Azerbaijan will need 30 years and $25 billion to clear Karabakh mines

He made this statement at the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, which is taking place in Astana.

“Azerbaijan is among the most mine-contaminated countries in the world. According to preliminary estimates, during the period of occupation, Armenia laid more than one million mines on the territory of Azerbaijan. According to international experts, it will take Azerbaijan almost 30 years and $25 billion to solve the mine problem”, - Aliyev said today (quoted by TASS ).

He added that in the two years after the end of the war in Karabakh, 250 Azerbaijanis were killed or seriously injured from mine explosions. The head of Azerbaijan again accused Armenia of provocations on the border after the settlement of the conflict, saying that because of this, the country's armed forces had to resort to "counter-actions".

“Armenia continues military provocations on the border. The last one took place in September of this year. The armed forces of Azerbaijan had to resort to decisive counter-actions to stop the Armenian military provocation. Responsibility for all these provocations lies with the military-political leadership of Armenia,” Aliyev stressed.

The Azerbaijani leader added that, despite this, Baku offered Yerevan to sign a peace agreement "on the basis of mutual recognition of each other's territorial integrity".

On October 11, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed on five principal points of a peace agreement brokered by Turkey. On the same day, the Armenian Defense Ministry accused Azerbaijan of another shelling of the territories. Prior to this, on October 6, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held a meeting for the first time, which took place in Prague at the summit of the European Political Community. They were accompanied by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for whom this was the first face-to-face meeting with Pashinyan.