BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug.25
Trend:
The foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Russia will discuss settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Trend reports on August 25 referring to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
According to the ministry, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jeyhun Bayramov, will pay an official visit to Russia on August 26 at the invitation of Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov.
"The heads of the foreign ministries will discuss the status and prospects of bilateral cooperation, key aspects of the regional and international agenda, including settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” the ministry said.
As the ministry noted, Bayramov is also scheduled to meet with Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Alexey Overchuk and Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council of Russia’s Federal Assembly Ilyas Umakhanov.
The ministry also pointed out that Russia and Azerbaijan are linked by the strategic partnership, built based on good-neighborliness, equality, and mutual respect's interests.
"The fundamental bilateral document is the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Security between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Azerbaijan dated July 3, 1997. The provisions of the Treaty were further developed in the Declaration of Friendship and Strategic Partnership between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Azerbaijan dated July 3, 2008,” the ministry also said.
“Currently, more than 150 international legal documents have been signed between the two countries. Furthermore, trade and economic cooperation continue to successfully develop. By the end of 2019, Russian-Azerbaijani trade turnover amounted to $3.169 billion. Russian exports to Azerbaijan amounted to $2.312 billion whereas imports were equal to $857 million.”
According to the ministry, active work is underway to implement the decisions of the 18th session of the bilateral intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation, which was held on December 9, 2019, in Baku.
“Our cooperation in the humanitarian sphere remains a consistent priority, with an accent on strengthening the common linguistic, educational, and cultural spaces,” the ministry stated.
“An important component of Russian-Azerbaijani interaction is interregional cooperation. At present, about 600 enterprises and organizations operating in most of the regions of the Russian Federation are involved in foreign trade activities with the Republic of Azerbaijan where 18 of them have cooperation agreements with Azerbaijan. We intend to continue the positive practice of holding Russian-Azerbaijani interregional forums,” the ministry pointed out.
“For more than two decades Russia has been a key mediator in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's settlement, including as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group. Given the geographic proximity and common history of our peoples, resolving this conflict is of paramount importance to us. Assistance to the conflicting parties is one of Russia's foreign policy priorities,” added the ministry.
“We consider the upcoming visit in the context of the continuation of the Russian-Azerbaijani political dialogue, the further expansion of mutually beneficial cooperation," the ministry concluded.