During the annual Munich Security Conference, the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev had a speech during the Panel Discussion “Beyond Ukraine - Unresolved conflicts in Europe.” The President of Azerbaijan in essence repeated the boring statements which are being made over the last two decades.

During this section of the conference, where a number of high-ranking officials were present, not everything went smoothly for Ilham Aliyev.

After the latter’s speech a question was addressed by a member of the Armenian delegation Andranik Hovhannisyan that “it is well-known that the OSCE Minsk Co-Chairs have on numerous occasions appealed to the both countries to accept the Basic Principles of the Madrid document, i.e. non-use of force or threat of force, right to self-determination and territorial integrity. The Armenian side has several times noted that it is accepting those proposals. Azerbaijan has never clearly stated about this. Can you here unequivocally state that you are accepting those principles as a basis for the conflict settlement.”

Putting the question flatly perplexed Ilham Aliyev and he spoke about his vision of the conflict settlement. Then he made a distorted presentation of the right to self-determination completely ignoring the principle of non-use of force and threat of force, and eventually did not clarify whether he is unequivocally accepting those principles or not.

Ilham Aliyev underlined that the conflicts in the former USSR space should have the same solutions, adding that Russia has occupied the Crimea.

The head of the Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tigran Mkrtchyan using the opportunity of asking a question, first of all reminded about the addressed call of the Minsk Group, then said that Azerbaijan is escalating the situation to undermine the negotiation process. “Mr. Aliyev, the Minsk Group Co-Chairs, about whom you mentioned, a few days ago made a statement where they “called on Azerbaijan to observe its commitments to the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.”

“This is not accidental, that their appeal is addressed to you, because it is the Azerbaijani side which is ignoring those appeals and is violating the ceasefire regime on Armenia-Azerbaijan border, as well as on the Line of Contact between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh. Since January the Azerbaijani side has violated the ceasefire regime more than 3,000 sides, as a result of which there were several losses on all sides. Just a few days ago 65 and 85 years-old Armenians were killed by your snipers. Don’t you think that by your actions you are further escalating the situation and thus are making the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the near future less likely.

“I would like to recall the Moderator of this session of the conference, Slovenia’s President, Mr. Pahor’s question asked to you and the other panelists, where he asked what the first step on the way to progress in the peaceful settlement of the conflicts. You wandered around, but did not speak about the most important. Settlement of a conflict commences when guns are stopping to fire. So my appeal to you is – Stop firing!”

Aliyev got more upset by the statement of the Armenian diplomat, repeated his accusations against the international community, the Armenian Diaspora, Armenia, without responding to the question and the appeal.