Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan vow for larger cooperation

By Azernews

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan continue to expand the scope of bilateral cooperation, strengthening the basis of mutual trust. This became even more obvious after the two-day visit of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Baku on April 2-3.

For 25 years of independence, two countries, which are linked by common history, culture, religion and language, have built mutually beneficial cooperation and rightly call each other strategic partners.

During the meeting, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev noted that the positions of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan fully coincide on all the issues discussed. Nazarbayev, in turn, expressed confidence that the current visit and negotiations will lay new foundations for strengthening trade, economic and political relations and will affect the further rapprochement of the two countries.

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan cooperate in almost all spheres, from culture and education to agriculture, ecology, defense and the fight against terrorism. More than 130,000 Azerbaijanis live in Kazakhstan. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan act as a united front within the framework of international organizations and have similar positions on most regional and international issues.

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan always emphasize closeness of history, culture, language and religion, and after gaining their independence, the two nations have built relations on trust, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said.

During a meeting in a narrow format with the Azerbaijani president, Nazarbayev noted that on April 2, he and Ilham Aliyev started the initial negotiations, defined the prospects and opportunities given the new conditions when economic and political crises as well as major changes are taking place in the world.

“We see opportunities in diversifying the economy, creating new production areas, doing new things and involving science and innovations in this. These works are being carried out both in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and we can significantly improve the economic relations between our countries on a new basis,” he said.

During the expanded meeting with his Kazakh counterpart, President Aliyev stressed that positions of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan on all the issues under discussion fully coincide.

“This visit is of great importance for the further strengthening of friendly, fraternal relations between our countries," he said.

President Aliyev congratulated his counterpart on the occasion of Kazakhstan’s election as a member of the UN Security Council, adding that this decision means recognizing the role of Kazakhstan in issues of global scale, Nazarbayev’s personal authority and the initiatives he puts forward to strengthen peace not only in the region, but also worldwide.

“We are very satisfied with the development of our relations. We are in a constant contact. Today we have already exchanged views on a number of issues. We began our work last night, and the exchange of views that we had, shows that our positions on all issues under discussion fully coincide. In particular, we mulled our active cooperation in the field of politics, good prospects in the economic and transport spheres, and now we will continue the discussion with the participation of delegations,” said President Aliyev.

Both Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are carrying out huge work to strengthen regional cooperation through specific transport, energy projects and projects related to economic development, said the Azerbaijani leader.

In turn, Nazarbayev spoke of the five documents, relevant agreements and interministerial agreements to be signed during the visit. He said that issues of cooperation in the economic and financial spheres will be solved based on these documents, which mark a new stage in the Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan relations.

Nazarbayev said that all the issues have been discussed and the Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan relations in all spheres have been taken into account in a declaration prepared for signing.

Another important issue discussed during the visit was the possibility of increasing the trade turnover that has decreased somewhat in recent years against the backdrop of the global economic crisis.

“We have specified that it is possible to greatly increase the Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan trade turnover by several times in the next two or three years,” the Kazakh president said. “The documents, relevant agreements to be signed between the Kazakh and Azerbaijani ministries, in particular, between the transport and communication ministries, promise great benefits for both countries.”

To outline the Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan relations in other issues – both economic and political, and cultural and humanitarian, Nazarbayev said that the two states must pay attention to admission of young people to the relevant universities in both countries, cultural relations, restoration of meetings of representatives of the intelligentsia, and mutual days of culture of the two countries.

The expanded meeting was followed by the signing of Azerbaijan-Kazakhstan documents covering Joint Declaration of the Presidents, cooperation in logistics and rolling stock engineering, double taxation, international road transportation, cooperation Program for between Foreign Ministries and plant quarantine and conservation.

Within the framework of the visit, Nazarbayev was awarded the Heydar Aliyev Order for his exceptional merits rendered to the development of friendly and co-operative relations between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

Cooperation between the two countries is not limited to the bilateral format. Both countries are participants in a number of international projects including transport, energy, information technologies, which offer great prospects for Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and for the region as a whole.

The economic ties between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan should reach a new level in view of the fact that both countries adhere to the policy of economic diversification.

Both countries are interested in using their transit opportunities and turning into international transport hubs. Transport infrastructure of the two countries is actively developing.

In 2016 Kazakhstan launched new ferry port Kuryk, alongside of existing Aktau port and in recent years it has been working at the limit of its capabilities.

Azerbaijan, for its part, built a new international sea trading port and last week the first cargo was shipped from the port of Kuryk to the Baku port. In addition, it is planned to complete in the autumn of 2017 the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, which will help speed up the transportation of goods from Central Asia.

Now Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are working to promote a joint transport project - the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, which involves cargo transportation from China via Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and further through Turkey and Ukraine to Europe. Recently, the implementation of this project was once again discussed in Baku by the heads of railways and ports of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Georgia.

Thus, the negotiations between the two countries at the highest level have once again confirmed the well-known fact that the Azerbaijani-Kazakh relations can be an example for imitation.