"British Petroleum" has supplied Azerbaijan with 35 billion USD worth oil and gas in the last 4 years and that's 4 times the size of the Azerbaijani defense budget. This gives the UK some leverage over Azerbaijan through "British Petroleum". Would you like to see the UK using that kind of leverage? And following on from that, again the question on support: Azerbaijan has been getting huge quantity of arms from Russia, Turkey, Israel. I know that Armenia is now getting some weapons from India, France. Would you like to see other countries intervene, so that Armenia had the means to defend itself? Referring to this question in an interview given to the British media, Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan answered:
"You see I would not like to comment on business activities and investments made in the neighboring countries, but one thing I can say is that any investment should be motivated by having peace in the region or the environment it's made.
In general, establishing peace is in the interests of the international community and the investors, but of course, the primary beneficiaries of peace are Armenia and Azerbaijan. And this theoretical premise, which is of course very theoretical, could step by step be manifested in more substantive terms. In the last 5 minth we have achieved two major agreements with Azerbaijan. Eventually, the peoples of Armenia and Azerbaijan are keen on peace.
Of course, the investors and broader economic stability are interested in peace, but we are the primary beneficiaries of peace. So a number of statements coming from Azerbaijan regarding the reforms of Armenia's army and modernization are alarming us. You are right pointing out that there is a strong misbalance between the military budgets of Azerbaijan and Armenia and that is also the results of the deals you referred to that generates income for Azerbaijan, but what we are worried about is that even with this misbalance, Azerbaijan is responding very aggressively to the reforms of Armenia's armed forces and to the acquisition of arms and equipments, although everyone understands that these acquisitions are of solely defensive nature.
As I have repeatedly said that no country can challenge the right of another country to have a combat ready army and I think having a strong army is sometimes used for war, but having such an army is also important for peace, for balancing the powers. That's also the reason why when Azerbaijan raises those questions, referring particularly to Armenia's acquisition of weapons, which is not more than 15-20% of Azerbaijan's acquisitions in terms of cost and volume, and our acquisitions are mostly of defensive nature, we respond to those statements.
We invited Azerbaijan to introduce a bilateral arms control mechanism, so that we can mutually agree upon a way to avoid provoking arms race in our region.
We proposed and we continue to propose simultaneous withdrawal of troops from the border declared on the bases of the 1991 Alma-Ata declaration. That proposal still stands," Pashinyan said.
