Serbia interested in developing relations with Azerbaijan
By Nigar Orujova
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic, accompanied with an official delegation, arrived in Baku with two-day official visit to mull the relations between the two countries.
President Ilham Aliyev received the delegation on September 10.
During the meeting, the head of state expressed his satisfaction with the development of bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and Serbia.
President Aliyev voiced confidence that Dacic's visit to Azerbaijan would contribute to the expansion of cooperation between the two countries.
For his part, Dacic said that there is a mutual interest in expanding the ties between the friendly countries and nations.
Serbia is interested in developing relations with Azerbaijan in cultural, humanitarian and other fields such as political and economic areas, he added.
During the Baku visit, Dacic also met with Prime Minister Artur Rasizade.
The sides focused on the prospects of the strategic cooperation between Azerbaijan and Serbia, stressed the existence of necessary legal ground to develop the friendly relations.
The two parts affirmed that there is a reliable environment to widen mutually beneficial cooperation in particular in the non-oil sector, tourism, and humanitarian sphere, develop joint projects and conduct business forums.
Touching upon the regional conflicts, the sides also focused on the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh conflict, expressed inadmissibility of aggressive and separatism tendencies in the modern period.
They noted that Azerbaijan and Serbia have always the same stance on the international events, support settlement of disputes in the frame of international law, within the territorial integrity and inviolability of borders of states.
Dacic also met with Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.
Following the meeting, the sides gave a press conference, at which Mammadyarov said Serbia's position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is significant for Azerbaijan, as this country will take over the OSCE presidency in 2015.
Mammadyarov stressed that the Azerbaijani-Serbian relations are at the high level, adding that the two countries mutually support their territorial integrity and sovereignty in the international arena.
He further said Azerbaijan provided Serbia with a loan worth of 300 million euros to finance the construction of a road section in the central part of Serbia running from Ljig to Prelina.
The loan was allocated for a 15-year period, with a grace period of three years and with an annual interest rate of four percent.
Azerbaijan also intends to speed up holding the next meeting of Azerbaijan-Serbia intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation.
The Serbian minister, in turn, said that it is planned to hold a business forum and negotiations between Azerbaijani and Serbian governments in the near future.
He also stressed that during its OSCE presidency, Serbia will seek to solve the military conflicts in the region.
Dacic voiced that he intends to contribute to the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "I will visit this region again. As the OSCE chairman, I will seek to waste no effort in resolving the military conflicts," he said.
Dacic also noted that Serbia highly appreciates Azerbaijan's support to its territorial integrity.
Since a lengthy war in the early 1990s that displaced over one million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.
The UN Security Council's four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.
Peace talks, mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group, are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs and dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.