BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 27. Today, in order to get to Nakhchivan, we have to either fly there or go by bus or car through the territory of Iran, or even take a longer route through Georgia and Türkiye before entering Nakhchivan, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with Saudi TV channel Al-Arabiya, Trend reports.
''So it causes a lot of inconvenience and problems. After the Second Karabakh War ended with our victory, we could have taken that part by force. At that time, the Armenian army was totally demoralized. There were 12,000 deserters who ran from the war in the Armenian army and zero in the Azerbaijani army. The Azerbaijani army was motivated; the people were motivated, and there was no one in front of us. We stopped on November 10, 2020, at our border. We didn't take that part by force, but we told Armenia that they cannot block our communications with Nakhchivan. So for almost five years, we've been negotiating with them about these connectivity lines. In the meantime, we started to build a railroad toward the Armenian border to connect it with Nakhchivan, and started to build the highways. The highway projects will probably be ready next year, as well as the railroad.
But during these almost five years of negotiations, Armenia did not demonstrate a constructive approach with respect to our demands or legitimate requests. So when President Trump and his team started to be involved in the process and wanted to facilitate, our message to them was: without the Zangezur Corridor being operational and safe, so that Azerbaijani citizens can travel safely along this 40-plus-kilometer route, there must be strong security guarantees — international security guarantees.
Only security guarantees from Armenia alone will not be enough. So Trump's administration accepted this legitimate concern with the proper attitude, and that's how it turned into TRIPP — Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. So now, when President Trump gave his name to the Zangezur Corridor, I'm sure that it will materialize very soon. From the point of building the physical infrastructure, I mean the railroad, it should not take a long time, because it's only 42 kilometers. If we were to build it ourselves, we would have done it in one year. Maybe for Armenia it will take a few more years, because we have more experience in building railroads,'' President Ilham Aliyev noted