Azerbaijani president refuses to regard Armenia as actually independent state

BAKU. Aug 26 (Interfax) - Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said that Armenia cannot be considered an actually independent nation, as the country is incapable of maintaining its own security.

"Today, Armenia openly confesses that it can't ensure its own security or guard its own borders and can't live off its own resources. In a situation like this, there can be no independence. It is totally unjustifiable to call Armenia an independent nation. Because Armenia lacks an overwhelming majority of factors that are inherent to an independent nation," Aliyev said in Baku on Thursday.

"If they had listened to us at the time and left our lands, they wouldn't have come up against such a shameful situation today," he said.

"In the early hours of November 10, Armenia signed an act of capitulation, and the war was ended. Our putting an end to the war was an absolutely reasonable thing to do. If the war had continued, we would have suffered more losses," Aliyev said, meaning military action in Nagorno-Karabakh.

"We liberated our lands on time, stopped the war on time, and achieved a historic victory," he said.