Baku, August 8, AZERTAC

Following their one-on-one meeting, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow have held a meeting in an expanded format.

The presidents made speeches at the meeting.

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said:

Dear Gurbanguly Malikguluyevich,

Dear guests,

Once more I sincerely greet you in Azerbaijan. Welcome to Azerbaijan. We attach very great importance to your visit. I am sure that the visit will play a significant role in the development of Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan relations. We are friends, neighbors, for centuries our people co-existed in an environment of friendship and good neighborliness, and today as two independent states we have raised our cooperation to a new level.

We maintain successful cooperation in all areas, we have very good results in political, economic, transport, and energy fields. The issues that we discussed today during our one-on-one meeting once again show that we have the same approach. We want Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan to maintain their relations at the high level as always and develop them even further. We want permanent stability and peace to be established in the region. We want our peoples to live well, to live in prosperity. Of course, the development of our bilateral relations is in the best interests of our peoples. Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan show exemplary relations both at the international level, in the region and in the bilateral format. Your visit is yet another evidence of this.

Once again I sincerely greet you in Azerbaijan, and say “Welcome”. I want to express my confidence that the visit will be very successful and that our relations will reach a higher level.

President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow said:

Dear Ilham Heydarovich, thank you.

First of all, I want to express my deep gratitude to you for inviting me to pay an official visit to Azerbaijan. On my own behalf and on behalf of our delegation, I express my deep gratitude to you. I also express my special gratitude for sincere reception. As you noted, we are neighboring countries. Once again I thank you for the hospitality shown to me. Very good conditions have been created here for effective collaboration.

First of all, I would like to note that the main aim of the official visit is to strengthen brotherly relations between our countries and peoples. Today there are great opportunities for developing our relations and cooperation in economic, trade and humanitarian areas. As regards the political dimension, I would like to emphasize that our countries support the preservation of international and regional security. We want our countries to maintain steady development. This is a factor that positively affects the political processes in the Central Asia and Caspian Sea region.

Under current circumstances, our countries should strengthen cooperation within influential international organizations - the UN, OSCE, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, CIS, Economic Cooperation Organization - and other organizations.

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During the meeting the sides discussed the development, expansion and strengthening of the relations of cooperation between the two friendly, brotherly and neighboring countries. The sides stressed great potential for developing cooperation in political, economic, energy, transport, culture, education and other areas, and underlined the importance of the documents to be signed during the visit.