Former U.S. ambassador: Eurovision to allow Europeans to get rid of misconceptions about Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan, Baku, May 26 / Trend E. Kosolapova / Carrying out Eurovision will allow Azerbaijan to become closer and more understandable for ordinary European citizens who currently have a misconception about this country, former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, Matthew Bryza believes, Bloomberg View reported. The thousands of Europeans are likely to suffer from one of two common caricatures of the host country. According to Bryza, to date, the thousands of Europeans are aware of Azerbaijan only from Western media reports. However, as a man who worked a year as U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, he perfectly knows that these media often say wrong about this country. In particular, Azerbaijan's record on economic reform has been significantly better than is portrayed in the Western media, Bryza said. "Economic reformers have followed prudent fiscal and monetary policies, and established a well-managed sovereign wealth fund modeled on Norway's...)," the former U.S. ambassador said. Moreover, according to Bryza, the government reformers invested much of the country's energy revenue in an anti-poverty program that helped reduce the poverty rate from 49 percent to 9.1 percent from 2003 to 2009 (16 percent, according to the World Bank). Do you have any feedback? Contact our journalist at agency@trend.az