BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 27. Today, in order
to get to Nakhchivan, we have to either fly there or go by bus or
car through the territory of Iran, or even take a longer route
through Georgia and Türkiye before entering Nakhchivan, President
of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with Saudi TV channel Al-Arabiya, Trend reports.
”So it causes a lot of inconvenience and problems. After the
Second Karabakh War ended with our victory, we could have taken
that part by force. At that time, the Armenian army was totally
demoralized. There were 12,000 deserters who ran from the war in
the Armenian army and zero in the Azerbaijani army. The Azerbaijani
army was motivated; the people were motivated, and there was no one
in front of us. We stopped on November 10, 2020, at our border. We
didn’t take that part by force, but we told Armenia that they
cannot block our communications with Nakhchivan. So for almost five
years, we’ve been negotiating with them about these connectivity
lines. In the meantime, we started to build a railroad toward the
Armenian border to connect it with Nakhchivan, and started to build
the highways. The highway projects will probably be ready next
year, as well as the railroad.
But during these almost five years of negotiations, Armenia did
not demonstrate a constructive approach with respect to our demands
or legitimate requests. So when President Trump and his team
started to be involved in the process and wanted to facilitate, our
message to them was: without the Zangezur Corridor being
operational and safe, so that Azerbaijani citizens can travel
safely along this 40-plus-kilometer route, there must be strong
security guarantees — international security guarantees.
Only security guarantees from Armenia alone will not be enough.
So Trump’s administration accepted this legitimate concern with the
proper attitude, and that’s how it turned into TRIPP — Trump Route
for International Peace and Prosperity. So now, when President
Trump gave his name to the Zangezur Corridor, I’m sure that it will
materialize very soon. From the point of building the physical
infrastructure, I mean the railroad, it should not take a long
time, because it’s only 42 kilometers. If we were to build it
ourselves, we would have done it in one year. Maybe for Armenia it
will take a few more years, because we have more experience in
building railroads,” President Ilham Aliyev noted
