President of Russia Vladimir Putin: First of all I would like to thank you for accepting my invitation and coming to Moscow. And I want to congratulate you on your successful visit to Brussels. I know that the visit was very business-oriented and concrete. You concluded important agreements linked to Azerbaijan’s participation in European energy affairs. We too are pleased with this. As you know, we are engaged in a constant dialogue with the European Union on this issue. And we will soon have our next meeting, our next summit in Finland.
For that reason I would be very curious and interested to hear your opinion about how your dialogue with European partners proceeded. And among other things, we have a very large number of bilateral relations – in politics, in international affairs, in economics. Our volume of trade amounts to more than a billion dollars. I think that we will double this amount in the next two or three years. At any rate, the speed at which our volume of trade is growing acts as proof of this – I think that in 2006 we have already increased our economic cooperation by 50 percent.
I am very glad to see you. Welcome.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev: Thank you Vladimir Vladimirovich. I am also very glad to be in Moscow again. It is very pleasant for me to meet with you again and to discuss our bilateral relations, regional cooperation, and the situation in our region as a whole.
We are also satisfied with how our relations are developing. They are very dynamic, effective, based on the principle of maintaining good relations between neighbours, friendship and cooperation. And we are seeing practical results. In the last little while relations between Russia and Azerbaijan became very intense – probably what amounts to their greatest intensity since independence. And we certainly are very desirous to increase our cooperation potential.
Cooperation is now developing rapidly in the political, economic, cultural and educational spheres. Within the Year of Russia in Azerbaijan – which is unfortunately coming to the end of its term but whose spirit I hope will continue in the future – we drew much closer together. These events, namely holding the Year of Azerbaijan in Russia and that of Russia in Azerbaijan, were very effective and useful. During this time our countries and peoples drew even closer together. And it is probably necessary to continue the regular contacts that were visible at all levels throughout the year in some other format. Therefore all these questions are interconnected and finding positive outcomes to these issues will help us strengthen our relations and stabilise the situation in the region as a whole. Therefore I await our conversation with a great deal of interest.