Presidents of Azerbaijan and Belarus made statements for the press

After the document signing ceremony, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko made statements for the press.

Statement by President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko

- Dear friends!

The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Heydar oglu Aliyev, and I have had very productive talks in both narrow and expanded formats. We have said many times that our meetings are of regular nature. Above all, these are meetings in which we exercise control over the execution of the decisions made during our visits – the visit of our delegation to Baku and of the Azerbaijani delegation to Minsk. And huge credit for what we have achieved today belongs to our friend Ilham Aliyev.

These are not just words. When we were in a dire situation, and this is known to all the people of Belarus, we asked a number of states for help. And Azerbaijan through its President was the first country to respond to our request to resolve our problems and difficulties. Ilham Heydar oglu, we all remember and will never forget it.

I once told you that the people of Belarus are very grateful and will return the favor. So you can count on us. If you have to use Belarus in the center of Europe to promote your interests here, address the world together somewhere, or, as we are doing today, set up joint economic facilities, trade and economic relations, Belarus will always be there with Azerbaijan, you can always rely on Belarus.

I am saying this because I have decided to award the President of Azerbaijan with the “People’s Friendship” Order. We present this order to a limited number of politicians who have made significant contributions to the development of the Belarusian state and expansion of our relations. This historic award is a tribute to you, Ilham Heydar oglu, and all the people of Azerbaijan.

I am sure that by developing our strategic partnership, we can promote our relations to a higher level. We have agreed on many issues today. Sometimes new projects and contracts for our cooperation crop up. And we are determined, if it depends on us, not only to implement joint production projects in Azerbaijan, in the areas of science and technology. If you are interested, we are ready to train your personnel in the areas of our expertise. In turn, we hope that you can help us develop the areas that are not available in Belarus, train our specialists.

Heydar Aliyev and I once laid the foundation for our cooperation. But I could not even imagine then that we can move so much forward in building a common home of relations between Azerbaijan and Belarus. Everything we have done in recent years together with you was achieved because you of your attitude towards certain areas of our cooperation. In 10 years we have done more than any other country. And I want to stress again that our experts, delegations of Belarus and Azerbaijan are now obsessed with the ideas of cooperation in the good sense. The emergence of new projects and initiatives suggests that we can double or even triple the volume of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Belarus. I have already mentioned this and will not list these new directions – from food to pharmaceuticals, from construction to modernizing production, military and technical cooperation. In short, there is a wide spectrum. There are no forbidden topics here.

Today we talked about investments in the Belarusian economy. If Azerbaijan does have such an interest, you will receive priority opportunities in Belarus. Because we know each other, because Azerbaijan has never let us downs, because you know how tenderly and carefully we treat investment from outside, especially in the privatization of Belarusian enterprises. We also talked about the fact that young people are our future, we are ready to expand our cooperation in education. We have made great progress in that. In short, we have no problems, there are major ambitions which we are committed to resolving together with the President of Azerbaijan.

I am grateful to you for the invitation to visit your beautiful land again. We will definitely come to Baku with a delegation.

We will be able to monitor the implementation of the agreements reached here in Belarus.

Thank you for visiting us with such a large delegation. This is worth a lot, this promotes our cooperation.

Statement by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev

- Thank you, dear Alexander Grigoryevich, for your kind words about our country. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to visit your beautiful country again and determine the further development of our relations together with you.

Our relations have been tested by time and real cooperation. I am very pleased that you have found it possible to award me with a high state order of the Republic of Belarus – the “People’s Friendship” Order. Believe me, I will continue to do everything in my power to further bring together our two countries and peoples.

The level of cooperation between our two countries is the result of our collective work. As you correctly pointed out, the basis of relations between our countries was established by you and my father Heydar Aliyev. But in recent years this relationship has transformed, as you quite rightly characterize it, into a relationship between strategic partners. We cooperate on a broad range of issues, address specific issues of cooperation, support each other actively in international organizations. I want to express my gratitude again for your support of Azerbaijan in the UN Security Council vote last fall. We appreciate the support of Belarus in this matter. We always cooperate and strive to support each other in other international organizations too. This, in general, is a real friendship – the fact that we always strive to support each other where we can, provide sincere, friendly and unselfish support. That's the essence of a strategic partnership.

And when coming to your beautiful country today, I expected in advance that this visit of mine would also be successful.

And for a good reason. The issues we have resolved have helped us a lot to develop our production in Azerbaijan. I will never forget this. It was probably the first such experience of real cooperation when it took several months from reaching an agreement on the establishment of a joint production to the implementation of the project in Azerbaijan. Thanks to your will and your instructions, a production facility that is now expanding and developing was established in a short time. On the basis of this complex we are going to start new production, which was also part of our discussions today.

Successful collaboration in one area generates new ideas. Today members of our delegations are full of enthusiasm and optimism to promote new ideas. New initiatives were made even during our expanded meeting. I am sure that by the time of your next visit to our country they will also be implemented. Our relationship is characterized by honesty, mutual respect and support. And, again, I must repeat that when we see specific results of our collaboration, this further inspires us and we try to find more new areas of our relations. Our economies do not compete with each other, on the contrary, they complement each other.

Humanitarian cooperation further brings our nations together. The people of Azerbaijan have a great sympathy for the people of Belarus, great interest in your traditions and culture. And we have long discovered Belarus. We think that we know your country.

If you look at the range of goods and our turnover under the projects we are carrying out, they cover all areas – political, economic, energy, transport, industrial directions of our cooperation are being fully realized. And you, dear Alexander Grigoryevich, deserve credit for that.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and all the people of Belarus continued success and further victories. We will always be there with you, we will always enjoy your successes and work together to promote what we have begun.

Thank you again for your hospitality and warm welcome.