Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, Oct. 29 / Trend , H.Hasanov/
The Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) is interested in further expanding traditional cooperation with Turkmenistan, ECO Secretary-General Mohammed Yahya Maroufi said at the meeting with President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.
"This collaboration is successfully developing in the interests of all member countries of the ECO," he said. The high-ranking official also noted the achievements of modern Turkmenistan, leading in the global ranking state on the level of socio-economic development.
The parties discussed the prospects of cooperation, expressed "confidence in the fact that in these years the partnership will further continue to develop in a constructive, mutually beneficial basis."
Turkmenistan joined the ECO in 1992. In the spring of 2009, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry sent a diplomatic note to the ECO secretariat "to undertake all necessary procedures involved in processing the associated membership of Turkmenistan in the Organization."
Berdimhamedov expressed such an intention at the Tehran summit of ECO on March 11 in 2009. This decision was reasoned with conceptual terms of foreign policy of Turkmenistan as a state possessing the status of permanent neutrality, recognized and supported in the UN General Assembly resolution, dated Dec. 12 in 1995.
Within the ECO Turkmenistan calls strategic directions diversification of energy and transport infrastructure. Ashgabat has made to the UN a proposal on security of energy transit to international markets and submitted the draft of special resolution to the General Assembly for consideration. The special resolution is sponsored by all member states of ECO, and it was unanimously adopted in December 2008.
Turkmenistan is also involved in creating new corridors North-South, East-West, including the construction of the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran, which opens the shortest route from Europe to the seaports of the Persian Gulf and India.