Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova has met with the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Estonia Eva-Maria Liimets as part of her current official visit to that country.

The warm welcoming of the Azerbaijani delegation by Eva-Maria Liimets was followed by her pointing at the exclusive role of mutual visits in the furtherance of the bipartite relations. The Azerbaijani-Estonian connexions are setting sound standards; successful projects are undertaken in various fields including education and e-governance, Mrs Liimets added.

The Estonian FM underscored her country’s interest in making its relations with Azerbaijan yet deeper and lauded the roles played by the Azerbaijani and Estonian legislatures in this context. Estonia is invariably behind the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and finds it important to keep peace and security in our region, according to Mrs Liimets who offered an opinion that restoration of all the regional communications would help this cause tremendously.

Having thanked Mrs Liimets for the kind welcome and the heartfelt hospitality, Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova expressed her pleasure at the evolution of the relations between Azerbaijan and Estonia as two friendly states and partners. Sahiba Gafarova also referred to the exceptional contribution to the relations’ advance made by high-level visits and meetings, in which relation she mentioned the state visit of President Ilham Aliyev of the Azerbaijan Republic to Estonia and the official visit of the President of the Republic of Estonia to Azerbaijan. The joint statements signed during those visits laid a foundation for the continued growth of the interstate relations, in the opinion of Mrs Gafarova. Today, Azerbaijan and Estonia have at their disposal vast opportunities to bolster co-operation in the transport sector. The North-South and East-West transport corridors are crossing Azerbaijan, which has allocated  immense funds towards the costs of developing the transport infrastructure. The launch of the Zangazur Corridor and the re-opening of all the communications in the region will greatly add to its transport potential.

Sahiba Gafarova briefed Eva-Maria Liimets on the Azerbaijan-EU relations in view of Estonia’s membership in the European Union. She remarked that the new Azerbaijan-EU partnership agreement talks were at a final stage with more than 90 per cent of the provisions of the document accommodated already. The energy co-operation with Europe matters much as well. Apart from being a supplier of crude oil, Azerbaijan also acts as a reliable source of natural gas for Europe by virtue of the South Gas Corridor and this is another weighty input in the Continent’s energy security.

The Chair of the Milli Majlis went further to inform the Chair of the Riigikogu of the new reality that had set in across our region following Azerbaijan’s victory in the 44-day Patriotic War of 2020. Mrs Gafarova pointed out that our country had freed its own lands after thirty years of Armenian occupation and made the national territory whole again thanks to that victory. Besides, Azerbaijan had thusly enforced the four resolutions of the UN Security Council as well as the international law’s principles and standards all by itself. The conflict is in the past whereas Azerbaijan is busy restoring its freed lands on a large scale and furthering creative, building work in those provinces. Further, Sahiba Gafarova drew the attention of the Estonian colleague to the fact that Armenia had destroyed all the towns and villages it had captured, had plundered our historical, cultural and religious heritage utterly in the thirty years of occupation. So, now, Azerbaijan is restoring and repairing those provinces depending on its own devices only, as the Chair of the Milli Majlis stressed. Azerbaijan wants peace and has made several peace treaty signing offers already, according to Sahiba Gafarova.

The conversation also revolved around certain other topics of shared interest during the meeting.

The Press and Public Relations Department 

The Milli Majlis