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Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev is one of the most reliable and trustworthy leaders for US President-elect Donald Trump, Rob Sobhani, director general of Caspian Group Holdings, wrote in his article published in the Jerusalem Post.

Azerbaijan has certain unique cultural, economic and geopolitical features that deserve the next US administration’s immediate attention, Sobhani said. Trump and his foreign policy team should unequivocally and wholeheartedly embrace Azerbaijan and its president, the author writes.

“The first point to keep in mind when thinking of US-Azerbaijan relations is our shared values of religious freedom and tolerance,” the article said. “A major feature of Azerbaijan’s national culture is religious tolerance.”

This Shi’ite country is home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, according to the author. Indeed, unlike most other Muslim countries, Christians, Jews, Bahais and even Sunni Muslims live side by side in peace and harmony, the author noted.

For example, relations between Azerbaijan and Israel are deep and include cooperation on numerous fronts including the military and diplomatic ones, according to the article.

“This is indeed unique in the Muslim world,” the article noted. “When President- elect Trump looks around the Muslim world for a model of religious freedom Azerbaijan is one country he can point to.”

The second point that makes Azerbaijan unique is that it shares Washington’s goal of an uninterrupted flow of oil and gas from the Caspian Sea region to international markets, said the article.

Today, Azerbaijan’s oil and gas exports play a critical role in Western energy security, Sobhani wrote.

A third point the new administration should consider is that Trump will meet numerous world leaders over the next four years but none will come closer to being a true partner of Washington than Aliyev, the author said in his article.

“Immediately after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, his father, former president Hedyar Aliyev, invited the American ambassador to his office and pledged his country’s full support and cooperation,” Sobhani noted. “Since then President Aliyev has been an unwavering ally in America’s war against terrorism.”

In fact, Azerbaijan is a transport route for US military supplies to Afghanistan and cooperates with the US companies to develop the energy resources of the Caspian Sea region, according to the article.

The immediate steps that the president-elect’s foreign policy team must make as it concerns Azerbaijan are the following: first, invite President Aliyev to the White House for a working visit with President Trump, the article said.

Furthermore, a Trump-Aliyev meeting would send a positive message to those anxious about the president-elect’s feelings toward Islam in general and the Muslim world that President Trump values alliances of the US with those Muslim countries that put a premium on religious tolerance, reads the article.

Trump can showcase to other Muslim countries that Azerbaijan is the model and way forward, the author wrote.

Finally, President Trump can actually earn his Nobel Peace Prize by bringing an end to the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said the article.

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