The First International Meeting of High Representatives Responsible for Security Matters was held in Sochi on October 5-6. The Secretaries of Security Councils, the assistants of presidents and prime ministers of national security, the heads of security agencies from 43 countries, as well as the Deputy UN Secretary-General Yuri Fedotov were in attendance. While opening the meeting, Patrushev, Russian Secretary of Security Council, delivered the greeting of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sent a welcome message to participants in the forum.
Representatives from Azerbaijan included Ramiz Mehdiyev, the Head of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, the Secretary of the Security Council, Academician, Novruz Mammadov, the Head of the Foreign Relations Department of the Presidential Administration, Fuad Alasgarov, Head of Department on Work with Law Enforcement Bodies and Elnur Aslanov, Head of the Department of Political Analysis and Information.
During the First International Meeting Mehdiyev delivered reports on "Transnational crime, the relationship of its most dangerous types" and "Threats to international security in terms of global information society: the directions of cooperation". In his report on transnational crime, academician Mehdiyev mentioned the threats posed by international organized criminal activity in the context of the occupation of Azerbaijani territory. He stressed that merging of terrorist groups with various criminal organizations, acting within the so-called 'grey zones', creates great potential for crime and is one of the most dangerous tendencies.
This uncontrolled zone was created in Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other adjacent regions of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenian forces. The incoming operational information and procedural proven facts give every reason to believe that this area is used actively to produce, to transit and to trade in narcotic drugs, arms and people, illegal migration, transfer and harbor terrorists, money laundering and other dangerous types of transnational crime.
Being outside the national and international law, this area, as well as other similar areas remain inaccessible for adequate and timely response to these threats. Therefore, we consider issues related to the settlement of Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as part of efforts to ensure national and regional security and to prevent terrorist and other threats.
Stressing the necessity and urgency of coordinated activity in the information society, Mehdiyev noted that Azerbaijan often faces with examples of obvious information provocation, when there is a call to the separatist activity in the worldwide web, the territorial integrity of a country is put for question, state leaders, public and political figures of the country are the object of harassment.
It should be emphasized that such actions are often held by information organizations of neighboring Armenia, a country with which Azerbaijan is in war. Along with the above-mentioned examples of using "information warfare", constant attempts are made to inflict hacker attacks on Azerbaijan's information resources, especially in the tragic days associated with the massacre of Azerbaijani civilians in March 1918, January 1990 and by armed groups of Armenian separatists in Khojali in February 1992.
During the visit Mehdiyev held bilateral meetings with Serdar Kilic, Turkish Secretary General of the National Security Council, Raisa Bohatyryova, Ukrainian Secretary of the Council of National Security and Defense, Leonid Maltsev, Belarusian State Secretary of the Security Council, Christian Catrina, Head of the Office for Security Policy of the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sports of the Swiss Confederation. There was a wide exchange of opinions at the meeting. Furthermore, the situation and security in the region and in the world were analyzed and the issues of mutual interest were discussed.
The Sochi meeting focused on preventing and eliminating consequences of natural and manmade disasters, cooperating in combating transnational crime in its various forms - terrorism, drug trafficking, illegal migration, trafficking in arms and radioactive materials, as well as ensuring international information security in terms of the global information society.
The Sochi meeting was the first important step towards multilateral cooperation in the sphere of international security.
