The President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev gave an interview to Al Arabiya TV channel

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev gave an interview to Saudi Arabia's Al Arabiya TV channel.

As reported by BAKU.WS, the interview of our head of state was shown on the same channel on August 26.

We present the interview.

Correspondent: Dear viewers of Al Arabiya channel, we welcome you from the capital of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the beautiful city of Baku. Today I will be conducting an exclusive interview with the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev. This meeting comes after the signing of an agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan with the support of US President Donald Trump. Today we are experiencing these historic days and will discuss this specific issue. At the same time, we will talk about Azerbaijan's role between East and West. We will also discuss with President Ilham Aliyev the role of Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus.

Mr. President, welcome to Al Arabiya channel.

President Ilham Aliyev: Very glad to see you. Welcome to Azerbaijan.

Correspondent: Thank you, Mr. President. With your permission, I would now like to address that historic agreement that was signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan through the mediation efforts of Donald Trump. I would like to know your general impressions of this agreement. What can we expect next?

President Ilham Aliyev: I think what happened in Washington on August 8 is actually the end of confrontation and a way out of the deadlock. We have been at war with Armenia for a long time. It was Armenia that occupied Azerbaijani territories since the early 1990s. And at that time, Azerbaijan was very weak. We didn't have an army, while Armenia had supporters abroad who helped it occupy Azerbaijani territories.

Thus, almost 20 percent of our territories were occupied by Armenia, and we had one million refugees and internally displaced persons. At that time, this was one of the highest per capita rates, with Azerbaijan's population being eight million people. That is, one million people were left homeless.

The First Karabakh War ended in 1994 with a ceasefire, and we entered into a series of endless and, as we saw, useless negotiations that lasted until 2020, when the Second Karabakh War began and we liberated our internationally recognized territories.

Almost five years ago, during the 44-day Patriotic War, Azerbaijan restored justice, international law, and its own dignity by reclaiming its lands. After that, a certain vacuum emerged in the process, as the mediators didn't know what to do next. And again, it was Azerbaijan that proposed to launch a peace process with Armenia. I repeat, it was we who initiated the negotiation format. We also presented a draft peace agreement. In fact, the document initialed in Washington on August 8 is based on the Azerbaijani version of the vision for settling interstate relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

As I said, the negotiations lasted several years and concluded in Washington with the active support of President Trump and his team. I believe this is truly the end of the conflict, the end of the war. Formally, a peace agreement was not signed for one specific reason: Armenia's constitution still contains a provision that questions Azerbaijan's territorial integrity.