Eduard Bagiryan: Armenia must liberate lands around Karabakh and Karabakh itself

Armenia must liberate occupied Azerbaijani lands, member of the Platform for Peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, retired colonel Eduard Bagiryan, said today in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza, speaking about ways of settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

He stressed that both Armenian and Azerbaijani people want the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to end. "Only Mikhail Gorbachev needed this conflict in order to destroy the Soviet Union. Everything was done in order to create nationalistic sentiments in society, which is why this conflict began. When the USSR collapsed, no one needed the Karabakh conflict, but the war machine continued to work by inertia," Eduard Bagiryan said.

"Armenians think that since they fought for 30 years, occupied many regions of Azerbaijan, so how can they abandon everything? I believe that yes, they should liberate these lands! Even America left other countries when it saw that there's nothing to gain from war. It left Korea, Vietnam, Iraq. Armenia must also leave Azerbaijani lands, because there's no military solution to the conflict in its favor. A new war will only bring more grief, tears and blood, and there will be no solution," he noted.

He stressed that Armenian authorities deliberately cultivate hatred for Turkic peoples. "When we studied in Azerbaijan, nobody told us that Armenians are bad, but you can read are a lot of bad things about Muslims, Turks and Azerbaijanis in Armenian press," he said.

"All regional global projects involve Azerbaijan, and Armenia can't get access to them. Due to blocked borders, Armenia can't transport its goods to Russia through Azerbaijani roads, so situation with logistics is very difficult in Armenia, and this affects prices of Armenian goods. All of this could have been avoided if the conflict was resolved," Eduard Bagiryan concluded.