President: "If Armenia shows the same will, we will be able to sign a peace agreement within a few months"

“The situation in our region is developing in a peaceful direction, and I hope so,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore's reporter Roberto Bongiorni on September 2 in the city of Cernobbio, Report informs.

“I came to Italy from Brussels. There we had a trilateral meeting between me, the President of the European Council and the Prime Minister of Armenia. We agreed that within a month, the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia would meet to start practical negotiations on a peace agreement,” President Ilham Aliyev said.

He noted that Azerbaijan came up with a proposal to sign a peace agreement almost immediately after the end of the Second Karabakh War:

“We have declared that we need peace, a peace agreement. It took Armenia almost two years to agree to this. I consider this one of the most important outcomes of the meeting.”

The president noted that much would depend on the progress of these peace talks.

“I believe that we can prepare and sign a peace agreement within a few months. If the Armenian side shows the same will, then I think it's real. We put forward five basic principles on which the peace agreement should be based, and Armenia accepted them,” the head of state added.