Baku, December 10 (AZERTAC). Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has today addressed the 40th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation titled "Dialogue of civilizations: factor of peace and sustainable development" in Conakry, Guinea.

The Azerbaijani top diplomat noted: “Being closely linked through historical, religious and cultural roots with Islamic Ummah, the Republic of Azerbaijan has always paid particular importance to the development of relations in the political, economic, cultural and other fields with Islamic countries.

Due to its geographical location - at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Azerbaijan has been a bridge between civilizations for centuries. Azerbaijan always promoted Islamic cultural and spiritual values all over the world. The organization and hosting of international events aimed to promote the inter-civilization contacts such as the World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue, International Humanitarian Forum as well as the 8th session of UNESCO intergovernmental committee for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage are among the vivid examples of this mission.

Azerbaijan has always called for toughened combat against defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred. Today, it is very important to consolidate our efforts within the OIC to prevent existing trends of Islamophobia. The Islamophobia-affected approach towards Muslims is not just unacceptable, it also makes necessary to reinforce dialogue and solidarity among the Muslim countries to counter Islamophobia.

Azerbaijan reiterates its sincere gratitude to the Islamic Ummah, to each OIC member state and OIC Secretariat for their long standing position in condemnation of the Armenian occupation of 20% of my country’s territories with notorious ethnic cleansing on the seized lands. We are particularly grateful to OIC Member States for their call for immediate, unconditional and complete withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from all our occupied territories, as it is demanded by the relevant resolutions and decisions of the UN Security Council, the OIC and other international organizations.

Strengthening cooperation with OIC Member States in political, economic, cultural and other areas is one of the main priorities in the Foreign Policy of the Government of Azerbaijan. Promoting OIC objectives and Islamic values, Azerbaijan is engaged in all the activities and programs being implemented by the OIC. Among them, (1) International Conference on “Strengthening International Cooperation in Preventing Terrorism”, jointly organized by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and ISESCO on 18-19 March 2013 in Baku under the patronage of His Excellency Mr. Ilham Aliyev, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan; (2) OIC Labor Ministers Conference was held in Baku on 25-26 April 2013 where have been decided to establish OIC Labour Center in Baku; (3) the 4th Islamic Conference of Ministers in charge of Childhood of ISESCO member-nations themed “The Children of the Islamic World and Problems of Urbanization” organized in Baku on November 11-12, 2013. We will be very delighted to host the 5th Session of the Ministerial Conference on Women’s Role in the Development of OIC Member States in the year of 2014 in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan is also committed to continue its humanitarian assistance to OIC Member States in need and Azerbaijan International Development Agency together with the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) arranged humanitarian aid to nine OIC Member States from Africa as part of the "Fight against avoidable blindness" campaign.

Azerbaijan is very pleased to observe that the cooperation between OIC and UN has become much more significant in recent years and has taken the form of close consultations and collaboration in different areas. Due to the fact that many political conflicts arouse within the OIC region, our Organisation has to be more proactive in dealing with maintaining peace and security issues. Therefore, we consider UN-OIC cooperation as a strategic one, including most and utmost synergy between OIC and UN Security Council.

Another regional organization the Cooperation Council of the Turkic Speaking States, to which the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and the Republic of Turkey are members, concurrently members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as well, applied to the OIC for obtaining Observer Status. As the Chairman-in-Office of the Cooperation Council of the Turkic Speaking States, Azerbaijan believes that participation of our organization as a regional cooperation mechanism in the work of the OIC, by obtaining Observer Status, will contribute to the achievement of goals shared by both of these organizations.”