In today’s fast-changing world, global stability won’t be achieved in the coming months, or even years, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev told Euronews.
Addressing what he called the “global transformations of the moment” at the Global Baku Forum in the Azerbaijani capital on Thursday, Aliyev said that the world has entered “a phase of elaboration of new rules and regulations”.
“The old world order seems to no longer be here. So what will be the new configuration of the international community’s interaction, nobody knows. There are different opinions.”
“But what is absolutely clear is that every country should be more concentrated on its own capability, not to rely on any kind of assistance or even not to rely on international law,” the Azerbaijani leader explained.
Furthermore, Aliyev said he preferred to be “realistic, not optimistic” about the ability of key world actors to find solutions to major conflicts, particularly when it comes to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Even if the war stops, there’s no guarantee it will not erupt again,” the Azerbaijani leader explained.
“We had a time for almost 30 years when we had a ceasefire agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which was achieved in spring 1994, but that did not mean that the war ended. It just transformed. And the war only ends when you have a peace agreement,” Aliyev said.
The region of South Caucasus has experienced “confrontation and hostility” for decades, he pointed out. Today, “it’s important to protect the region from any crises around us,” Aliyev added.
“Now we have relatively quiet periods, so we need to concentrate on that to build security mechanisms that will be inclusive, to eliminate any threat of another military confrontation and to try to live in the neighbourhood, as we used to in the times of the Soviet Union.”
Azerbaijan, together with other countries of the region, was one of the USSR’s 15 socialist republics when it declared independence in October 1991. While Aliyev acknowledged that not being independent meant none of the countries of the region could plan their future, he highlighted that the republics did maintain “active interaction”.
Speaking on Baku’s current state of relations with neighbouring Armenia, the Azerbaijani president said that “a big advantage of today’s situation” can be seen in the quiet period of the past five years.
However, stability only comes through agreement, he pointed out.
“Until a peace agreement is signed the stability is not here,” Aliyev concluded.
Watch the interview with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in the player above.
