news.am: Toivo Klaar, the European Union Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia, has welcomed the statement by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the recent IX Global Baku Forum.

“Pleased to read Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s statement at Global Baku Forum: ‘Now it’s time to establish peace, to establish cooperation’ and to ‘move to practical implementation’ following positive dynamics with Armenia. The EU strongly supports this,” Klaar wrote on Twitter.

In his address at the aforesaid forum in the Azerbaijani capital last week, Aliyev had said, in particular, that “if both sides work to show goodwill, we can sign a peace agreement within a year.”

But at the same time, the president of Azerbaijan had threatened that if the Armenian side continues to raise the issue of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), this could lead to a new confrontation, claiming that “there is a verbal agreement” not to talk about the status.

“Any speculation by Armenia or any other country about the [OSCE] Minsk Group irritates Azerbaijan. We have resolved the [Karabakh] conflict, the Madrid Principles developed by the Minsk Group have been implemented. Now we have to think about how to normalize relations with Armenia and sign a peace agreement,” Aliyev had added.