On March 14, the 11th Global Baku Forum, organised by the Nizami Ganjavi International Center under the auspices of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, began at the Gulustan Palace in Baku under the theme "Fixing the Fractured World".

Opening the event, Azerbaijani President Aliyev said: "We are now closer to peace with Armenia than ever before. Never in the history of the independence of the South Caucasus has peace been as close as it is today. This is the result of the Second Karabakh War. This is the result of the anti-terrorist operation we carried out last September, which took less than 24 hours and put an end to separatism in Azerbaijan forever, restoring our sovereignty and territorial integrity".

He added: "Was it possible to avoid a military solution? Yes. Yesterday, we had a broad discussion with the members of the Council, and I opened the curtain a little. There was a chance to reach an agreement in 2018, when there was a change of government in Armenia. We had assurances from the new Armenian government that they would act in accordance with international law and that the territories would be returned. We had these expectations, and if the new Armenian government had preferred to behave as it is now, there would have been no need to restore our sovereignty by force. Unfortunately, in 2019, the new Armenian leadership has made absolutely unacceptable proposals, such as "Azerbaijan must negotiate with the separatists, everything that has been worked out as a basis for a peace agreement should be destroyed and everything should start from scratch, and Armenia will not return an inch of the occupied territories".

Moreover, the famous slogan articulated by the Armenian Prime Minister that "Karabakh is Armenia". Firstly, it's an absolute violation of international law, and secondly, it was too ambitious for a country that thought it could keep our lands forever. So we had to teach them a lesson in 2020, in September-November, and we thought that this lesson was enough for them to understand that the time when they could rely on foreign troops and keep another country's lands under occupation is over".

The Azerbaijani leader noted: “Talking about the international reaction, unfortunately I have to mention the position of one country, which is in absolute contradiction with the international community. This is France. I regret it very much, because relations between Azerbaijan and France have been developing in a positive direction since the beginning of the 1990s. There were many high-level visits, many business contacts, 13 cities of the two countries had an agreement and they were called sister cities. However, the French government's response to the Second Karabakh War and the anti-terrorist operation [in September 2023] was inadequate. There were five attempts to bring this issue to the United Nations Security Council and to impose sanctions on Azerbaijan - for what we did not do. We have not done anything contrary to international law. All these five attempts failed because other members of the Security Council did not support it. After that, there were several attempts in the European Union to sanction Azerbaijan. And these attempts also failed. The majority of countries in the European Union did not support it.”