Azernews.Az

Azerbaijan will not allow its conflict with Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh to "freeze" and negotiate merely to prevent a new war, President Ilham Aliyev told a cabinet meeting on Monday devoted to the outcomes of 2011.

President Aliyev said Baku will not let the ongoing peace talks to be aimed not to resolve the long-standing conflict proper, but to avert eruption of a new war in the region.

"If someone thinks that the main point in the negotiations is to prevent a war, I disagree with them," he said.

The president said no one wants war to break out, "especially, the Azerbaijani state, which has achieved such enormous success".

"But this does not mean that the negotiations will be put aside and that all our efforts will be aimed at preventing a war. This won’t happen."

Aliyev said further that there are only two options in settling the Karabakh conflict – negotiations and military action.

"There is no third option here," he said. "It is not a ‘frozen’ conflict and it won’t be."

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile cease-fire in 1994. Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory since then. Efforts by OSCE mediators representing the United States, Russia and France have been largely fruitless so far. Azerbaijani officials have repeatedly warned that the country’s occupied territories will be freed at any cost.

President Aliyev also said Azerbaijan’s possessing the most powerful armed forces in the region and increasing its military power year on year worries Armenia.

He noted that the Azerbaijani military budget increased from $3.413 billion in 2010 to $3.474 billion in 2011.

This story is published by AzerNEWS Weekly under a project funded by the Foundation for State Assistance to the Development of the Media under the President of the Azerbaijan Republic.