There was a meeting of Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova and the visiting delegation led by President of the Chamber of Deputies of the Romanian Parliament Ion-Marcel Ciolacu on 27 February.

Sahiba Gafarova told the guests that she was glad to greet them at the legislative assembly of Azerbaijan and that, as she was convinced, their arrival was bound to make an input of its own to the unfolding co-operation between our legislatures and a further strengthening of our friendship.

The diplomatic relations were established back in 1992 with Romania, the second country in the world and the first in the European Union to recognise the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and they have since been progressing successfully, having attained the degree of strategic partnership. The embassies of the two countries, too, are working hard to promote bilateral ties, according to Sahiba Gafarova.

She also underscored the exceptional importance of reciprocal visits and conversations between the heads of our states as a driver of bilateral relations, mentioning the visits of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to Romania – mentioning particularly mentioning his last working trip to that country on 17 December 2022. Mrs Gafarova brought up the arrivals in Azerbaijan of the Romanian leaders as well, such as the official visit of Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on 2-3 February this year. Such two-way visits signify the active nature of our summit-level political dialogue, in the opinion of the leader of the Milli Majlis.

The meeting continued with the reference to the richness of the bilateral legal and contractual frameworks and the good state of our relations in the energy sector. As regards the volumes of trade, they are constantly on the increase; on the other hand, there is a serious potential to broaden our co-operation in most diverse fields.

Speaking about the fruitful co-operation of our states in international organisations then, Sahiba Gafarova stressed the need to continue that interaction as well as our mutual support.

The bilateral cultural ties are fuelled by the activities of the Romanian branch of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and those of a number of other entities.

Azerbaijan’s having granted women the suffrage in the now-distant 1918 and having been the first in the Muslim East to do so was mentioned also – as was the emergence of opera, ballet and theatre in our country, again, for the first time in this whole expanse we live in.

The Speaker of the Milli Majlis said that the inter-parliamentary connexions occupied a special place in the system of inter-state relations; she mentioned with satisfaction the efficient co-operation going between the two legislative assemblies and underscored the significance of the meetings of heads of parliament and friendship groups held to date – also placing an emphasis on the work those groups are doing.

As she proceeded to touch on the role of reciprocal visits in the advancement of the relationship, the head of the Azerbaijani parliament recalled the travel of the members of the Romanian parliament’s friendship groups, during their stay in our country in April 2022, to the de-occupied lands and to Azerbaijan’s cultural capital of Shusha as well as their having eye-witnessed both the destruction wreaked by the Armenians and the Azerbaijani side’s restoration work already under way in those provinces at that time.

Sahiba Gafarova also mentioned the importance of co-operation amongst committees of the legislatures of Azerbaijan and Romania in terms of continued promotion of our inter-parliamentary connexions.

The conversation moved on to Azerbaijan’s remarkable victory in the 44-day Patriotic War, our country’s having restored her own territorial integrity and enforced independently in 2020 the resolutions of the UN Security Council and of other international organisations concerning the conflict past. Those resolutions had demanded liberation of our lands but had merely stayed pieces of paper for long years.

Next, the Romanian parliamentarians were told of the current work to revive the formerly-occupied Azerbaijani provinces and the once IDPs’ return to the native lands. The visitors were also told that Azerbaijan had offered a peace treaty that would be inked with reliance on the five basic principles of international law whereas Armenia was treating the negotiations disruptively.

Chairman of the Chamber of Deputies of the Romanian Parliament Ion-Marcel Ciolacu said his thanks for the invitation to pay this official visit to Azerbaijan before speaking of the close bilateral connexions and Azerbaijan’s being Romania’s strategic partner in the South Caucasus.

Mr Ciolacu broached his meeting with President Ilham Aliyev earlier today. If he had lived in Azerbaijan, Mr Ciolacu said, he would have been the most ardent supporter of Ilham Aliyev.

Mr Ciolacu’s further words were about development of the inter-parliamentary ties, the pertaining roles of the friendship groups, the Romanian-Azerbaijani energy projects and their contribution to the European energy security.

Sahiba Gafarova, in turn, thanked Ion-Marcel Ciolacu for his generous words about our country, her president and her people.

They also voiced the shared conviction that it was necessary to broaden our delegations’ interaction within the walls of international organisations.

Among the participants of the meeting were Chairman of a Milli Majlis committee Musa Guliyev, Head of the Azerbaijan-Romania inter-parliamentary connexions working group Azay Guliyev, that group’s members including Agalar Valiyev, Chief of the Milli Majlis Staff Farid Hajiyev and the two Azerbaijani and Romanian ambassadors in Bucharest and Baku, Huseyn Najafov and Vasile Soare, respectively.

The Press and Public Relations Department

The Milli Majlis