Azerbaijan, Baku, Dec. 20 / Trend Aliyev /
The Organisation for Democracy and Economic Development - GUAM is an open organisation and may consider appropriate applications for membership by other states, Secretary General Valery Chechelashvili said on Thursday at a press conference on the results of the fifth GUAM session in Baku.
According to him, GUAM is an open organisation and if the application for membership is being submitted by a country sharing the principles stated in the statutes of the organisation, this request will be taken into consideration by foreign ministers of four GUAM member states.
However, he also stated that expansion of GUAM is not an end in itself.
"Our aim is the development of quadrilateral cooperation and formation of a civilised partnership in the Black Sea-Caspian region based on European principles, standards and practices of cooperation, for one simple reason that one of the main common foreign policy priorities of our countries is the approximation to the European Union," Chechelashvili said.
GUAM was established by the post-Soviet countries in 1997 during the EU presidential summit in Strasbourg. In 1999, Uzbekistan joined the organisation, and left four years later. A decision was made to rename GUAM as an international organisation entitled 'Organisation for Democracy and Economic Development - GUAM', at the body's first summit in Kiev in 2006.