Azerbaijan overcomes economic crisis - president says

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said that the country has overcome the crisis caused by the drop in oil price.


"I think we have managed to overcome the crisis with honour and now there are no problems in the economic sphere," Aliyev said.


"Our financial situation is stable, economic development is continuing and although there are problems caused by three- to four-fold decline in the crude price, we are coping with these problems with honour. I am sure that we will end the year 2016 with success," the website of private ANS TV channel quoted Aliyev as saying at a reception in Baku to mark Victory Day and the birthday of his father, late President Heydar Aliyev.


"Everything we have achieved is a result of efforts made by the people of Azerbaijan and of a well-thought-out policy. No one has helped, is helping or will help us. And there is no need for this," Aliyev said.


He went on to say that the government's major task is to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh (Nagornyy-Karabakh) conflict. "We are using political, diplomatic and other factors to strengthen our position in the negotiations [on Karabakh settlement]," he said.


President Aliyev also slammed the USSR leadership for allowing separatism to emerge in Nagorno-Karabakh.


"Heydar Aliyev was absolutely groundlessly dismissed from all his positions in 1987... Just two weeks after his dismissal Armenian nationalists raised the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh's secession from Azerbaijan and its joining to Armenia... Unfortunately, the then Soviet leadership had not stopped those unpleasant aspirations, thus committing a crime," APA quoted Aliyev as saying.


He added that he used to accompany his father in trips to Nagorno-Karabakh in Soviet times and they saw no signs of separatism there. "There were no factors to forebode that separatist aspirations might increase there. I mean that [Karabakh secession movement] was an artificially created provocation," he said.


"Every time we recall that history we note with regret that if Heydar Aliyev had been in power in the early years of our independence [in the early 1990s], this country would have not faced the Nagorno-Karabakh problem. Heydar Aliyev would have never allowed separatists to raise their heads in Nagorno-Karabakh and this bloody crime to be committed against our nation," he added.

www.ann.az