Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova, currently in Belgrade on an official visit, has met with President of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić on 25 May.

President Vučić greeted the Azerbaijani delegation cordially. He then expressed satisfaction with the high level of relations between our friendly countries, also strategic partners, and noted the progress of co-operation between Azerbaijan and Serbia in various fields.

There are also friendly relations between the Azerbaijani and Serbian peoples. Azerbaijan is well known in Serbia, according to Mr Vučić, who added that he followed the developments going on in our country closely and had the highest regard for the achievements made under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev. The Serbian leader was pleased to recall his meetings with his Azerbaijani counterpart and said that the agreements that had been reached and documents that had been during them had made an important contribution in terms of deepening the interstate relations further.

President Vučić referred to the part our legislatures play in the progress of the two-way ties and said confidently that Mrs Gafarova's current visit would serve the cause of furthering and advancing the inter-parliamentary collaboration.

Sahiba Gafarova thanked Aleksandar Vučić for the warm welcome and conveyed to him the greetings of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.

She went further to say that our diplomatic relations were 25 years old and that we had observed a consistent evolution of the bilateral ties throughout those years. The supreme and high-level reciprocal visits have greatly contributed to the intensification of our connexions, which is especially true of President Ilham Aliyev’s official visit to Serbia in November 2022 and the official visit of President Aleksandar Vučić of Serbia to Azerbaijan in May 2018 as well as his working visit to our country in December 2022. Those trips and the documents signed to date had proved crucial for the advancement of our diverse co-operation, indeed.

The two states took up steady partnership and achieved solidarity in international organisations, especially, on such topics as sovereignty and territorial integrity. It is a shared interest that this collaboration in particular should continue.

Various areas are covered by the two-way interaction, with the energy sector featuring as one of the fields endowed with a huge intensification potential, according to Mrs Gafarova.

She told Mr Vučić that this was her first visit to Serbia as Head of the Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan, adding with conviction that the visit would serve the cause of strengthening and broadening the Azerbaijani-Serbian connexions further. The interaction between the two legislatures, then, represents one of the substantial factors bearing well on the Azerbaijani-Serbian bilateral and multilateral relations. Reciprocal trips are good for the relations, too, whilst promoting the growth of our co-operation.

Next, Speaker Gafarova informed President Vučić in detail about the current situation in our region, while also talking about the utter destruction by Armenia of all our infrastructure, buildings and sites of historical and cultural significance in the Azerbaijani territories which had been under Armenian occupation for nigh on three decades. That occupation had expelled a million Azerbaijanis from their Homeland and had kept them away from it for as long. Azerbaijan restored her territorial integrity and justice by ending that plague of occupation in 2020, and is carrying out re-construction and rehabilitation of Garabagh and Eastern Zangazur on a grand scale now. Modern towns and villages are being built in the liberated lands including Garabagh and Eastern Zangazur. The 'Great Return' programme devised to take our former IDPs back to their native parts has already been launched, according to Madam Speaker.

The massive mining by Armenia put up the greatest ever hurdle to the on-going revival of the de-occupied provinces of Azerbaijan. Preliminary estimates indicate the Armenian planting of over a million mines in those areas. Approximately 300 civilians and military personnel have either been killed or mauled by those mines’ blasts since the Patriotic War was over in November 2020.

Madam Speaker reiterated that, despite having been subjected to occupation, Azerbaijan herself is endeavouring to attain lasting peace and stability in our region and has invited Armenia to sign a peace pact that would be based on five principles of the international law.

President Aleksandar Vučić said his thanks for the greetings from the Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev and, in turned, asked Speaker Sahiba Gafarova to pass his own best regards to him.

Other matters of shared interest were brought up and talked over as well as the meeting continued.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis