Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

The foreign ministers of the Turkic Council member states expressed hope that 20th meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council, which took part in Kyiv on December 5-6, will be an occasion in addressing the main issues of concern in the OSCE area.

"While we are satisfied with the overall framework submitted by Ukrainian Chairmanship for this Ministerial, we hope that our deliberations in Kyiv will be open and the approach to possible declarations and decisions will be based on their respective merits," the statement of the Council reads.

The Turkic Council member states confirmed their readiness for constructive collaboration with other the OSCE participating states to this end.

"We are grateful for the efforts of Ukraine to navigate discussions in the Helsinki+40 process and advance the work towards a security community. In Kyiv, we reaffirm our engagement and strong commitment to this process and hope a unanimous declaration in this direction will be adopted," the statement said.

"We believe that both our OSCE commitments and our parallel cooperation through the Council will allow the strengthening of our mutual trust and confidence which can be only beneficial to the overall objective set at the 2010 OSCE summit in Astana.

"Our approach is based on our assumption that regional organizations, such as the Council, play a key role in strengthening the overall agenda for a Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security community," it said.

The foreign ministers stressed readiness to contribute to the building of such a security community which should be, as mentioned by all heads of states and governments in Astana, "free of dividing lines, conflicts, spheres of influence and zones with different levels of security".

The Turkic Council is an international organization comprising Turkic countries, which founded in 2009 in Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan city. The member countries are Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey. The idea of setting up this cooperative council was first put forward by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev back in 2006.