Foreign

Home page

Foreign

Mahmoud Mammad-Guliyev: â€œBSECâ€™s activity must be reviewed in details, current weak points must be identified and detailed proposals arising from it must be preparedâ€

19 December 2011 16:08 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) held its 25th meeting in Moscow on December 16. The representatives of the BSEC Member States, as well as Related Bodies, BSEC Observers, Sectoral Dialogue Partners and other guests participated in the meeting and delivered statement. In the working session of the meeting, the Ministers exchanged views on issues of common concern to the region. They highlighted the need to continue ongoing efforts to further increase the efficiency, effectiveness, visibility, institutional capacity and human resources of BSEC, its Permanent International Secretariat and Related Bodies. It was emphasized that the Organization should identify and implement more projects which can contribute in a concrete way to sustainable development at the national and regional levels.

Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmoud Mammad-Guliyev said in his statement that BSEC covered one the worldâ€™s most dynamically developing regions, which have a large potential and Azerbaijan was interested in the extension of economic relations with other member countries within the BSEC framework. To achieve this goal, BSEC countries need to review the organizationâ€™s constitutive documents and to carry out reforms in the organization, to review BSECâ€™s activity in details, to identify current weak points and to prepare detailed proposals arising from it, as well as to plan further measures to increase the effectiveness of the organization. Azerbaijan considers that the organization must be more active in the regional initiatives, strengthen cooperation with the European Union and extend business relations between the member countries.

Analyzing the activity of the organization in the past six months and generally the current situation, Azerbaijani deputy foreign minister enumerated the problems and shortcomings against the background of certain progress and made concrete proposals to increase effectiveness and to improve the quality of the BSECâ€™s work. He focused attention on the fields that could be priorities for the development of economic cooperation between the BSEC member countries. Giving the fields of information and communication technologies and transport as an example, he enumerated the achievements of Azerbaijan in these fields and informed about the current and future grandiose regional projects.

He emphasized the current conflicts as the main obstacle for establishing comprehensive economic cooperation in BSEC region and said only after the full settlement of these conflicts, the economic cooperation between the member-countries would be in satisfactory level.

The Council of Foreign Ministers adopted final decisions, resolutions and recommendations on the main directions of the BSECâ€™s activity. Azerbaijani representative was elected as the Executive Manager of the BSEC Permanent International Secretariat.

At the conclusion of the meeting, a ceremony took place whereby the Russian Federation handed over the Chairmanship-in-Office of BSEC to the Republic of Serbia. Serbia will officially assume the Chairmanship as of 1 January 2012, for a period of six months until 30 June 2012.