Ilham Aliyev: Armenian occupants wanted to destroy traces of Azerbaijani culture

Armenia which kept these lands under occupation wanted to destroy the traces of Azerbaijani culture, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said receiving a delegation led by ICESCO Director-General Salim bin Mohammed AlMalik in Baku.

According to the Azerbaijani leader, Baku could not even imagine that the destructions are so wide. "It demonstrates that the country which kept these lands under occupation wanted to destroy the traces of Azerbaijani culture, destroy the heritage of Azerbaijani people. And actually, we now clearly understand that these destructions were made after the 1st Karabakh war. It was not during the war because during the war these kinds of destructions are not possible. It was after the occupation in order to destroy everything which belonged to the people of Azerbaijan and not to allow any time in the future Azerbaijanis to go back," he said.

The president explained that that once again demonstrated that during all these almost 30 years of negotiations Yerevan had only one objective to make these negotiations endless and useless. "And it happened. Because during these almost 30 years of negotiations process there were no results. Only talks, only visits, only statements, but no results and that gave the aggressor the opportunity to try to change the historical-cultural, and religious origin of the occupied territories," the head of state said.

Ilham Aliyev noted that Armenians destroyed almost 70 mosques on the occupied territories. "They destroyed all our mosques except one, the one in Aghdam they did not completely destroy only because they needed to have some landmark to plan their artillery attacks, if or when the Azerbaijani army moves forward," he stressed, adding that they kept pigs and cows in that mosque.

The President assured that Azerbaijan will restore all mosques on the liberated lands.