Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev began his speech yesterday at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly in New York by saying that Azerbaijan was forced to exercise its legitimate right to self-defense following thirty years of ineffective negotiations to end the Armenian occupation of its lands.

Aliyev blamed the OSCE Minsk Group for failing in its mission to settle the Karabakh conflict and, instead, sought to preserve the status-quo.

“ During the war, Armenia shelled our towns and cities, launched ballistic missiles, and used cluster munitions, killing more than a hundred innocent civilians. Azerbaijan, in turn, conducted the war in strict compliance with international humanitarian law,” Aliyev claimed when describing the 2020 Karabakh war. 

Aliyev said the August 8 White House meeting of the leaders of the U.S., Armenia and Azerbaijan jump-started peace talks between Yerevan and Baku and signaled a new phase in Azerbaijan-U.S. relations.

The Azerbaijani leader also welcomed U.S. President Trump’s waiver of sanctions imposed on Azerbaijan in 1992. 

Aliyev said that Armenia was ruled by “war criminals” for almost thirty years and accused Armenia of conducting a deliberate policy of levelling “hundreds of Azerbaijani cities and villages during the occupation of Azerbaijani territory.

“We are rebuilding villages and cities razed to the ground. Under the Great Return Program, already more than 50,000 people live, work, and study in the liberated territories,” Aliyev remarked in his speech.

Photo: Azerbaijan Presidential Office