Baku, Azerbaijan, July 24
By Seba Aghayeva – Trend:
The Organization for Democracy and Economic Development (GUAM) will hold a special meeting in autumn to mull specific areas of development of energy cooperation.
The GUAM member countries have been proposed to prepare concrete proposals on various areas of cooperation in this field. The GUAM Working Group has also been instructed to intensify consultations on a wide range of issues of energy cooperation and energy security as part of the Working Group on Energy, to promote the development of projects aimed at enhancing the energy security of GUAM countries and the use of alternative energy sources, to support the further development of cooperation within GUAM-Japan format and with the countries of the Visegrad Group (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia) in the field of energy.
Azerbaijan is the country which coordinates the working group on energy cooperation.
The GUAM format was created by post-Soviet states in 1997 during the summit of heads of the EU states in Strasbourg. In 1999, Uzbekistan joined the format and four years later withdrew.
In 2006, Ukraine and Azerbaijan announced plans to further increase the GUAM member relations and established its headquarters in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.
Currently, GUAM cooperates with Washington and Tokyo within GUAM+US and GUAM+Japan formats.