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Deputy Head of Azerbaijani Presidential Administration: We expressed to European Union that we want to fully maintain our independence and sovereignty

15 November 2014 12:35 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Ramiz Mikayiloghlu - APA. President of Aezrbaijan Ilham Aliyev made his most visits to the countries of the European Union, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Director of the Administration's Foreign Relations Department Novruz Mammadov, APA reports.

Mammadov said that the Head of state has visited France, Greece, Italy, Hungary and other countries. “The projects such as TAP, TANAP and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project that will be launched next year are of great importance for the world countries and the European Union as well. President Ilham Aliyev’s participation in international events and his visits to European countries give impetus to development of the cooperation between Azerbaijan and the European Union in this spirit. Azerbaijan takes a special position in relation to the process of cooperation with Europe. The processes took a long time and we expressed our concern about some issues. In general, we have good relations with each EU countries. However, some issues arose regarding the cooperation with the European Union and we expressed our special position on these issues”, he said.

Mammadov stated that the cooperation Azerbaijan and the European Union is normally developing. “However, we conveyed to the European Union that the Association Agreement that it proposed, doesn’t satisfy us and we want to fully maintain our independence and sovereignty. We maintain the independence of our foreign policy course, so that our foreign policy course should serve to protect all the interests of our country and people”, he said.

Mammadov stressed that it is not accidental that Azerbaijan has proposed the European Union to sign a special strategic partnership agreement. “How is it that we can establish a good cooperation with each EU country? We want to establish such cooperation with the European Union. Anyway, Azerbaijan is a special country in every sense, let our cooperation be special and a special strategic partnership agreement be signed. Though the European Union took a somewhat different approach to this proposal, they see that this step is the rightest choice”, he added.