Tokyo, 16 June, /AJMEDIA/
Baku and Islamabad have full mutual understanding on how to move forward, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said, while making a joint press statement with Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif, AJMEDIA reports.
Statement by President Ilham Aliyev
Statement by President Ilham Aliyev
– Dear Mr. Prime Minister, my dear brother.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Azerbaijan.
I`m very glad to host my dear brother, Prime Minister of Pakistan, in our country. We have relations, which are relations between the brothers. Our contacts with the Prime Minister – they have a regular character. We met last year twice on the sidelines of the international events. I`m grateful to the Prime Minister that he accepted my invitation to pay an official visit to our country.
Relations between our countries are relations, which are based on mutual history, culture, traditions, religion, solidarity and mutual support. We are very grateful to Pakistan for support to Azerbaijan during the times of occupation and during the 44 days of Patriotic War of 2020.
Pakistan is the country, which did not establish diplomatic relations with Armenia because of occupation. And this is a real position of brothers. We are very grateful for that.
Today, I informed Mr. Prime Minister about ongoing negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia on a peace agreement and the prospects to sign this agreement I think are here. Armenia just needs to demonstrate a political will and to put on paper what they have already officially announced that Karabakh is Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan always supports and will continue to support Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir. We demonstrate this support and solidarity in all international organizations. Of course, mutual support unites our countries and our peoples even more.
People of Azerbaijan know very well, who was with us during the times of 44 days war – it was Türkiye and Pakistan, which expressed a strong political support to us.
Today, we discussed a broad range of issues of our bilateral agenda as well as regional development and regional security issues. We have full mutual understanding on how to move forward. We agreed that soon several delegations from Azerbaijan will visit Pakistan. One on trade and investment mission, another on issues related to energy cooperation, and the third will address the issues of cooperation in the defense industry.
We also agreed that we will work hard to enhance our mutual trade. The step towards that will be the signing of a MoU to start working on that and to work on the list of items, which will be included into the list of preferential trade between our countries.
Great opportunities in the area of energy whether its fossil fuel projects or projects related to renewable sources of energy. We also agreed today that we will increase the number of flights between our cities, including flight between the capitals. So, that was a very good result of today’s meeting.
We see big potential in the area of education. Now we have 750 students from Pakistan studying in our universities, and just to illustrate how rapidly this process goes, I just want to say that last year there were only 100. And we hope to host more our young brothers from Pakistan. And Azerbaijanis also studied in Pakistan – they today in different areas already contribute to our development.
We also discussed cooperation in the area of defense and defense industry. As I already said we agreed to increase the number of joint military exercises we had in the past. There is a need for that. Because the situation in the world is changing, instability areas are growing. Therefore, strong military capacity is a guarantee for independence and territorial integrity.
For almost 30 years Azerbaijan was involved in the negotiations with Armenia, which did not produce any result. Only our military might and the spirit of Azerbaijani soldiers restored our territorial integrity. So, we restored it not because of negotiations or not because of some mediators. On the contrary, negotiations and mediation efforts only left to freezing the situation. But we did not agree with that. We restored our territorial integrity and liberated our lands on the battlefield sacrificing the lives of 3,000 our sons.
So, we know how international law works selectively. How resolutions of the United Nations Security Council are not being implemented. We both know that. And the guarantee for your independence, territorial integrity, security and wellbeing of your people is your economic, political and military capability. So, on all these issues we have full mutual understanding. Pakistan and Azerbaijan are countries, which always stand shoulder to shoulder. And also an important factor is that our peoples – they share the same views as the leaders. You can see in many parts of Baku Pakistani flags. They have been installed here during the times of the Second Karabakh War. And they are still here, despite the fact that the war ended two and a half years ago. So, this is the really attitude of the people, and we see the same from our brothers from Pakistan.
Mr. Prime Minister, once again, I’d like to express gratitude for visiting us. I always enjoy meeting with you and discussing our bilateral agenda. I also want to congratulate the people of Pakistan with such a great leader as Prime Minister Sharif – the person with a great vision, experience, knowledge and commitment to the development of the country, strengthening its independence. And under your leadership, I’m sure the brotherly people of Pakistan will achieve even more heights, even more successes and more achievements.
I wish you and your people prosperity, happiness and peace. Thank you.
