Before Khojaly, Azerbaijanis thought that they were joking with us - ex-president of Armenia

By Trend

In December 2000, while researching his book on the Karabakh conflict, Black Garden, Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region interviewed Serzh Sarkisian, the man who is an ex-president of Armenia and was then Armenia’s minister of defense, Trend reports citing the memoirs of the author.

Waal wrote that when he asked Sarkisian about Khojaly, he said that “a lot was exaggerated” but he did not deny that Armenians had killed Azerbaijani civilians. He told Waal: “Before Khojaly, the Azerbaijanis thought that they were joking with us, they thought that the Armenians were people who could not raise their hand against the civilian population. We needed to put a stop to all that. And that’s what happened.”

The interview contains many other fascinating insights and information, which will be of interest to those who followed this complex conflict, Waal noted.