 23 — Azerbaijan has lost hope for regulating mechanisms
of international organizations in settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict.

The settlement talks are continued, but they are "not yielding any
effect," Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Friday at a
graduation ceremony at a military college named after his father
Geidar Aliyev.

He said that decisions of international organizations, including the
four known resolutions of the US Security Council calling for the
pullout of "occupation forces" from seized chunks of Azerbaijan’s
territory were not fulfilled.

"Armenia ignores them and in such conditions we on the whole have no
hope about the international regulating mechanisms," Aliyev said.

He stressed that "Azerbaijan will try to end to use possibilities of
the peaceful negotiation process".

He said that the "subject of the talks can be only the restoration
of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and ensuring security of
all peoples living in the region".

"Outside these bounds, the achievement of an accord on the problem
is impossible," the president stressed.

He highly appraised the efforts of international organizations,
including the Minsk Group of the OSCE, in mediating conflict
settlement, but added that a "lack of progress forces Azerbaijan to
make adjustments to its policy".

Azerbaijan’s rapid economic development is superior to Armenia’s,
Aliyev said.

"According to estimates of international financial structures,
Azerbaijan will get in the coming years 140 billion dollars
on implementing oil projects alone. Considering that the Karabakh
conflict is problem number one for Azerbaijan, we shall doubtless use
this possibility to strengthen he the army in order it could return
the seized land at any moment. Azerbaijan will never reconcile to
the loss of its territories. We shall return our land in either a
peaceful or a military way," Aliyev said.