Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova received on 1 March the visiting delegation under Vice President of the Republic of Cuba Salvador Antonio Valdés Mesa.

Sahiba Gafarova told the guests that she was glad to welcome them to the Azerbaijani parliament; their visit, she remarked confidently, was going to help with further expansion and strengthening of the friendly ties between our states and peoples. Mrs Gafarova also referred to the sound Azerbaijani-Cuban political relations and the mutual backing in international organisations including the UN and the Non-Aligned Movement.

President of the Republic of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel attended the 18^th summit meeting of the NAM heads of state and government in Baku whereas Mr Valdés Mesa is going to join the summit gathering of the NAM Contact Group in Baku tomorrow, Mrs Gafarova mentioned.

She went on to speak of the Cuban backing for the initiatives that Azerbaijan had made as the NAM chairing member; on the other hand, she mentioned the Azerbaijani support for the Cuban viewpoints on votes in the UN. Our states were giving each other a hand during the difficult period of the COVID-19 pandemic, too; Azerbaijan highly appreciates the help that then came from Cuban doctors. As for the bilateral economic, trading, academic, educational, cultural, sports, tourism and other co-operation and its promotion, there is a fine potential to do so; all there is to do is to grasp the existing opportunities.

Highlighting the two legislatures’ exceptional role in the furtherance of the Azerbaijani-Cuban relations, Sahiba Gafarova also underlined the importance of their friendship groups which can serve as a bridge between them through reciprocal visits and an on-going dialogue.

The parliaments’ interaction under the roofs of international organisations was talked about as well. Mrs Gafarova mentioned the emergence of the Parliamentary Network of the Non-Aligned Movement upon the instance of President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan at the Network’s constituent session in Madrid in November 2021 – a member of the Cuban parliament was present there, incidentally. Furthermore, Deputy Chair of the National Assembly of People’s Power Ana Maria Mari Machado took was amongst the participants of the Network’s first conference in Baku on 30 June-1 July 2022. The Cuban parliament’s involvement in the Network’s work deserves all the praise, according to Mrs Gafarova who added that the run-up is in progress to the next conference of the PN, due on the sidelines of the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s 146^th Assembly in the Bahraini capital of Manama.

Azerbaijan’s restoring her own territories energetically after thirty years of their Armenian captivity, disrupted with the 44-day Patriotic War in autumn 2020, was talked about as well. Besides, Mrs Gafarova told Mr Valdés Mesa of the former IDP returning to their native lands where Armenia had during the occupation annihilated all our towns, villages, cultural and historical heritage and religious facilities, and about also the mine problem. Whereas it was Azerbaijan that had come up with the idea of normalising the relations with Armenia and offered this state to ink a peace treaty that would be based on the five main principles of international law, Armenia is hampering the negotiations and continues breaking – outrageously – the provisions of the well-known Trilateral statement, Mrs Gafarova emphasised. Armenia has been abusing the Lachin Road to military ends, carrying miners, other ordnance and military personnel and using it also to expatriate the loot of mineral resources of our country. In response, Azerbaijani civil activists and environmentalists started – and are continuing – a manifestation of protest on the Lachin Road, which is more than open for civil transportation, by the way. A humanitarian crisis of any nature is quite out of the question, according to the leader of the Milli Majlis.

Clearly keen to continue exploiting the Lachin Road to its illegal ends, Armenia only resorts to false propaganda about some ‘blockade’ and ‘a tense humanitarian situation’ to distort the true nature of the state of affairs and to confuse the international community whereas this state could do worse than abstain from a subversive course of action and take practical steps instead towards signing a peace pact with Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan, for her part, wants peace and stability.

Vice President of the Republic of Cuba Salvador Antonio Valdés Mesa thanked Speaker of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova for this meeting before sharing the impressions of his earlier conversation with President Ilham Aliyev and wishing the summit meeting of the NAM Contact Group in Baku tomorrow success.

Cuba is interested in making the bilateral connexions stronger. Cuba chairs the Group of 77 starting this year whilst Azerbaijan’s chairmanship tenure in the NAM has been extended by another year, which affords certain co-operation possibilities for our two states helming those respective organisations, in the opinion of Mr Valdés Mesa who went further to laud the initiatives of Azerbaijan as the NAM Chair and share his opinions about the future of the Cuban-Azerbaijani inter-legislature, health care, economic, trading and otherwise co-operation. He also underlined the importance of exchanging experience.

Azerbaijan was perfectly correct and in her right to have liberated her own territories, the Cuban visitor pointed out. Cuba, incidentally, has for long years been blockaded and yet, the Cuban people’s will to struggle and be free will never expire, according to Mr Valdés Mesa.

Next, Mr Valdés Mesa thanked Azerbaijan for her backing of the resolutions on Cuba tabled at the UN General Assembly.

The other participants of the meeting included the chairman of the Milli Majlis Health Committee Ahliman Amiraslanov, the leader of the Azerbaijan-Cuba inter-parliamentary connexions WG Elshad Mirbashir oglu, Chief of the Milli Majlis Staff Farid Hajiyev and the two countries’ ambassadors Ruslan Rzayev and Carlos Enrique Valdés de la Concepcion.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis