Dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
As colleagues mentioned before and also my Armenian colleague Mr Sos Avetisyan said, Armenia has chosen the path of democracy. This is a fact, whatever it means for any of us. It's important that only our people can choose how to get out of the crisis in our country.
Now, I want to get back to the issue of prisoners of war. For your attention, I literally want to bring up the conversation which took place maybe a week ago between Ilham Aliyev and the wife of Erdogan, Emine. On their way to occupied Shushi, she asks Mr Aliyev: "Are there many Armenian prisoners of war in Baku?" He happily says "Yes, yes, there are so many prisoners of war." She says laughing, "Oh, so good. Return them in small portions".
This is literally what they said. The video is there on YouTube; you can see it. The countries, Azerbaijan and Turkey, are members of the Council of Europe and their leaders behave like that.
This not only contradicts the logic of international law but also is insane. It is inhuman.
Every time we come here the families of the prisoners of war ask us what Europe is doing and what you are doing while you go there. We say you know they discuss it, they judge, they condemn. As a result we have very little portions of prisoners of war and there are so many people, hundreds of people, and the families are suffering.
It has been more than half a year since the ceasefire statement was signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia. Armenia has done its part of the deal. It's Azerbaijan which refuses, and they say, you know, we returned 15 prisoners of war. Thank you very much, but I want to remind you that it's your duty to immediately return all the prisoners of war which you have to do according to the 9th of November ceasefire statement.
I want to say that peace is not simply a beautiful word. We value peace more than anyone in the world because we know how it is to be in war, how it is to lose loved ones. But peace means action. Peace means hard work. The Azerbaijani way of peace is to enter the sovereign territory of Armenia, is to keep Armenian prisoners of war as hostages, is to dehumanise Armenians at a state level and then come to this hemicycle and beautifully talk about peace.
Dear Azerbaijani colleagues, if you really want peace, go back to your home country and make your dictator Aliyev act in accordance with international law. Return Armenian prisoners of war and leave our Armenia's sovereign territory.
We don't want war. No one wants war. But if you want peace, you need to act.