Azerbaijan, Baku, July 12 /Trend, H.Veliyev/
The participants of the East-West information superhighway project are discussing establishing a permanent secretariat headquartered in Baku, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan said on Tuesday.
According to the Ministry, the matter is discussed at the meeting with leading telecom operators of Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and China in the Azerbaijani city of Gabala.
One of the main aspects of this meeting is to discuss the future strategy of the project, prepare a memorandum of understanding on further joint work of the participating countries.
Memorandum is a quite complex document, which should reflect strategy and guidelines for implementing the project, proportion of participants, transit policy and transit tariffs of countries and etc, Head of the Working Group on the East-West Project Ilyas Naibov-Aylisli told Trend earlier.
"Today, the main issue is to reach a principle agreement of the countries - participants, all of these questions will be the main topics of discussion at the upcoming meeting," he said.
He said the talks are underway to attract Georgia and Ukraine to the project. The issue is discussed at the intergovernmental level since 2010 with the latter.
An Azerbaijani delegation will soon visit Ukraine to discuss the details of this project.
A resolution submitted by Azerbaijan to create an information superhighway was adopted by the U.N. during its sixty-sixth plenary meeting.
The organization expressed support for the project, which aims to reduce poverty and increase economic growth. The project will serve as an engine for regional development.
East-West is intended to connect a total of 20 countries. The project will eliminate the information gap existing between countries in Western European and the Pacific basin.