Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova had a meeting with the French Republic’s Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador to our country Zacharie Gross on 16 March. Madame Speaker greeted the guest, noted that the Azerbaijani-French diplomatic relations were turning thirty years in 2022 and talked about the special role that reciprocal high-status visits and meetings had to play in the advancement of the two-way connexions.

Azerbaijan and France have political, economic, humanitarian and other relations in progress; speaking of which, there is a potential to tap to bolster them more, according to Mrs Gafarova who went on to express a confidence in the eventual further enrichment of the legal frameworks for our co-operation.

Sahiba Gafarova also brought up the subject of the joint activities of our country and the European Union, saying that those were wide and efficient, and that Azerbaijan is keen on the furtherance of its relations with the European Union along equal partnership principles. The EU is the main trade partner of Azerbaijan; the bilateral interaction in the energy sector is strategic by nature. Apart from the crude oil exports, Azerbaijan is a dependable supplier of natural gas to Europe.

As she turned to the significance of the inter-parliamentary connexions in the progress of the bilateral relationship then, Sahiba Gafarova mentioned the friendship groups active in the legislatures of both countries and recalled the visits that the French parliamentary delegations had paid to our country in 2020 and 2021 specifically in the context of that activity. Those visits had included the trips to the towns of Ganja and Agdam. In general, such visits are useful in that they promote objectivity in French parliamentarians’ attitude to our country and help base it on real facts.

Further, the leader of the Milli Majlis touched on the biased resolution of the European Parliament dated 10 March 2022. She said that it was wholly based on the false information spread by Armenia and the Armenian Lobby of the Europarliament and, apart from that, it had distorted the truths emanating from the 30-year-long occupation of Azerbaijan’s lands. According to Madame Speaker, this resolution of the Europarliament is also completely at odds with the recent efforts of the EU leadership to maintain peace, stability and security in the South Caucasus.

As the conversation went on, Madame Speaker told Mr Gross about the outstanding victory that Azerbaijan had gained in the 44 days’ Patriotic War of 2020. Azerbaijan had freed its own lands after the thirty years of occupation by Armenia and made its own national territory whole again. Armenia, though, had totally plundered our tangible cultural heritage situated in those lands during the occupation period. In those thirty years, Armenia had destroyed 67 mosques and hundreds of monuments of culture, and that’s not to mention the utter annihilation of the infrastructure of those parts, Sahiba Gafarova continued.

The Garabagh Conflict is history now; so, Azerbaijan is cleaning its liberated lands of mines and is restoring them at a rapid pace so that our once internally displaced people can go back to their native lands and regain their homes. Resumption of communications and the projects that are to be undertaken there will be a splendid prop to the progress of the whole region.

The ambassador of France in Azerbaijan Zacharie Gross thanked for the kind welcome before saying that his country attached a very big importance to growing its relations with the Azerbaijan Republic. Mr Gross also talked about the dialogue, the bilateral relations and the current economic, humanitarian and educational co-operation.

Mr Gross also covered the peace and security endeavours in our region and underscored the importance of the transport and communication projects as well as of the East-West Transport Corridor.

There was also an exchange of opinions about other matters of interest to both sides during this meeting.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis