Isa Qambar: "Azerbaijan's membership in NATO would not guarantee the return of 20% of Azerbaijani lands, occupied by Armenia"

He said, however, that we should not forget that a greater part of the Azerbaijani territory is occupied by Armenia and the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict has not been settled yet.

"It means that our country has to choose the further way of strategic development and, I think, Azerbaijan should make a choice towards NATO", said he.

According to him, our country does not meet the standards of this organization both in the sphere of military construction and in the sphere of democratization.

"Before joining NATO, Azerbaijan should also settle a number of other issues, passing to a real market economy.

But here it is necessary to note that one of the high-ranking Russian politicians said openly that Russia would act the same way towards Georgia, as it has already done, even if Georgia was the NATO member. It all says that in case Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan join NATO they should get firm guarantees of the alliance in case of Russia's military aggression against them".

He said Azerbaijan's membership in NATO would not guarantee the return of 20% of Azerbaijani lands, occupied by Armenia.

"But the resolution of this issue will become real, if all the three countries of our region become members of one and the same security system, sharing the whole system of NATO's values.

However, today we see that Georgia openly states the intention to become a full member of NATO, Armenia contents itself with a "title" of Russia's outpost in the Caucasus and Azerbaijan hopes to take an advantage of the so called balanced external policy. In such conditions, the prospects of the establishment of stability and peace in the South Caucasus and return of the occupied lands of Azerbaijan seem gloomy to me", concluded Qambar.

/Day.Az/