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By Rashid Shirinov

Armenian public and lobby are well aware that the aggressive policy of the Armenian state has led to an economic collapse, isolation of the country, mass departure of citizens and horrific poverty in Armenia, Azerbaijani MP Elman Nasirov told Trend on March 12.

He said that Armenians believed that Armenia would develop and its economic power would increase as a result of occupation of Azerbaijani lands, but in fact the opposite happened.

“Today in Armenia, people with analytical thinking openly admit that the aggressive policy pursued by the Armenian state is leading the country to an abyss, while Azerbaijan is becoming stronger day by day, achieving very serious success in bilateral relations, establishing high-level relations with all neighboring states, excluding Armenia, and forming a very important cooperation in trilateral formats,” Nasirov said.

He also noted that Armenians recognize that Azerbaijan is implementing global projects, and Armenia is isolated from them.

“They understand that a tragedy awaits Armenia, and they want to repeat what Azerbaijan does. For example, one of the representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia has proposed to “switch to a trilateral format” of cooperation and cites the Armenia-Russia-Iran format as an example, and then recognizes that the competition with the Azerbaijan-Russia-Iran format has no potential,” the MP said.

Nasirov further mentioned that Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia have great economic opportunities, therefore, promising cooperation was established between these countries.

He noted that Armenian experts already admit that the occupation of Azerbaijani lands has not brought benefits to Armenia – on the contrary, the country is on the brink of a precipice.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on the country. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

To this day, Armenia has not implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions. Meanwhile, the socio-economic situation in Armenia is getting worse every year.

The state debt is approaching $7 billion but there is no sign of improvement in the life of Armenians, the unemployment rate is around 18 percent, almost a third of the population lives in poverty – these are only few of the problems the Armenian citizens face.

People periodically hold protests demanding from the government to solve the economic and, first of all, social problems in the country. However, the Armenian authorities continue to close their eyes to these issues.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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