“First of all, I’d like to say that the Minsk Group was obliged to resolve the conflict by mandate from OSCE since 1992. So, they were in function, for 28 years until last November when we in 44 days liberated the territories. My opinion about the Minsk Group activity does not differ from the opinion of the Azerbaijani people. It’s a failure,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper on December 15, Report informs via Azertag.
“We must tell the truth. We should not pretend to be politically correct when it’s clear like a day light. If the Minsk Group co-chairs which are the leading countries of the world, 3 out 5 permanent members of Security Council, 3 nuclear powers, the most powerful countries of the world, could not or did not want to put an end to Armenian occupation, that means that their activity was failed. They worked for 28 years. Can you imagine?”
“The Madrid principles was more than ten years ago. They started in 1992, and the three leading countries which I mentioned became the co-chairs several years later. But anyway, it’s more than 20 years. But without zero result, and why? Probably because as you said, the status quo was acceptable to them. Though I can tell you that at certain stages even on the level of the heads of state for the co-chairs of the Minsk Group there have been positive statements that the status quo is unacceptable and must be changed. And we were very encouraged by that. Unfortunately, there were no actions. It was very simple and I raised this issue many times to persuade Armenia, or to force Armenia to leave the territories of Azerbaijan, and to comply with the United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that the only way to do was to enforce sanctions on Armenia.
We know that in certain cases these sanctions are being imposed on other countries. But not on Armenia. Again double standards. Again unjust approach. Azerbaijani people were tired of these permanent visits of this Minsk Group “troika”. Several times a year they were coming and going without any result, and actually, their activity was totally paralyzed after 2019 when Armenian president declared that Karabakh is Armenia. And that meant that it’s the end of the negotiations. Because if Armenia said that Karabakh is Armenia what to negotiate about? Another thing is that later Armenian leadership said that Karabakh is independent country, which was contradictory to the previous statement. But Minsk Group did not react. They did not even condemn this statement. Of course, this kind of behavior only encouraged Armenia to strengthen their position on the table and to make occupation endless. That was a target of Armenia, and unfortunately, Minsk group helped them in that,” Ilham Aliyev said.