Official website of the President of Russia

Transcripts   /

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev: Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

Dear visitors, dear friends!

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, your visit to Azerbaijan is coming to an end.

During the visit we had time to discuss a very wide range of issues concerning bilateral regional cooperation. And our opinions concur on many issues linked to the development of relations between Russia and Azerbaijan today and concerning regional and international politics.

Yesterday the Year of Russia in Azerbaijan had a successful beginning. We believe that our countries and peoples will grow even closer during the course of this year. We are also going to cooperate actively on the political level, increase our volume of trade, and further cooperate in developing our cultural and educational spheres. In other words, we expect that the positive tendencies that have developed over the past five or six years shall continue and become stronger in all fields in which we cooperate.

Today I consider that relations between Russia and Azerbaijan can serve as an example of neighbourly relations. Our relations, relations between good neighbours, are friendly and sincere. And this allows us to actively develop our economic relations, cooperate in all spheres, and also establish good preconditions for major investment projects and economic relations between our countries.

Today the Russia-Azerbaijan business forum in which a large number of Russian entrepreneurs are participating began. I hope that this forum will very soon result in concrete projects and concrete decisions. And in this way doubling the volume of trade, something we managed to do over these past two years, will probably be only a stage in the development of long-term active economic cooperation between our countries. The potential exists. Our countries economies are developing actively. Russia is Azerbaijan's most important trading partner. And of course we are counting on further cooperation.

During our meetings and talks with the President of Russia of course we discussed a wide range of regional issues, questions of regional security, stability in the Caucasus and in the region as a whole. We discussed in great detail the issue of settling the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and possible resolutions to this problem.

And we expect that Russia, our neighbour, a great country and one of the leaders of the OSCE's Minsk Group, will continue to play an active role in finding a just settlement for this conflict, based on the norms and principles of international law.

We are counting on the fact that in the future we shall progress even further in all directions in which our states cooperate and that we shall intensify our efforts even more. We have all the preconditions necessary for this – the political will of state leaders, activities by members of the government. Our intergovernmental commission is working very effectively and we must give it due praise; it played a very important role in allowing us to double the volume of trade over the last two years.

And of course we expect that during the Year of Russia in Azerbaijan a great many visitors from Russia will come and visit. We are always happy to have guests, especially ones from Russia, one of our friends. Probably a great deal of acors, singers, people of arts will come, there will be many meetings between old friends and, of course, all of us will draw us even closer together. We very much hope and expect that this will be the case. And I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank the President of Russia for visiting our country, for coming for the opening of the Year of Russia in Azerbaijan, and to thank all the leaders of the Russian regions who are our guests here, and all our Russian visitors.

Welcome. Thank you for your attention.

President Vladimir Putin: For my part I would above all like to thank the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan for the invitation and for the very friendly atmosphere that our talks have taken place in. As always, our talks were very open and productive. The Russian delegation notes that the relations between Russia and Azerbaijan have reached a very high level today and are showing very positive development. This is true of our political cooperation, our economic relations and our cultural ties. Regarding our cultural ties, many of you were present yesterday for the opening of the Year of Russia in Azerbaijan. I am sure that this will provide a further impulse to developing our humanitarian relations. I hope that the programme of events planned for the Year of Russia in Azerbaijan will be of great interest to the Azerbaijani public, which I know has a lot of interest in Russian art, Russian performers and Russian theatre. I hope that these events will give the Azerbaijani public the chance to see once again that Russia has not come to a standstill in these areas but is moving forward and developing all the time. Azerbaijani viewers and listeners will have the opportunity not only to see once again the famous ensembles and groups that they already know well, but also to become acquainted with new performers and to gain pleasure from this contact with the members of Russia’s artistic community.

Our political ties, our political cooperation, are indeed at a high level today. We have ongoing contact between our Foreign Ministries, at government level and between practically all our agencies that are involved in work in the areas outlined by my colleague and myself. One area that receives our particular attention is economic cooperation. Not only have we reached the goals we set, but we have also set a very good pace of development in areas of cooperation that are of great importance to our countries. These areas include the energy sector, machine-building, transport and communications, agriculture and the metallurgical industry. They also include an area without which it is impossible to develop business – the finance sector. I very much hope that the numerous contacts taking place between representatives of our business communities and between representatives of our different regions will bring positive results in the nearest future.

