Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 25
By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:
Azerbaijan and Turkey remain committed to the "one nation- two states" principle, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said at a press-briefing following the talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Baku Feb. 25.
"The cooperation between the two countries is based on this principle," he said.
"We discussed various issues related to our cooperation," he said. "I informed my counterpart about the negotiation process on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement."
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the U.S. are currently holding peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
"The issue of holding other meetings of the foreign ministers in the Azerbaijan-Iran-Turkey and Azerbaijan- Turkey-Georgia formats was also discussed at the meeting," Mammadyarov said.
He said that the ministers of the three countries will meet in Georgia in the end of this month to review the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project implementation.
Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is being constructed on the basis of the Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) finances the project in accordance with the Azerbaijani president's decree 'On the implementation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project activities' dated February 21, 2007.
Cavusoglu said that Turkey and Azerbaijan have become the centers of implementing the joint projects.
"It is gratifying to see our relations developing day by day," he said. "The decisions being taken at the level of the presidents of two countries are implemented. We have a lot of joint projects, including the TANAP project. Turkey attaches great importance to this project implementation. Moreover, we continue working on the implementation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project."
The TANAP project envisages the transportation of gas of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field from the Georgian-Turkish border to the western borders of Turkey.
Cavusoglu also said that the format of the ministerial meetings of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Kazakhstan is being worked out.
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