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Mahmud Mammadguliyev: Establishment of common airspace between the European Union and Azerbaijan is only a proposal and must be discussed by the relevant agencies of Azerbaijan

23 September 2011 09:48 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Viktoria Dementyeva â€“ APA. The European Union has prepared a mandate to start negotiations on visa facilitation with Azerbaijan and handed over to the Council of the European Union. The negotiations will start after the Council of the European Union confirms the mandate, Deputy Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Mahmud Mammadguliyev told journalists, APA reports.

Asked about the plans on the establishment of common airspace between the European Union and Azerbaijan, Mahmud Mammadguliyev said this is only a proposal and must be discussed by the relevant agencies of Azerbaijan.
â€œOnly after that we will express our opinion about it,â€ he said.

Asked about the cooperation between Azerbaijan and the European Union in the development of democracy and EUâ€™s criticism about it, Deputy Foreign Minister said our country is working in this sphere and is ready to cooperate with the EU.
â€œCriticism must be objective and based on facts. It is necessary to cite to the information obtained from several sources while criticizing. It is important to work towards the development of human rights and democracy. We do not exclude the existence of some unsolved issues, we are ready for close cooperation and are cooperating. Azerbaijan-EU subcommittee on democracy was established in this field. The committee held its first meeting, a series of conferences, including the conference on civil society development in Azerbaijan. The subcommittee will hold its second meeting in Brussels in Novemberâ€.

Speaking about the Azerbaijan-EU talks on associative agreement, Mammadguliyev said the process is underway: â€œWe have different positions on some issues, but I think we can solve these issues during the negotiations. It is difficult to say when the talks will finish. This issue depends not only on Azerbaijan, but on the opposite side as wellâ€.

Regarding the Azerbaijanâ€™s WTO membership views, Mammadguliyev said the working group on WTO membership is expected to hold its next meeting in November-December. â€œAzerbaijan submitted the relevant documents to the secretariat. Everything depends on the secretariat and WTO members now. It is difficult to say when the talks will finish. Azerbaijan is interested in WTO membership, but the terms of membership should meet the interests of Azerbaijan tooâ€.

Deputy Foreign Minister noted that Azerbaijan-EU Cooperation Council is one of the main tools of cooperation between our country and EU and this Council holds annual meetings. â€œThe meetingâ€™s program contains the issues of very different spheres of the cooperation. It also covers Nagorno Karabakh conflict, economy and human rights. I positively evaluate our relations, but there are still issues, which need to be discussedâ€™.