Azernews.Az

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held a meeting dedicated to army-building issues at the Defense Ministry on Friday.
During the meeting, aired by the state television channel AzTV, President Aliyev said building the military has always been in the government’s focus, given the long-standing Armenian occupation of a part of Azerbaijani territory.
"This is a core issue for us, because Azerbaijani lands have been under occupation for many years."
The president noted that strengthening Azerbaijan’s military power to the greatest extent possible is necessitated by the Armenian aggression.
"Armenia and its benefactors committed utmost brutality in the process of occupation. The Khojaly massacre is a graphic example of that. Armenia is blatantly violating all norms of [international] law. Despite the four standing UN Security Council resolutions on liberating occupied Azerbaijani territories, it is not enforcing these decisions."
Commenting on the updated Madrid principles for settling the Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh conflict, which was submitted to Baku and Yerevan by the mediating OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, the Azerbaijani leader said the latest proposals could be a basis for drafting an agreement. He went on to reaffirm Baku’s intransigent stance on the conflict resolution.
"I want to say once again that Azerbaijan's territorial integrity has not been and will not be a subject of discussion. Armenia, delaying the negotiating process, is unwilling to withdraw from the land it occupies. Our greatest compromise is Azerbaijan's having been committed to the peace process for twenty years," Aliyev said, emphasizing that the world community should honor its own decisions.
He said that without a Garabagh settlement, no other problems can be resolved in the volatile region, considering that the long-standing dispute is considerably affecting regional developments.
Stressing the high combat readiness in Azerbaijan, Aliyev said the country’s military spending has surged more than ten-fold in the past five to six years, its defense industry is developing, and large quantifies of military machinery has been purchased.
"This is our natural right. Today, the Azerbaijani army is more powerful and more skillful than the Armenian military in all respects. Azerbaijan is one of the handful of countries in this region that does not depend on anyone else’s assistance."
A fragile ceasefire has been in place with Armenia since a brutal war in the 1990s that claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about one million Azerbaijanis from their homes. Armenia continues to occupy Upper Garabagh and seven adjacent Azerbaijani districts in defiance of international law. The ceasefire accord was signed in 1994, but the OSCE-brokered peace talks have been fruitless so far. Azerbaijan has not ruled out military action to liberate its land and has spent billions on dollars on building up its military.*