Baku, Azerbaijan, July 10
Trend:
The relations between the European Union and Azerbaijan are based on good spirit, on spirit of partnership and mutual support, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in a press statement with President of the European Council Donald Tusk.
“Dear Mr President, Dear guests, ladies and gentlemen! First of all, I would like to once again welcome President of the European Council Mr Donald Tusk to Azerbaijan,” Ilham Aliyev said. “It is not the first time Mr President is visiting us, second time in his capacity as a President of the European Council. I many times visited Brussels. So this shows that we have a very active political dialogue and today’s visit of Mr President once again demonstrates that relations between European Commission and Azerbaijan has a very positive dynamics.”
“Today during our tête-à-tête meeting and meeting with delegations we discussed broad range of issues of our bilateral cooperation, regional development, regional security,” he noted. “We discussed ongoing negotiations between European Commission and Azerbaijan on new agreement. We express views on future prospects for negotiations. The negotiations continue successfully. Many issues have been already resolved and we are working now on remaining issues in the spirit of good partnership.”
“Last year the Partnership Priorities document was adopted between the European Commission and Azerbaijan,” Ilham Aliyev said. “This is a very important document. It expresses support to territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of borders of Azerbaijan. Today during our tête-à-tête meeting with Mr President I informed him about our position with respect to resolution of Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The conflict must be resolved based on territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, and relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. For many years our territories are under Armenian occupation, more than million refugees and IDPs suffer from this aggression and occupation and our firm position is that the conflict must be resolved in the framework of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Our efforts are aimed at the soonest resolution of the conflict. Unconstructive position of Armenia is the main reason for conflict not to be resolved yet, and I am sure that the efforts of international community and OSCE Minsk Group must be aimed at soonest resolution of the conflict. The status-quo is not acceptable, and must be changed, and the change of status-quo means beginning of de-occupation of Azerbaijani territories.”
“Today we also discussed the issues related to energy security, the issues related to transportation sector,” the Azerbaijani president noted. “In these areas Azerbaijan and the European Union have a very constructive cooperation.”
“The project of Southern Gas Corridor is being successfully implemented and with respect to transportation sector, the investments in logistics and transportation sector in Azerbaijan allowed us to transform us to an important transportation hub,” he said. “East-West and North-South corridors are crossing our country. Of course, our geographical location is advantageous but without investments in transportation sector this geographical location would not mean a lot. Therefore, our efforts during the last years in this respect already brought good results. Azerbaijan is becoming an important transitor and in the future our role as a transitor will definitely grow.”
“We have good cooperation also in other sectors, and hopefully, all our plans will be implemented,” Ilham Aliyev noted. “Because relations between the European Union and Azerbaijan are based on good spirit, on spirit of partnership and mutual support. I especially would like to express gratitude to President Tusk for his personal contribution to the development of these relations. He is well aware about situation in Azerbaijan. His role in bringing us closer is very important and we from our side also do a lot in order to strengthen cooperation between the European Union and Azerbaijan. Also I would like to mention that with several member states of EU, Azerbaijan already have adopted or signed documents on strategic partnership, and this also is a good contribution to our cooperation. So once again, Mr President, welcome and thank you for being with us today.”