Of course, I must also mention a very complex issue that is of great importance for bilateral relations and for the entire region, and that is the issue of Nagorny Karabakh. I agree with the President of Azerbaijan that, despite the great complexity of this issue, the two negotiating parties – Azerbaijan and Armenia – can find mutually acceptable solutions. Russia will do all it can to ensure that the negotiating process brings positive results. We have promised the President of Azerbaijan that we will initiate and hold additional consultations with our Armenian partners. I intend contacting the President of Armenia very soon and inviting him to Moscow for further consultations on this issue. The Russian delegation considers our talks today to have been very productive indeed and we are grateful to our Azerbaijani partners for organising our work together.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Question: Why have Georgian-Russian relations become so tense? Yesterday talks were held in Moscow with an Iranian delegation and we have no information about them. May we know the results of these talks?

Vladimir Putin: I shall begin with the second part of the question, with the talks with our Iranian partners. I must say that also during our talks with our colleagues from Azerbaijan of course we talked about issues concerning finding a solution to the nuclear problem and our general relations with Iran, because for us this has a very practical significance – this is our region. More than that, we also have areas in which there is three-way cooperation. For example, in power industry a special tripartite commission was created not long ago that works on improving our three-way relations in electric-power industry. And therefore everything that takes place concerning Iran is extremely important for us.

Regarding talks in Moscow on the Iranian nuclear program I can say that they are proceeding with difficulty but that we expect positive results. We are not losing hope and now there is a pause in the negotiation process so that Iranian negotiators can consult with their political leaders. We believe that the Russian proposal to find a way out of this crisis, linked with establishing a joint enterprise for enriching uranium on Russian territory, is quite acceptable to our partners and can be used as an instrument to resolve this problem.

I repeat that we expect a final answer from our negotiators and expect positive results. We are in constant contact with all the participants in this process – I am referring to our European and American colleagues. I have nothing more to add on this question.

Regarding Russian-Georgian relations it is a great pity, a great pity for the Georgian people. Georgians, a very beautiful people that are close to us, are now in a difficult situation because Georgia is affected by substantial economic difficulties, huge problems in the social sphere, and a very low level of quality of life among the population. And in fact during the Soviet Union the material well-being of people living in Georgia was above the country's average. Of course experiencing such a decline is difficult. People are simply suffering. Since a large number of the population is experiencing serious difficulties, of course this destabilizes not only the country but the region as well. If someone believes that such problems can be solved by distracting the population's attention by proposing a foreign enemy then I believe that they are mistaken. One can be distracted from economic and social problems for a certain time but they must be resolved all the same. And it is better to do this with one's neighbours not only through dialogue but through fruitful cooperation, similar to that which is now happening with Azerbaijan. Despite all difficulties we are fully optimistic, we believe that problems inherited from the former Soviet Union are difficult but can be resolved. We are prepared to take part in this joint work but criticizing what was going on in the former Soviet Union – and quite justly criticising it, it would be wrong to make the same mistakes today.

In the past Russia was called a 'prison of the peoples'. It is inadmissible that these states, states that were established on former Soviet territory repeat the destiny of the Soviet Union and that they themselves try to repeat the negative experience that the Soviet Union went through some time ago. We must be able to come to agreements and to compromise. Regarding Russian-Georgian relations there are many positive tendencies. Despite recent difficulties we see that there are groups in Georgia, including among the Georgian leadership, who want to develop relations with Russia and I include President Mikhail Nikolaevich Saakashvili in this category. I expect that these positive tendencies will prevail. Thank you.

Question: One of the most painful problems both for Azerbaijan and for the whole region is the Armenian-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Peace and stability in the region and in the southern Caucasus is in Russia's interests as well. How can Russia speed-up the process of finding a solution to the conflict?

Vladimir Putin: I tried to answer this question with reference to our relations with Georgia. I can say again that Russia is extremely interested in the resolution of all conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union. If anyone says that this is not the case, then it is either a mistake, or an attempt to mislead our people.

Over the past two years Russia and Azerbaijan's volume of trade has doubled and reached one billion USD. If there was no conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh perhaps it would already be five billion USD. Conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union constrain us. We have a huge number of areas in which we could cooperate, areas such as energy, and not only oil and gas but electric power as well, transport and, I repeat, communications, engineering, agriculture, and teamwork in resolving security issues. We have a great many areas of cooperation that are important and necessary for us. And conflicts constrain us and therefore we are extremely interested in resolving them.

But we absolutely reject the possibility that we should exert pressure on any one of the parties trying to reach an agreement; we can only play the role of an intermediary and act as a guarantor for agreements that have been reached. Today with the President of Azerbaijan and yesterday night at his house we discussed the problem in detail. And I want to repeat once again that despite all the difficulties it is possible to resolve this problem. We shall try to help find a resolution to this conflict and ensure that it becomes a part of history in every possible way. That is everything that I can say on this issue. I consider it still premature to go into detail

Question: How do you evaluate the prospects for our trade and economic relations and first of all in the energy sector?

