UN Assembly to beef co-op with Azerbaijan up

Source: AzerNews

The UN General Assembly intends to expand cooperation with Azerbaijan, Vuk Jeremic, President of the 67th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, said in Baku on June 18.

As part of his visit to Azerbaijan, Jeremic met with Communications and Information Technologies Minister Ali Abbasov, the ICT ministry said.

Jeremic said the energy and information technologies sectors were in focus during the discussions on sustainable development at the United Nations. Jeremic recalled that he had familiarized himself with the achievements of Azerbaijan and added that the country has achieved good results in the two mentioned fields.

The construction project on the Trans-Eurasian Information Super Highway (TASIM) was discussed at the meeting along with prospects of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the UN General Assembly.

Azerbaijan is currently involved in two major transnational projects - as a coordinator of TASIM, on which the UN GA passed a second resolution in 2012 supporting the project politically, and as one of the main initiators and participants of the Europe Persia Express Gateway (EPEG) project, which has already been launched.

Noting that 2013 was declared the ICT Year in Azerbaijan and providing information about the country's ICT achievements, Abbasov spoke about ongoing national and regional projects in this sector.

Earlier, Abbasov said establishment of the alliance in the frame of TASIM will be formally announced in September. Work in this area is already underway and Azerbaijan is a coordinator of the alliance.

TASIM is a project of regional importance, whose aim is laying a transnational fiber-optic line covering the countries of Eurasia from Western Europe to Eastern Asia.

The project envisages the creation of a major transit link from Frankfurt to Hong Kong. The line will combine major centers of information exchange in Europe and Asia.

The transit line will stretch through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to Germany. A reserve North transit line will pass through the territory of Russia, Ukraine and Poland.

Currently, the project connects five countries - Azerbaijan, China, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey, while involvement of Georgia, Bulgaria and Ukraine is expected in the near future.

The project is designed to connect 20 countries and its implementation will eliminate the "information gap" between Western Europe and the Pacific region.