BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 10. The restoration of the Zangezur corridor will lead to the full operation of the East-West transport corridor, Prime Minister of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ali Asadov told local media, Trend reports.
He cited a statement by National Leader Heydar Aliyev that no nation, no matter how large, can grow economically by limiting itself to its own borders.
"Being a world-scale political leader, such large-scale economic projects as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline, which are the logical continuation of the "Contract of the Century," were implemented on Heydar Aliyev's initiative.
These projects have served as a foundation for political and economic stability in Azerbaijan and Georgia, as well as opening an additional window for the transportation of Kazakh oil to the global market.
These projects were a continuation of such gas pipelines as TANAP and TAP. Imagine that if it were not for these projects, for which Heydar Aliyev laid the foundation with great difficulty, even being assassinated and threatened several times without any external financial support, and which President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev completed and continued, the situation with the energy security of Europe would be much worse than it has been in the last three years.
We can say the same about the road and railroad corridors. The organization of an international conference in Baku in 1998 on the subject of the East-West transport corridor is another vivid embodiment of how farsighted a leader Heydar Aliyev was. It was at this conference that representatives of 32 countries and 13 international organizations signed the 'Basic Multilateral Agreement on International Transport for Development of the Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia'," Ali Asadov said.
He mentioned that immediately after the international conference, Heydar Aliyev, holding a meeting dedicated to its results, stated with great foresight about increasing the importance of the transport corridor in Eurasia in the XXI century and gave instructions on preparations for it.
"The currently growing global need for the Middle Corridor project connecting East and West is evidence that Heydar Aliyev was 25 years ahead of his time.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad, built on the initiative of President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev with active political and financial support of the Azerbaijani state, is a continuation of Heydar Aliyev's far-sighted strategic plans. These projects now play an important role in global transportation and economic security.
Incidentally, the restoration of the Zangezur corridor will also contribute to the East-West transport corridor working at full capacity, which, in turn, will increase the profitability of international trade," he added.
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