Ilham Aliyev: As a whole our economic ties are developing very dynamically. We have mentioned this figure more than once: in two years we have managed to double our volume of trade and today the state of our countries' economic relations bears witness to the fact that, of course, this figure is not a limit but rather only the beginning, only a first stage. The Russia-Azerbaijan business forum that started its work today shall, I think, offer new prospects for cooperation. I believe that this cooperation will take place on many levels. From the Russian side we have great expectations for the prospects of investment projects in Azerbaijan. Along with this, Russian companies, companies that today have a good reputation in the world and are producing competitive products, will certainly be increasingly presented in Azerbaijan as partners, as companies that can implement their production. Our countries' economic potential, as we have already said, is growing very quickly; today no one doubts Azerbaijan's solvency and that in the future through more profound economic reforms Azerbaijan will be even better able to find high-quality goods produced in Russia.

In the energy sector our cooperation has a long-standing tradition. We cooperated in this sector from the very beginning. Today Azerbaijan buys 4,5 billion cubic metres of gas from Russia. Each year more than three million tonnes of gas are transported through Russian territory.

As the President of Russia has already said our energy systems work in a parallel fashion and mutual flows of electricity are very helpful in allowing us to resolve economic issues today. In the future we plan to pay even more attention to this branch since the possibility of effectively regulating energy sources provides us with more advantages and costs less. So cooperation in this field has a long-standing tradition and is reliable, and this is also important.

We aspire to build long-term relations in all directions, since when there is a long-term perspective, both investors and potential participants in these projects feel more comfortable, more at ease. This is our goal. So that business comes to a country investors must be confident that business is protected, and that it will be profitable. And in this case it is a win-win situation. For that reason today we discussed a very wide range of issues concerning economic cooperation and if, shall we say, five or six years ago when we talked about economic cooperation we meant only in the oil and gas sectors, then today we are referring to quite a wide range of sectors. So I have no doubt that we are going to actively develop economic cooperation between our countries and that today, half jokingly but half seriously, we already discussed the possibility of doubling in the near future the volume of trade that has already doubled.

Vladimir Putin: I completely agree with this evaluation of our prospects for economic cooperation. From Russia's perspective Azerbaijan is a priority, interesting partner in this sphere. Of course, first and foremost this is because of the high rates at which the economy is developing, some of the highest in the world, the quickest rates of development in the world, and second in view of the potential of Azerbaijan's economy. As I already said, we are cooperating in a whole range of areas. If we start with energy then I can say that in the sphere of electrical power industry we are selling Azerbaijan a significant amount of electricity but that we are also buying electricity from Azerbaijan because in some regions such an exchange is much more effective than simply using it within the country.

We are also resolving problems with Iran in a tripartite format. I think that there are good prospects here. From the point of view of Russian investments in power industry we see two main directions. The first is reconstructing the installations that generate energy on Azerbaijan's territory and the second is constructing new facilities, including in the Sumgait region. Regarding oil and gas you have already heard that we are selling a significant amount of gas to Azerbaijan and we do not rule out the fact that we can continue cooperation in delivering the necessary hydrocarbons to Azerbaijan. But at the same time we plan to develop joint production. Some of our companies are already present on the market in Azerbaijan, are already working here. I am referring for example to LUKOIL, who is working here now on two platforms and of course is interested in expanding its activities. And we feel that our partners in Azerbaijan are supporting our entrepreneurs' business initiatives and we are counting on this support in the future. Other companies are also carefully looking at what is happening here.

Of course we are much attracted by the country's political stability. But this is not the only direction of our activity that is of interest for us. Probably you have heard about companies plans to make major investments in metallurgy. I am confident that this is one of the promising and interesting large-scale projects that will support not only the development of bilateral cooperation but also the growth of Azerbaijan's economy. Transport, agriculture and engineering as a whole are areas in which we have good prospects. Our partners in Azerbaijan have put some very good orders to our ship building companies. I am confident that they will be happy with the results. But also in other directions linked with industry, there are many very promising things that we can achieve more effectively together than by ourselves.

I already said that we consider cooperation in the financial sphere to be important and that some of our banks are now holding talks with their Azerbaijan partners to expand their activities in Azerbaijan. All of this establishes a very good firm basis for implementing what we call a strategic partnership.

Question: What role do the diasporas that live in both countries play in further strengthening Azerbaijan-Russian relations on various levels? And how would you evaluate the situation of Russians in Azerbaijan and that of people from Azerbaijan in Russia?

