I would like to once again express my gratitude to the Turkmen side for its active support in the admission of Azerbaijan as a full member of the Consultative Meeting of the Heads of State of Central Asia.
elchi reports that the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev stated this in a press statement with President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov on June 22.
“I view this as a historic event because, although we are not geographically part of Central Asia, our cultural and historical ties, as well as the specific issues we are addressing today regarding regional interaction and transport and logistics problems, naturally create prerequisites for the greater Central Asia to be perceived as a unified geopolitical and geoeconomic region. Naturally, we began to interact actively in a multilateral format from the very first day.
Much was also said today about the transport and logistics sector. Naturally, cooperation between our countries in this area is already of a long-term nature; I would even say that it is of strategic importance not only for us, not only for our neighbors, but also for a vast geography. Because today there are not so many reliable and safe transport routes in the world that connect countries cooperating with each other. This is a great achievement. In such a case, it is impossible to consider transport and logistics projects in isolation from political interaction. Without political interaction, no geographical conditions would allow us to unite our efforts. We have agreed to further coordinate our activities in the transport and logistics sector both to further increase the already growing cargo flows as a result of our joint efforts and to attract cargo transportation from third countries. Therefore, this area will naturally be a priority for both our bilateral and multilateral interaction,” the head of state emphasized.