OFFICIAL NEWS

STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT OF ROMANIA TRAIAN BESESCU

11.10.2006 [17:43]
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First of all, I would like to thank President Ilham Aliyev for inviting me and the delegation to pay an official visit to Azerbaijan. President Aliyev said here that we have discussed a wide range of issues. At the same time, we have considered the issues of regional and European interest. As NATO member and the country, which is going to join the European Union on January 1 next year, Romania will continue to pay a special attention in its foreign policy to the Black Sea region. In the framework of the Black Sea forum, we discussed how to strengthen security measures in the region. At the same time, we want to do the same in the Caspian Region, as we are interested in the transportation of the region’s energy resources. We are neighbors and want to be a part of both European Union and NATO security system. I assured President Aliyev that Romania will continue to share its experience with Azerbaijan and assist Azerbaijan in integrating into the European structures.

We are pretty sure that Azerbaijan is the country, which has made a positive contribution to the security and energy policy in the region. From this point of view, we will continue our cooperation based on the mutual interests. We will continue our cooperation in the issues concerning the frozen conflicts. I want to say that Romania has good relationship with Albania, Ukraine, as well as Azerbaijan and Armenia. Nevertheless, good relationships cannot be considered a ground for forgetting the fundamental principles. For over a century, Romania has always respected and observed in its foreign policy the principles of inviolability of frontiers and territorial integrity of states. Disregard of these principles may lead to negative consequences, if any territorial and ethnic problems emerge. It may work against any country’s security. Therefore, ensuring of inviobility of frontiers and territorial integrity principles is important, and I reiterate it. I believe, we can do respective works based on good relationships with Albania as well as Moldova, Ukraine, Russian Federation. It is impossible to move away from these fundamental principles.

I would like to emphasize that given our interest towards creating the secure region, in particular, developing the Black and Caspian Sea regions as secure regions; I consider Romania can become a transit country for goods and energy carriers. Due to this cooperation, our import dependency can be reduced in the future. Naturally, in our cooperation with the European Union, Azerbaijan can play its role as a reliable provider of energy resources. It can be Azerbaijan’s remarkable contribution to strengthening of Europe’s energy security.

We discussed these issues during our meetings. We have discussed Constantza-Trieste project. At the same time, we discussed the projects concerning crude transportation from the Caspian Sea. There are other very important projects for Romania and EU members. The talks are mainly focused on the crude transportation. I want to clearly state that after becoming EU full member on January 1, 2007, Romania will make its own contribution to providing Europe with energy since 50 percent of energy carriers for Europe are now imported. The volume of import and dependency will increase even more in the following years to reach nearly 70 percent. I think, because of this reason, taking into account not only Romania’s relations with Azerbaijan but also our future European Union membership, we could become an alternative provider of energy carriers for whole Europe by implementing the concrete projects and find alternative ways of resolution. This is why, Azerbaijan can make its own contribution to this issue. It is one of our targets; we saw that we have common positions when we met one-on-one and in the presence of our delegations.

At the same time, we have talked about cooperation within the international organizations your country is affiliated with. Mr. President, I can assure you that you may be confident of our support for integration into the EuroAtlantic structures.