President: "War would have stopped earlier if Armenians had taken heed of my words in first days of war”

"It was after we liberated Shusha on November 8 that the Armenian leadership had finally realized that it would be costly for them to continue the war. However, if they had taken heed of my words in the first days of the war and told us the date and a timetable for their withdrawal from the occupied territories, then the war could have ended earlier," President Ilham Aliyev told the 5th Congress of World Azerbaijanis in Shusha, Report informs.

"During the war, I repeatedly said in my address to the Azerbaijani people that the Armenian leadership should give us a date when it would leave our lands, and we were ready to stop the war. It happened so, but they were obliged to do so. The Armenian army and the Armenian state, completely destroyed within 44 days, were actually on the verge of the abyss. It was forced to sign an act of capitulation on November 10," the president said.