Azernews.Az

By Kamila Aliyeva

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov held a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who arrived on a working visit to Ashgabat within the framework of the 25th anniversary of Turkmenistan’s membership in the United Nations, the Turkmen Dovlet Habarlary news agency reported.

Berdimuhamedov underlined that the full-scale, long-term cooperation with the UN stood as an invariable strategic choice of the country.

“We are willing to continue cooperating with the UN on the energy security and sustainable energy issues,” he said.

Guterres, in turn, expressed his gratitude to Turkmenistan for helping refugees and stateless persons.

"In difficult times, there was a very large number of refugees and stateless persons in the country, and Turkmenistan successfully integrated these people into society, positively solving their problems," he added.

The Law on Refugees in Turkmenistan was adopted in 1997. In April 2011, Turkmenistan was admitted to the Executive Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) program.

Over the past ten years, Turkmenistan, together with UN specialized agencies, has implemented more than 260 projects in various spheres in accordance with the previously adopted framework programs.

A number of specialized UN organizations and institutions, including the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN International Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) among others successfully operate in Turkmenistan.

Turkmenistan was elected to the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development for the period of 2017-2020, the UN Commission on Population and Development for the period of 2016-2020 and the UN Commission on Social Development for the period of 2017-2021.

Turkmenistan cooperates with the UN in such spheres as security, sustainable development, energy, transport, environment, development and the establishment of democratic institutions.

This year, Turkmenistan is a chairing country in the Energy Charter Conference. In the end of May, Ashgabat held representative Forum of International Energy Charter on the subject “Toward the Bilateral Framework Agreement of Transit of Energy Carriers”.

The Central Asian Nation has put forward a number of international initiatives on the issue of ensuring reliable energy supplies to world markets, saying that the legal mechanism could allow taking into account the interests of producers, buyers and transit countries.

Following the meeting, the two sides also plan to sign a set of documents aimed at further boosting mutually beneficial partnership between the UN and Turkmenistan.

---

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz