Azernews.Az

YEREVAN – Armenia has tersely responded to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s recent strongly worded statement, with President Serzh Sargsyan claiming that Azerbaijan "had launched the war, lost it and offered a truce itself".

"Further, Azerbaijanis began to state that Armenia had gained victory in the Karabakh war with the help of a third country. Last time we heard this from the Azerbaijani president yesterday," Sargsyan alleged at a meeting with Armenian journalists in Goris on Saturday, his press service said.

Sargsyan demanded that Baku name the country in question. "Say it, so we can prove with facts that you are lying. Why don’t you disclose that?"

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a cease-fire in 1994, but Armenia continues to occupy Nagorno Karabakh and seven other Azerbaijani districts in defiance of international law. Numerous rounds of OSCE-brokered talks have been fruitless so far and refugees remain stranded. The separatist regime in Nagorno Karabakh proclaimed so-called independence in 1991, which has not been recognized by any country to date.

Sargsyan also accused Azerbaijan of alleged distortions of history. He claimed that Azerbaijanis began to settle in Karabakh only in the 18th century, after Armenians had lived in the region for as long as eight millennia.

President Ilham Aliyev said last week that present-day Armenia was established in ancient Azerbaijani territories and that his country will never allow the establishment of a second Armenian state.

"Zangazur, Irevan Khanate are our lands!" President Aliyev said. "Azerbaijanis lived there for centuries. There were Armenians [only] in some regions. Mass settlements of Armenians in these territories took place in the 19th century. How could it be that Yerevan was declared Armenia’s capital under a decision of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic’s government in 1918? If those regions belonged to ‘Great Armenia’, why did they have to get our permission?"