Speaker of Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova meets with Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili

Baku, April 20, AZERTAC Speaker of the Azerbaijani Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova has met with President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili as part of her official visit to the country. President Salome Zourabichvili said she was glad to welcome Speaker Sahiba Gafarova, noting the importance of such visits in terms of the mutual exchange of experience. The Georgian President underlined the role of the parliaments in the progress of the bilateral cooperation and expressed her gratitude for the promotion of the close bilateral inter-parliamentary ties. President Salome Zourabichvili hailed the fact that the two countries support each other in the international arena. Speaker of Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova noted that Azerbaijan and Georgia as neighbours and friendly countries, had the history of relations that dates back over many centuries. “These relations had been propelled to intensive progress when both states had regained their independence and we will mark the 30th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Georgia this year,” Gafarova said. “These kindly relations stemming from the foundation laid by national leader Heydar Aliyev are successfully being continued by President Ilham Aliyev today. The two countries have signed documents encompassing various areas over the past years and those documents provide the powerful legal platform for our collaboration in all those areas,” Gafarova pointed out. Sahiba Gafarova highlighted the work done by the intergovernmental commission on bilateral economic cooperation. She mentioned that Georgia is an active player in the large-scale international projects that Azerbaijan had undertaken. Touching upon the relations between the Azerbaijani and Georgian legislative bodies, Speaker Sahiba Gafarova emphasized the role the legislatures played in the development of the Azerbaijani-Georgian ties. “Our parliaments cooperate both bilaterally and multilaterally. Both have the friendship groups, too. Our delegations cooperate fruitfully in the international parliamentary entities,” the Speaker noted. Speaker Sahiba Gafarova also highlighted Azerbaijan’s outstanding victory in the 44-day Patriotic War. “Azerbaijan had liberated its lands that Armenia had held under the occupation for almost thirty years, and restored its territorial integrity. Armenia had plundered our tangible heritage and destroyed our towns and villages in those provinces entirely in the period of occupation. The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict has been consigned to history already whereas Azerbaijan is now busy demining and repairing the liberated territories so that the internally displaced people could move back to their native lands. Azerbaijan has put proposals to Armenia about signing a peace treaty that would ensure sovereignty and territorial integrity recognition, launch of the border delimitation and demarcation process, lead to restoration of all the regional communications and result in normalization of the relations. We hope that the signing of a peace treaty between the two states soon will be a significant contribution to the whole region’s development and prosperity,” Gafarova added. During the meeting, the sides also exchanged views on other issues of mutual interest.