Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

Azerbaijan's capital Baku is hosting for the first time a grandiose event: the 23rd Annual Session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly entitled "Helsinki +40: Towards Human Security for All".

The event kicked off in June 28 and will last till July 2.

Opening the session, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev welcomed OSCE parliamentarians to Baku before turning his focus to Azerbaijan's efforts to turn into a modernized state.

"Azerbaijan is an ancient land, a country with great history, culture, but young as an independent state. It's only less than 23 years that we live as an independent country. And, of course, these years were critical for our statehood, our development, our future. We had to build an independent state, lay down the foundation of our statehood, at the same time, create new political system. Actually, before we did not have any political system. Therefore the creation of democratic institutions, implementation of political reforms were the basis of our successful development," he said.

President Aliyev noted implementing political and economic reforms allowed Azerbaijan to avoid major complications, create a stable country, and achieve sustainable development.

"With respect to political dimension, I'd like to say that Azerbaijan is a country with the functioning democratic institutions. We put a lot of efforts to develop democracy, rule of law, provide fundamental freedoms. And I think we achieved great success. All fundamental freedoms are provided in Azerbaijan - freedom of assembly, association, freedom of expression, media freedom. We have thousands of media outlets in Azerbaijan. We have free internet. And more than 70 percent of our population are internet users," he added.

President Aliyev said Azerbaijan has a lot of plans for the future.

"Political reforms will be one of the top priorities on our agenda for the coming years. We need to do more and implement more reforms. And I'm sure that our commitment and cooperation with international institutions such as the OSCE and others will allow us to implement everything that we have planned," he noted. "Political reforms, of course, create a very positive atmosphere in our society. Political situation is stable and predictable. And this allows us to plan our future in a way that we can achieve modernization and transform Azerbaijan into a developed country of the world."

President Aliyev also informed the participants about Azerbaijan's international contacts that play an important role from the point of view of international interaction.

"Azerbaijan is a country with a very active foreign policy and with very straightforward foreign policy priorities. Our words never differ from our actions. Therefore Azerbaijan is now recognized as a reliable partner, which our friendly countries and partners can trust. This is very important because trust is something, which you have to build every day. Only one mistake and wrong step can ruin this trust. Therefore active bilateral relations with most of the members of the international community, particularly European countries, are one of our priorities. This is also applied to our relations with countries of other continents," he said.

President Aliyev also said Azerbaijan is a member of numerous important international institutions.

"We consider this membership as an opportunity to establish better connections in the world. We are members of Non-Alignment Movement, the Council of Europe, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and many other international institutions," he said. "One of our biggest foreign policy achievements happened two and a half years ago when Azerbaijan with great support of 155 countries was elected as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. This was the highest possible diplomatic and political achievement on the international arena. And we are proud that despite being young and not yet very well-known globally, we managed to present our case, and our friends showed great trust in what we were doing. And for two years Azerbaijan had been an active member of the UN Security Council, advocated for peace, security, stability, justice and implementation of international law norms. Actually, this is one of our priorities now as the chair of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. We assumed this chairmanship relatively recently."

President Aliyev called the elaboration of unified criteria and mechanisms of implementation of international organizations' decisions as one of the main priorities for Azerbaijan as the chair of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

Later, the Azerbaijani president spoke about the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"Azerbaijan is suffering from this situation because for more than 20 years we have been suffering from Armenian aggression and occupation. Nagorno-Karabakh is a historic part of Azerbaijan, an ancient Azerbaijani land, which is occupied by Armenia for more than 20 years," he said. "Twenty percent of our internationally recognized territories is under occupation, one million Azerbaijanis became refugees and IDPs on their own land. We were subjected to ethnic cleansing. Armenians committed genocide against Azerbaijanis in the city of Khojaly, genocide which is recognized already by ten countries of the world. International law norms are violated."

President Aliyev also noted the decisions adopted by international organizations remain unfulfilled.

