The meeting of the chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova and the chair of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea Park Byeong-seug held on 19 August began with a tete-a-tete and evolved into the enlarged format with the delegation members joining it.

The chair of the Azerbaijani parliament Sahiba Gafarova welcomed the guests and referred to the friendly ties between our countries – the ties, she noted, which had been progressing since Azerbaijan had gained independence. Madame Speaker expressed a hope that this visit and the meetings included in its orbit were going to create an added momentum behind our friendship and behind also the growth of the inter-parliamentary connexions. The high-level visits, negotiations and meetings held to date have played a material part in the achievement of the present-day height of the bilateral relations, according to Mrs Gafarova.

What else was said at the meeting was that the diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Korea were to turn thirty years in 2022 and that bipartite documents inked to date formed a robust legal framework for the mutual relations. It is not for nothing that there are extensive opportunities to foster and further the Azerbaijani-Korean political, economic, cultural and other bonds.

The speaker of the Milli Majlis underlined the roles of the parliaments in the evolution of the bilateral relations, too. She mentioned the solid co-operation built up between the legislatures of the two amiable countries. The Milli Majlis has the friendship groups for many a national parliament; amongst those groups is a large one on Korea.

As the meeting unfolded, Sahiba Gafarova also emphasised that Azerbaijan had freed its lands from the Armenian occupation and independently enforced the theretofore stalled-on-paper resolutions of the UN Security Council in last year’s Patriotic War that had taken 44 days. That conflict had thus been committed to history once and for all, Mrs Gafarova added. She went further to tell of the Khojali genocide of the Azerbaijani people that Armenia had committed as well as of the utter destruction by Armenia of the Azerbaijani lands it had held under occupation for thirty years, of the Azerbaijani towns and provinces and all the settlements there at all. The plunder of our cultural heritage and the desecration of our shrines and mosques were mentioned, too.

The chair of the Milli Majlis noted that the restoration and building work was at full steam in Garabagh today; the countries amiable to Azerbaijan are very welcome to join those processes.

The chair of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea Park Byeong-seug thanked for the ultimate hospitality before saying that he was pleased with his visit to our country and the meetings held during it. The Republic of Korea is interested in furthering the relations with Azerbaijan in diverse areas and intends to deepen bilateral co-operation in the fields of economy, high tech, sciences and education.

The progress of the parliamentary relations serves the two parties’ common goals, in the opinion of the guest who underlined the importance of putting the contacts off the two sides’ MPs on a regular basis eventually and of deepening the connexions between the friendship groups off the two legislatures.

Park Byeong-seug then invited the chair of the Milli Majlis to pay an official visit to his country.

The meeting also saw a discussion of a yet greater expansion of the bilateral ties, the possible vectors of the growth of inter-parliamentary relations and other topics.

The Press and Public Relations Department

The Milli Majlis