Azerbaijan's deputy foreign minister to represent country at BSEC Foreign Ministers Council

Azerbaijan will be represented at the forthcoming meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSEC) by the Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammadguliyev, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov said.

The next meeting of BSEC Council of Foreign Ministers will be held Nov. 26 in Thessaloniki, Greece. According to the BSEC official website, Nov.24-25 Thessaloniki will host a meeting of the committee of the BSEC member-countries' official representatives before the meeting of Council of Foreign Ministers.

Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) is an intergovernmental organization consisting of 12 states of the Black Sea and the South Balkans. BSEC was founded May 1, 1999 based on the Treaty on the Black Sea Economic Cooperation dated June 25, 1992. The organization's headquarters is located in Istanbul.

BSEC includes Azerbaijan, Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine, representing the region with a population exceeding 320 million people. The origins of the organization's establishment (1992) were Turkey and Russia, playing since then - together with Greece - a leading role in the activity of the structure, the secretariat and headquarters of which are located in Istanbul. The BSEC bodies are the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB), International Centre for Black Sea Studies (Athens), as well as the Fund of Projects Development and BSEC Parliamentary Assembly based in Thessaloniki.

The last meeting of the BSEC Council of Foreign Ministers was held in May last year in Sofia.

Greece will chair the organization by late 2010.


/Trend/