Azeri leader says war with Armenia not over yet

AzTV, Azerbaijan
April 19 2008

Azerbaijan’s is still at war with Armenia and its army is in a
position to retake the territories lost during a war in the 1990s,
President Ilham Aliyev has said.

"Only the first phase of the war has finished. The war has not
yet ended," state television on 19 April showed Aliyev telling
a group of soldiers in a bunker close to the heavily militarised
Azerbaijani-Armenian cease-fire line.

Aliyev said that Azerbaijan had the most powerful army in the region,
and that military spending this year would total Armenia’s overall
state budget.

"We have the most powerful army and the strongest military potential
in the region. We should strengthen it further," Aliyev said, adding
that the military budget would be increased from the current 1.3bn
dollars to nearly 2bn dollars this year.

The president also scoffed at Armenia as a foreign "outpost".

"Unlike Armenia, we are not an outpost of any country. Unlike Armenia,
we defend our borders ourselves," he said.