President meets Moldovan counterpart in Brussels [PHOTO]

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with Moldovan President Maia Sandu in Brussels on December 15.

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has met with President of the Republic of Moldova Maia Sandu in Brussels.

President Maia Sandu greeted the head of state: Hello, Mr. President.

President Ilham Aliyev: Hello. Nice to meet you.

President Maia Sandu: Very nice to meet you in person, finally.

President Ilham Aliyev: Very glad to see you.

President Maia Sandu: Thank you.

President Ilham Aliyev: So, it is our first meeting. I would like to congratulate you with your election once again, and wish you success.

President Maia Sandu: Thank you very much.

President Ilham Aliyev: I hope that the relations between our countries will continue to develop in positive direction, because personal contacts play important role in this respect.

President Maia Sandu: Indeed. Thank you very much Mr. President. I like to express my appreciation for the fact that you were there when we needed help with the gas crisis. We could explore potential solutions. In the end, we found the short-term solution, but we are still interested to discuss our cooperation in the energy sector, and of course, we are interested in exploring the possibilities to deepen our cooperation with respect to the business cooperation, trade exchanges. We are very interested in improving the business environment in Moldova. We want to create more jobs for our people, we are interested in attracting foreign investors and we are interested in exploring new markets as any other country is. So, I do see this possibility of establishing the contacts and then maybe helping our businesses talk to each other, organizing business forums. So that we could help the citizens of both countries.

President Ilham Aliyev: Yes, I agree with you. I think we need to also strengthen the activity of joined intergovernmental commission and to plan a new session, because they didn’t convene for almost ten years and I looked at some data. The level of mutual trade is very small.

So, I think that there is a potential to increase it. But for that, of course, as you mentioned the business circles should get together. If the commission meets they can also make presentations about the potential, about investment opportunities, business climate, so that we can increase the level of mutual trade. I think we can find a lot of goods to offer to each other, and also the energy cooperation issues. You know we are actively working with European institutions and with member states of EU and for us, of course, entering the new markets also is of big importance. Therefore, I think that we will find the common ground on that issue as well.

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The sides noted that Azerbaijan and Moldova have always supported each other's territorial integrity. The cooperation within international organizations, holding the next meeting of the intergovernmental commission in the coming days, holding political consultations between the two countries' foreign ministries, cooperation in the fields of energy, investment, as well as business circles of the countries were discussed at the meeting.