Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova has met with Chairman of the House of Representatives of the Parliament of Egypt Hanafy El Gebaly during her current official visit to the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Mr El Gebaly expressed his pleasure at Mrs Gafarova’s visit, which, he remarked, was going to be a significant boost to the inter-parliamentary ties between the two states whose diplomatic relations were established thirty years ago. Looking back over these three decades, Mr El Gebaly praised achievements that had marked them as he did the current state of the relations. He also referred to the visit of Egyptian President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi to Azerbaijan in January this year, the negotiations held during the visit and the agreements reached in its course. There is a remarkable potential to tap to deepen the two-way connexions further; and it is clearly necessary to intensify more our co-operation in education, culture, tourism and trade and to inject more energy in the contacts amongst the business circles of Egypt and Azerbaijan, according to Mr El Gebaly.

He went on to mention the high standards set by the present-day inter-legislature connexions and the fine opportunities to make them yet more profound, which efforts would benefit significantly from the work done by the friendship groups in the legislative assemblies of our countries.

As regards the operation of the Parliamentary Network of the Non-Aligned Movement, then, the Speaker of the House of Representatives finds its inception initiative and the work done to that end to be extremely praiseworthy. The Parliament of Egypt considers itself an integral part of the Network and stands by to work even harder within it.

Speaker of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova voiced appreciation of the cordial hospitality extended to the Azerbaijani delegation before she said that the current advance of the links between Azerbaijan and Egypt was gratifying and reciprocal visits and conversations of the two states’ leaders were central to that process. In this connexion, she recalled the visits – of President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan to Egypt in May 2007 and of President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi to Azerbaijan on 27-28 January 2023. Both visits are remarkable in the history of the Egyptian-Azerbaijani relations, in the opinion of Mrs Gafarova.

Sahiba Gafarova said, as she was talking about the many areas that our relations encompass nowadays, that the joint efforts of Azerbaijan and Egypt in international organisations such as, for instance, the UN, the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation and the non-Aligned Movement, and their mutual support were as pleasing.

Our legislatures occupy a special place in the inter-state relations: they have fruitful co-operation going, which can be deepened further especially as there is every opportunity to do so, according to the Speaker of the Milli Majlis. Two-way visits and meetings of the legislatures’ speakers and members are giving the co-operation in this field precisely a powerful impulse to go on whilst the friendship groups are bridging the two legislative assemblies. Apart from that there is already a positive experience of co-operating under the aegis of the international parliamentary organisations, that is, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Parliamentary Union of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, the recently-birthed Parliamentary Network of the Non-Aligned Movement too will become an efficient inter-legislature co-operation platform thanks to our combined efforts. The exchange of visits between the friendship groups and of experience between the concerned committees as well as their collaboration in general are capable of bringing about a further strengthening of the inter-parliamentary ties, in the opinion of Sahiba Gafarova.

Azerbaijan’s victory in the 44-day Patriotic War and the situation established in our region with the national territory of our country made intact again were talked of as the meeting continued. Azerbaijan is busy reviving her de-occupied provinces; the former IDP began to move back to their native lands already, Mrs Gafarova told Mr El Gebaly. Sadly, all our towns and villages, the whole of our historical, cultural and religious heritage in those areas had been decimated; 65 out of the 67 mosques had been destroyed totally, which signifies the Islamophobic nature of Armenia. Whilst Azerbaijan and no other brought about a normalisation with Armenia and offered Armenia to sign a peace treaty based on the five main principles of international law, Armenia remains destructive towards the negotiations and is in flagrant breach of the paragraphs of the Trilateral Statement. And then, Armenia could do worse than stop trying to undermine the peace process; Armenia should take real steps towards signing that peace accord because doing so opens the only path that is there to ensuring lasting peace and stability in the region, according to Sahiba Gafarova.

The two speakers also exchanged opinions concerning some other matters of shared interest.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis