Azerbaijani Defense Minister calls on his CIS counterparts to call Armenia aggressor

As APA reports, the meeting has brought together the CIS executive secretary Vladimir Rushaylo, delegations from Defense Ministries of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Ukraine as well as delegations of the CIS Executive Committee and Defense Ministers Board Secretariat.

Addressing the meeting, Azerbaijani Defense Minister Safar Abiyev said Azerbaijan is having military cooperation with international and regional organizations and attaches great importance to its activity in the CIS Board of Defense Ministers. Touching on economic successes Azerbaijan achieved during its 15-year of independence, the Minister stressed that the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict poses a great obstacle to improvement of these successes.

"There is a great deal of uncalculated military equipment and supplies in the Azerbaijan's territories under Armenian occupation currently and terrorists are trained there. There is illegal traffic in arms and weapons of mass destruction and illicit drugs transferred to different regions of the world from there," Minister Abiyev underlined.

Abiyev also reminded that Armenia ignores the UN Security Council's four Resolutions on unconditional withdrawal from Nagorno Karabakh without further delay. The Azerbaijani Defense Minister addressing his counterparts said it is high time to take a fundamental and objective stance.

"Armenia should be called aggressor and Yerevan should be demanded to comply with international legal norms and withdraw from the Azerbaijani territories it has occupied," he stressed.

He also noted that CIS's existence much depends on its ability to solve the conflicts in the Commonwealth territory.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov called the meeting efficient at the new conference following the closed meeting. He said they discussed military and military-technical cooperation and adopted a decision on improving the structure of working bodies of the Board.