President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev received at the presidential palace Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the organization’s Office on Drugs and Crime Mr. Antonio Maria Costa on December 4.

Sincerely welcoming the guest Head of the Azerbaijan state Ilham Aliyev said:

We had a gathering here in Baku to fight against the drugs and I was informed that it was very successful one and I would like to express my hope that in the future we will continue to cooperate in this regard. I can say that in fact in Azerbaijan we have created the state commission and we have the national program on fight against the illegal trafficking of the drugs and I can say we have made successes during the late years in this field. In fact, we have the decrease of 25% in the criminal acts made by drug addictive people compared with 1995. And it shows the effective work carried out in that area. But, in fact we can consider the fully successful our work only if we have full control of the uncontrolled areas of the drug trafficking and growing of the drug products. As a result of aggression of neighboring Armenia against Azerbaijan, we have the zone occupied by the Armenian armed forces in Azerbaijan and it is 20% percent of our lands and it is totally uncontrolled zone and there is no international monitoring in this area and in fact drug have been growing in this area and it has become the illegal drug trafficking. Azerbaijan has repeatedly expressed its stance in this connection to the international organizations. Particularly, this issue has been raised more than once at the Council of Europe’s meetings and reflected in a number of documents.

As far as I know, this issue was the focus of attention also at the recent Baku forum. I hope you will help us in this regard. I want to note once again that Azerbaijan will continue combating the drug addiction and illegal drug trafficking.

Expressing his gratitude to the President of Azerbaijan, Antonio Maria Costa said:

Mr. President, once again, we are honor and my colleagues to be here, meet with you, I would like, first of all, to congratulate You for the election of President, I think it is an important recognition, you received from your own people and indeed, responsibility before the people.

As far as I know, there are positive changed in Your father’s health situation, he is recovering. I would like You to convey my best wishes and greetings to Your father.

Mr. President, You probably remember that several months ago, we met in Yalta where You were in Prime-Minister capacity. During that meeting, I was mainly focused on Afghanistan. One of the reasons for that was that presidents of Central Asian republics participated in the Yalta summit and

Russian leader Vladimir Putin also showed keen interest in the issues.

Before going on to the main question – exchange of views on haw we should organize our activity in the Caucasus – I would like to express my gratitude to You for the hospitality.

Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Hasanov and Azerbaijan’s Ambassador in Vienna Mr. Sadygov closely cooperated with us in this matter.

We have had meeting with Azerbaijan’s top-ranking officials, and they have shared their views. Your information allows us to organize our work on constructive basis. I must admit that drug situation in Azerbaijan is much better than where I have recently been to. Indeed, the country is experiencing its hard times, especially after the war, it faces the problems related to terrorism and generally, crime.

I want to note with satisfaction that the country has successfully coped with these problems. Azerbaijan joined the anti-terror coalition. Your Parliament Chairman has let me know that all the United Nations’ related documents had already been signed, and important advancement achieved. The country’s showings concerning both combat against drug trafficking and drug addiction and AIDS prevention measures are very satisfactory. On this occasion, I want to congratulate You and Your country.

You have touched upon the occupied territories. I would like to say a few words on the matter. As You know my mandate is not to solve regional conflicts, but the occupied territories arouse anxiety, and we consider it necessary to familiarize closely with the situation here. Issues related to the country’s sovereignty are reflected in the Unite Nations resolutions, and peace talks are in progress. However, to monitor the area, we must take a permission from Armenia as well.

So I would be interest if we can get an agreement not only obviously from Azerbaijan government but also from Armenian government, to see what we can do prevent possible cases of some drugs crime. I just been our experience in many parts of world, in Asia, in Africa, certainly in some Latin American countries, the post-conflict situation, and especially when the institutional set up is not clear, bring a lot of organized crime.

The second aspect I wanted to bring to your attention, Mr. President, I want to congratulate on rather prosperous conditions the country is facing because of recent oil development. The country with no doubt of benefit from the exploration, exploitation of oil and sharing of revenues. But, I have another concern in my mind.

It has been our experience and I believe that Azerbaijan will possibly not to be different, when there are sudden positive, certainly also negative, but when there are even positive social and economic changes, you get consequences which are often anticipated.

So what my office would like to propose to you and to the cabinet, is whether we could initiate some preventive initiatives, preventive endure avoiding problems which we have seen in any countries.

Believe me our experience has been that preventive measures is much cheaper than repressive measures. And is much more efficient.

And I am not only talk about narcotics on Afghanistan obviously, that in generally question of crime, question of social changes, all of these created dislocations, we would be very happy to help the authorities and the government to cooperate.

Ilham Aliyev: Thank you very much for your offer. We agree with your suggestions and I think we can cooperate in the area of preventive actions and fulfill our responsibilities. Once again I would like to thank you for your assessment of the situation in Azerbaijan , and your assessment of your fight against the crime show that the policy we have in Azerbaijan for last ten years give the positive results. Because, the fight against the crime can not produce result in one or two years, it should be the long lasting process and we have this long lasting process and we will continue it. And the success of this fight is the fact that for last ten years we managed to establish stable political, and economic situation in Azerbaijan, on only through these efforts it is possible to gain the victory over the crime.

And at the same time I am very pleased that you are familiar with the situation in the occupied regions of Azerbaijan and once again I would like to reiterate that we decisively raise this issue on different international forums and it is due to unconstructive position of Armenia, we couldn’t managed to make the practical steps.

Of course, Nagorno Garabakh and regions surrounded are the Azerbaijani territories, but these territories are under the control of different countries military forces. Therefore, it is the duty of the international community, and United Nations and other international organizations to put the pressure over Armenia, so that to allow international auditors to come to this area and held their monitoring there. According to the information we are having, they managed to establish terrorist camps in that illegal territory and international terrorists have their practices and trainings there.

It is already not a secret that some 4-5 years before, Russia illegally sold arms to Armenia, there is no such amount of money in the budget of the Armenian Republic to pay for these arms and these money come from the money laundering, and according to the information we are having, this money is coming from the drug trafficking to pay for these arms.

It is such a serious issue that all crimes are interconnected , closely interconnected with each other and of course we will fight against drugs as a government, but we need the support and direct interference of the international organizations to put an end to this problem.

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Present at the meeting were Deputy Prime Minister Ali Hasanov, Chief of the Presidential Administration’s Department on Working with Law enforcement Bodies Fuad Alasgarov, UN resident-coordinator in Azerbaijan Marco Barsotti, Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Austria, permanent representative of Azerbaijan in UN Vienna office Vagif Sadygov.