AZERI LEADER THREATENES ONGOING "OFFENSIVE" POLICY AGAINST ARMENIA

Lider TV
October 13, 2008 Monday
Azerbaijan

The Azerbaijani president has said that his country will continue a
"policy of total offensive" against Armenia as long as Azerbaijani
territories are "under occupation" of Armenia.

Ilham Aliyev was speaking at a session devoted to the results of the
first nine months of 2008 on 13 October and his remarks were aired
by the Lider pro-government TV station.

"As long as our lands are under occupation, a policy of total offensive
against Armenia will be continued in the diplomatic, political,
economic, transport, military, propaganda, and other [fields]. This
is unequivocal," he said. He added that no cooperation with Armenia
was possible and that this country cannot participate in any regional
projects unless the Nagornyy Karabakh problem is resolved. "We will do
our best to keep things as they are today and make their [Armenia’s]
isolation even deeper and get them to understand better what their
future is connected with. An aggressive policy can benefit no-one,
and the country which has brought itself into isolation can already
see, and will see, the bitter consequences of it," he said.

Speaking about the country’s economy, Aliyev said that the global
financial crisis had not affected Azerbaijan. "Because of our
development at such a high pace, we are very quickly integrating
into the world economy. This integration manifests itself in all
spheres. Azerbaijan is part of the global economy. However, despite
this, we must conduct – and we do conduct – our policy in such a way
that any economic, or political, crisis does not impact Azerbaijan. And
we have achieved this. Both the political crisis and the economic
crisis – the crises that have shaken the whole world – have not had any
impact on Azerbaijan. We have protected our country and we will protect
our country after this too. I want to say once again that we rely
only and only on our own strength and on the will of the Azerbaijani
people. And we will govern our country independently after this too
and we will further step up our independent policy after this too, and
these events once again show how correct our policy has been," he said.

The TV station also quoted Aliyev as saying in his speech that
a total of 57bn (presumably, dollars) had been invested in the
Azerbaijan economy since 1991, and 77 per cent of them, i.e. more
than 44bn dollars, fell to the years 2003-08, the years of his tenure
as president. Aliyev also noted that since 2003, Azerbaijan had
increased oil extraction from 15.4m t to 52m t, and gas extraction
from 5.5bn cu.m. to 20bn cu.m., Lider said. Aliyev added that the
poverty rate in the country had been reduced from 49 to 16 per cent,
and that 741,000 new jobs had been created in the country in the past
five years, the TV said.