Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova who is in Kazakhstan on an official visit currently met Chairman of the Mazhilis of the Parliament of Kazakhstan Nurlan Nigmatulin on 29 September.

Mr Nigmatulin remarked as he was welcoming Mrs Gafarova that his country thought it very important to promote its relations with Azerbaijan. He congratulated Azerbaijan on its victory in the Patriotic War and wished our country success. The new situation established in the region following the war will bear on the economic development; the restoration of the transport and communication lines will be good for the region’s states and nations, in the opinion of Mr Nigmatulin.

The friendly and fraternal ties of the two countries are developing successfully; the co-operation that the countries are keeping up in the international organisations deserves the highest praise, Mr Nigmatulin went on. The Speaker of the Mazhilis touched also on the deeds done by Azerbaijan during its chairmanship of the TurkPA and said he believed that the bilateral co-operation would become yet more robust while Kazakhstan chaired the organisation. Our countries are strategic allies, Mr Nigmatulin pointed out. He added confidently that our political, economic, cultural, humanitarian and inter-parliamentary relations were going to reach further heights yet.

Sahiba Gafarova thanked for the hospitality and sincere conversation; she mentioned the history of the Azerbaijani-Kazakh relations spanning back over many centuries and said that their continued progress was in many ways attributable to the heads of the two states.

The Chair of the Milli Majlis thanked the Kazakh colleague for the honouring of the Memory Day (27 September) of Azerbaijan at the 10^th plenary sitting of the TurkPA and for his relevant initiative, which, he added, had been appreciated by the Azerbaijani society very much.

The inter-parliamentary relations were referred to then. The Chair of the Milli Majlis said that the reciprocal visits on this plane and, especially, in the TurkPA format, mattered tremendously for the advancement of those relations. Regarding the mutual friendship groups that are active in the Milli Majlis and in both chambers of the parliament of Kazakhstan, they do contribute to the progress of our inter-parliamentary relations.

Sahiba Gafarova also spoke of the growth prospects of the political, economic, cultural and inter-parliamentary relations and of the need to increase the volume of bilateral trade. Companies from each of the two countries function in the other successfully whilst the Caspian Sea that unites us has become a significant transport artery in this context. There is the historic impact of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea that was inked in Aktau in August 2018; both the Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan and the Senate of Kazakhstan ratified it eventually.

The Chair of the Milli Majlis proceeded to tell her colleague about Azerbaijan’s victory in the 44 days’ Patriotic War. She emphasised that our triumphant Army led by Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev had ended the thirty-year-long Armenian occupation thanks to its valour. That conflict is history; the very question of a status of Garabagh is erased once and for all; Azerbaijan has begun to restore its lands recovered from the invaders.

Armenia had destroyed and plundered our towns and villages during the occupation completely. It is not for nothing that the lands recovered from the Armenian captivity are called the ‘Caucasian Hiroshima’, Mrs Gafarova stressed before supplying the Kazakh colleague with ample information about the provocative obstacles that Armenia put in the path of the efforts to bring an enduring peace to the region.

Next, the Chair of the Milli Majlis mentioned the approaching thirtieth anniversary of the genocide committed in Khojali. Mrs Gafarova mentioned, as she was giving the details of that tragedy, that the parliaments of many countries had recognised that calamity as genocide. We would like the parliament of Kazakhstan to state its attitude to that grave crime against humanity, too, Mrs Gafarova said.

At the closure of the meeting, the Chair of the Milli Majlis presented the Kazakh colleague with the book entitled ‘Garabagh Before and After the Occupation’.

Deputy Chair of the Milli Majlis and Leader of its Working Group for inter-parliamentary connexions with Kazakhstan Adil Aliyev, a Milli Majlis committee chairman Ahliman Amiraslanov, MPs Fazil Mustafa, Hikmat Mammadov, Nizami Jafarov, Javanshir Feyziyev and Agalar Valiyev, Chief of the Milli Majlis Staff Safa Mirzayev, Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Kazakhstan Agalar Atamoglanov and other officials also took part in the meeting.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis