President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has held an expanded meeting with President of the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso.

Addressing the meeting, President Ilham Aliyev said:

- Dear Mr. President.

Dear guests.

I am greeting you again – welcome to Azerbaijan!

Your visit is of great importance, and we have extensively discussed many issues in our one-on-one meeting today. Our agenda is quite broad. Today, we talked about possible cooperation in political, economic, investment, energy and other fields. We agree on all the issues discussed. Of course, your visit will have a very positive effect on our future cooperation. Our political relations will be further strengthened. I do hope that as a result of the implementation of the agreements reached, a positive dynamic will emerge in our trade after the visit. We have had a wide exchange of views on cooperation in energy and agriculture, and here too there is no difference of opinion. We look forward to working together on COP29 and are grateful to you for your support.

Today, we also discussed the possibilities of cooperation in education, culture, and other areas, and all our discussions show again that we have a shared position on this issue.

Prior to your official visit, reciprocal visits of delegations from the Congo and Azerbaijan were organized. These were steps aimed at preparing for the visit. I am sure that the documents to be signed today and the agreements to be reached will greatly strengthen our cooperation.

Welcome again.

x x x

Then, President of the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso said:

- Mr. President.

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to you for creating the conditions for us to visit your beautiful country, your beautiful city, your capital. We have heard about Baku for a long time, and thanks to your invitation, we are now visiting Azerbaijan and Baku. Therefore, thank you once again.

You have summarized our one-on-one meeting. I would just like to make a couple of comments that there is a lot of potential between our countries and it can contribute to development for our people. As I mentioned, for example, that our country has a huge agricultural potential, and we use maybe only 3 percent of the cultivated land, which means that all the rest is available for use. We have abundant water sources and the Sun that shines all year round. We can use this potential and your great experience in this field for the development of our agriculture. For example, we can produce a product in Congo and then export it.

At the same time, I would like to mention again that we have great potential in the field of renewable energy, we have the Sun all year round, and we can take advantage of Azerbaijan's rich experience in this field.