"UN Security Council adopted four resolutions demanding immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian forces from the occupied territories. These resolutions remain unimplemented, remain on paper. OSCE decisions, particularly decisions of Lisbon Summit, which clearly identify what steps should be taken in order to resolve this conflict, also remain on paper. The European Parliament, Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Non-Alignment Movement and other organizations adopted decisions and resolutions. But Armenia simply ignores them. They do not want to liberate the territory, which does not belong to them. They want to keep everything unchanged. They ignore even statements of presidents of the OSCE Minsk Group's co-chair countries. The presidents of the U.S., Russia and France made it very clear that the status-quo is not acceptable, and this means that the status-quo must be changed. In order to change the status-quo Armenia should start withdrawing its troops from our lands, but Armenia ignores these statements," he said.

President Aliyev called the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as the major source of threat to the region

The president stressed that the best way to reduce tensions and to build confidence-building mechanisms is the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the territories of Azerbaijan.

President Aliyev also informed the guests about Azerbaijan's rapid economic growth.

"We have been the fastest growing economy in the world in the last ten years and the socio-economic reforms have led to prosperity, reduction of unemployment and poverty. I think this is one of the biggest achievements of our government that the rapid economic growth was supported by strong social policy. Our economy grew more than three times during the last ten years. This is the fastest growth rate in the world. At the same time poverty dropped almost ten times. Now it is at the level of 5 percent. We basically resolved the issue of unemployment. It is also around 5 percent. We have very stable financial system. Our foreign debt is only 8 percent of GDP, which is one of the best parameters in the world, and our currency reserves are more than 70 percent of GDP, which allows us to invest and borrow on international markets. Our credit ratings have been upgraded by major rating agencies like S&P, Moody's and Fitch. Azerbaijan has a very good reputation as a country, which protects investments properly. During last ten years $170 billion was invested in Azerbaijan. Last year it was $28 billion, of which 70 percent was local and 30 percent was foreign investments. Economic prospects for the future are very positive. We are working actively on the issues related to the diversification of our economy," he said.

President Aliyev spoke about the energy security as well.

"Azerbaijan contributes to security and cooperation, and through energy diplomacy we already established regional cooperation and we are expanding it. Today our plans go beyond our region and along with traditional partners and allies in energy policy we invite our European partners to be part of our initiatives," he said."Azerbaijan is the first country in the world, which connected Caspian, Black and Mediterranean seas with the diversified network of pipelines, and that allowed us to diversify our supply routes. So, we do not depend on any supply route and that is important for us as producers. And also we help our partners to diversify and get traditional energy resources from our structures, from our oil and gas fields, which contributes to the energy security of Europe. EU-Azerbaijan relations also partly are based on energy cooperation. In a memorandum, which was signed between the President of the European Commission and myself three years ago, Azerbaijan was identified as one of the main supporters and enablers of the Southern Gas Corridor. The Southern Gas Corridor is a historic project initiated by Azerbaijan. We have taken the biggest financial burden, the biggest responsibility and we are implementing this project. Today the Southern Gas Corridor consists of three important elements: production from one of the biggest gas fields in the world, Shah Deniz, its transportation and diversification. Transportation of gas will be realized through three pipelines, which, actually, when construction is completed, will make one big pipeline from Baku to Europe, particularly to Italy. This is Trans Anatolian pipeline, South Caucasus pipeline and Trans Adriatic pipeline. This is the biggest infrastructure project of Europe implemented now."

President Aliyev expressed confidence that this project will change the energy map of the region and Europe, and will be to the benefit of producers, transitors and consumers.

Later, Speaker of the Parliament of Azerbaijan Ogtay Asadov, Swiss President and OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Didier Burkhalter, OSCE PA President Ranko Krivokapic also addressed the inaugural plenary.

The OSCE PA Annual Session attended by nearly 300 parliamentarians from more than 50 countries will culminate in the adoption of the Baku Declaration, which will contain policy recommendations for the OSCE and its 57 participating States in different fields like politics, security, economics, the environment and human rights.