Everyone should recognize the “new reality” created by Azerbaijan driving Armenian forces from Azerbaijani lands, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said last week, Anadolu Agency reported.
“We have expelled the enemy from our land and created a new reality. Everyone should acknowledge this reality,” Aliyev said in an address to the nation.
Aliyev congratulated the people of Azerbaijan for the liberation of the Lachin region following 28 years of occupation by Armenian forces.
Aliyev said that before occupation, over 50,000 Azerbaijanis lived in Lachin, while today the population has reached 80,000, adding that one of their main goals will be to return the residents of Lachin and other liberated areas to their homes as soon as possible.
Telling how much of the infrastructure and buildings in regions liberated from occupation were destroyed by the Armenians, Aliyev stated that they will set about to rebuild and restore.
“We liberated several districts from the enemy on the battlefield, returned three districts, and forced the enemy, thus resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is gone. If someone thinks that this conflict still exists, they are wrong,” Aliyev said.
People living in Nagorno-Karabakh today are Azerbaijani citizens, and they will see their lives improve as part of Azerbaijan, free of poverty, Aliyev stressed.
The president said the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, has been transferred to the control of Russian peacekeeping forces.
The initial version of a Nov. 10 joint statement ending the conflict contained a provision on keeping the corridor under Armenian control, but when he objected, control of the corridor was transferred to Russian peacekeepers, he said.