Ilham Aliyev: Of course we discussed this question during our talks and we noted with satisfaction that we are very pleased with the situation. Diasporas are also an important factor in bilateral relations. And based on this we see that just how comfortably and how well Russians in Azerbaijan and people from Azerbaijan in Russia feel also depends on interstate relations. I must say that in this area we fully understand one another and we are considering active involvment of the diasporas in the public political and economic life of our countries and as an important factor in even closer integration between Russia and Azerbaijan.

Many people from Azerbaijan live in Russia and we consider this normal because today as borders are opening and since freedom of movement has become a very important universal value for all of us, a basic human right, then this factor plays an important role. I always say that if Azerbaijanis did not live well in Russia then they would not live there. Since they live and work there then that means that they are living well and that in the final analysis they are satisfied. In the 1970s the head of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev purposefully sent every year up to 1000 young Azerbaijanis to study in the universities of the Soviet Union. Basically these were universities in Moscow, St Petersburg and other Russian cities. Today these people work very actively towards Azerbaijan's further development and this expertise, this experience and, of course, the relationships they built help a great deal.

The same thing is happening today. Many young people from Azerbaijan are going to study in Russian universities, are going to work in Russia. This is a normal process and of course our countries’ appropriate structures must watch the way this process develops very closely to make sure that all are happy and comfortable with the process. The same applies to Russians and Russian-speakers in Azerbaijan; they are a part of our society, of our state and in Azerbaijan we have always felt a great deal of respect and desire to care for these people. Today I can say with pride that there has not been even the slightest incidence of intolerance motivated by ethnic characteristics, divisiveness or a certain attitude towards people because of their nationality or religious beliefs. Ethnic and religious tolerance reigns in our country. And this is our wealth and our force. This establishes even stronger bases for the development of a secular Azerbaijan and each citizen of our country, irrespective of their nationality or religion, has the same rights as the indigenous population. And in terms of finding work or being educated in Azerbaijan instruction in Russian is provided in practically all of our universities. So this is preserved so that people do not suffer from the fact that they do not know or do not fully know the Azerbaijani language. It is for this reason that identical conditions have been established and this should be valued for what it is. Russia appreciates this, this is a very important factor in international relations very sensitive to the various developments in relations between our countries.

I still remember very well how in the 1990s relations between Russia and Azerbaijan were saddened by such factors and how sharply and sensitively the diasporas reacted, and how worried they were. Proof of this can be found in the malevolent tendencies we saw and in the fact that people were leaving.

Today this is not the case. Today non-indigenous people that left here in the middle of the 1990s are returning to Azerbaijan. Today the level of our relations also helps the diasporas live comfortably – this is their home, their motherland. For these reasons these factors mutually depend on the following: on the one hand, the development of bilateral relations and their level help establish a good quality of life for people and, on the other hand, people's normal lives, that of Azerbaijanis in Russia and Russians in Azerbaijan, influence our bilateral ties. We value this and consider that it is a very important factor in the successful development of our bilateral ties.

Vladimir Putin: One of the major factors we use to judge the relations another country has with Russia, Russians and the Russian-speaking population language, one of the most important factors is their attitude towards the Russian language. We consider it this way now, and I am confident that it will remain this way in the future. For precisely this reason attitudes towards Russian language determine the essence of relations that a country has towards Russia in a historical perspective. And it is here that we can see if there is an element of strategic partnership or not, if our relations have a tactical character, are transitory, or are calculated to resolve today's problems.

In relations with Azerbaijan we noted with satisfaction that attitudes towards the Russian language at the state level are very good. Russian language in schools, in everyday life, in the cultural and educational spheres as a whole receives state support. And we very much expect that the policy Heydar Aliyev formulated and that his son, the current President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, maintains will continue in the future.

Concerning the Azerbaijani diaspora in Russia, it is a very numerous diaspora and possibly it is the very biggest. According to our estimations we believe that up to two hundred thousand Russians live in Azerbaijan and that up to two and a half million Azerbaijanis live in Russia. Of these about 620 thousand are citizens of the Russian Federation and the rest are citizens of Azerbaijan. And of course this acts as a living link for cooperation between our states because people who live in Russia today support direct, close contacts with their families and loved ones in Azerbaijan. And while working in Russia they make a contribution to the development of the Russian economy while supporting their relatives in Azerbaijan, first and foremost by providing them with financial support. We perfectly understand this and recognize that the development of interstate relations must take this factor into account, a factor which in our opinion plays a positive role. We shall continue to act this way in the future.