ILHAM ALIYEV: WE ARE ALREADY ACHIEVING THE FINAL STAGE OF NEGOTIATIONS

ArmInfo News Agency, Armenia
Nov 29 2006

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev takes a normal view of the results
of his meeting with Armenian President Robert Kocharyan in Minsk,
Tuesday. President Aliyev made this statement to AzTV, APA reports.

"The negotiations for settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani, Nagorny
Karabakh conflict, have been held under ‘Prague Process’ for already
three years. A considerable number of meetings of the presidents and
foreign ministers have been held during this period of time. These
meetings, naturally, discussed the ways of the problem’s settlement.

We have overcome definite stages and are approaching the final
stage of the negotiations," Ilham Aliyev said. In the course of
the 3-year-long negotiations, all the issues were discussed and the
positions of the parties were determined. "At present, we are at a
stage when the future of the negotiation process depends on us. From
this point of view, I take a normal view of the results of the last
meeting, on the whole. We had very serious negotiations during our
last meeting and discussed the disputable issues. We have managed
to settle a number of issues recently. We have managed to agree on
some uncoordinated issues. However, there are some principal issues
we have different opinions on and we have discussed them as well.

Azerbaijan’s position was left unchanged. We are for the conflict’s
settlement with observation of the principle of Azerbaijan’s
territorial integrity. UN Resolutions must be fulfilled. The
Azerbaijani lands must be liberated from the occupants and over 1
million of our citizens must return to their lands. The recently
activity of international organizations suits us. They expressed
their position on the conflict with observation of the principle of
territorial integrity of our country. Of course, this strengthens
our position," Ilham Aliyev stated.