Foreign

Home page

Foreign

Herman Van Rompuy: â€œBoth Azerbaijan and Armenia need to take decisions to reach a lasting and peaceful settlement based on the Madrid principlesâ€

05 July 2012 14:25 (UTC +04:00)

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy made statement for media following the meeting at presence of delegations.

President Aliyev noted that the relation with the European Union cover economic cooperation, energy security and the other spheres. â€œWe have strong relations with EU member countries, these relations also rely on mutual interestsâ€ â€“ said the president and underlined that all these formed the topic of discussions held in Baku.

Azerbaijani President noted that many measures were taken in our country towards protection of human rights and ensuring the democratic freedoms.

The Head of State touched on Nagorno Karabakh conflict and said that Armenia have been holding 20% of Azerbaijani territories under occupation, more than one million people have been living in refugee and IDP conditions. Despite decisions and resolutions on liberation of occupied Azerbaijani territories adopted by the international organizations, including the UN Security Council, Armenia ignores these.

President Aliyev expressed satisfaction with the statement of presidents of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries concerning the status-quo and spoke about the main energy projects of the region. â€œWe are the first country that put forward an initiative on delivering the Caspian Seaâ€™s hydrocarbon resources to European and world marketsâ€ â€“ said the Azerbaijani president and noted that our country will further participate closely in the ensuring the energy security of the European partners. Speaking about newly-discovered fields, significance of TANAP project, President Aliyev noted that Azerbaijani gas is a new source for Europe and world and this project covers the next decades, maybe the centuries.

President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy expressed satisfaction with his first visit to Azerbaijan. He said he have seen many signs of rapid modernization in our country and congratulated Azerbaijan for the hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest in May. He noted that they had good discussions today and highly assessed Azerbaijan-European Union relations.

â€œWe have seen an intensification of our relations in various fields. Our energy cooperation continues to develop fast as an important positive dimension of our bilateral relationship. The ongoing negotiations on the Southern Corridor and on the Trans Caspian Pipeline are of strategic importance to Azerbaijan and the European Union. In this regard, I welcome that Turkey and Azerbaijan recently formalized the understanding that they reached on the Transanatolian Pipeline. There is, however, still a huge potential to develop and diversify our ties. The activity carried out within Eastern Partnership program is very successful, we are on track in reaching the goals set out in the Roadmap in time for the next Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius 2013.

Herman Van Rompuy noted that Azerbaijan is a secular society and underlined that he highly assessed the attitude here to the religious values and tolerance: â€œThe European Union and the region need a stable, progressive, and tolerant Azerbaijan committed to democratic reforms and modernizationâ€.

Speaking about Nagorno Karabakh conflict, the President of the European Council noted that the progress on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should remain a top priority: â€œBoth Azerbaijan and Armenia need to take decisions to reach a lasting and peaceful settlement based on the Madrid principlesâ€