Budapest, January 30, AZERTAC

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has held an expanded meeting with Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban in Budapest.

Addressing the meeting, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said:

- Mr. President, we are very grateful to you for visiting our country. We have discussed all issues of strategic importance for cooperation between our two countries. We are grateful for your sustainable contribution to the strengthening of relations and traditional cooperation between our peoples over the past decade. We do appreciate that. Our countries did not start this important friendship now. We started it a long time ago. You are our friend not only because of energy. I imagine you have new friends now because the strategic importance of your country in the world is growing. However, our cooperation began a long time ago and is based not only on interests, but also on cooperation in the field of culture and traditions.

Mr. President, you have always supported Hungary joining the Organization of Turkic States. We do appreciate that. Hungary as a Turkic-speaking country is a country participating in that platform, and this is important for us not only from a cultural but also from a political point of view. In short, Mr. President, you are welcome to our country, to Budapest. We are very grateful to you for visiting us. We value our deep cooperation established in the past and look forward to it continuing in the future.

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President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said:

- Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister. I’m very glad to see you. Thank you for your cooperation. We really are two friends and partners. We already formalized our relations as the relations of strategic partnership. And today we will sign another document, which will once again confirm strategic character of our cooperation. As Mr. Prime Minister said, our relations already have a good history - history of mutual support, mutual trust, partnership and friendship. And this is really a big asset. Therefore, now when we explore new areas of cooperation, we already have, how to say, a very solid foundation for our partnership. And Mr. Prime Minister mentioned that energy becomes part of our cooperation, but it has never been the case before. Therefore, our cooperation does not have this energy background. It just happened that now energy resources of Azerbaijan are more needed in Europe than before. And we are ready to increase our supplies and, of course, we want to start cooperation with friendly countries. And today we will sign corresponding MoU, which will open the door for long-lasting cooperation in the energy area. But, of course, not only, because we cooperated in the area of education, culture. We hope to see Hungarian companies participating in reconstruction of Karabakh area. We discussed today with Mr. Prime Minister this and other issues. And also I would like to use this opportunity to invite Mr. Prime Minister to visit Azerbaijan whenever it is convenient for you and to continue our active dialogue. So, once again, thank you for hospitality.

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The sides discussed issues of cooperation in the fields of energy, education and transport, as well as within international organizations. They stressed the importance of the intergovernmental commission in terms of developing cooperation. Instructions were given to the relevant government authorities in order to further develop the bilateral relations.