ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
March 4, 2005 Friday

Azerbaijan’s president pins great hopes on coop with Georgia

By Sevindzh Abdullayeva, Viktor Shulman

BAKU

Azerbaijan’s President Ilkham Aliyev believes that the potential of
economic cooperation with Georgia must be used to the maximum extent
possible. He made a statement to this effect at a meeting with
Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli, who has arrived in Baku on a
working visit.

About the condition of Azerbaijani-Georgian relations Aliyev said
“mutual understanding, cooperation and mutual support between the two
countries is at the highest level.”

Aliyev said this was a very important factor to both Azerbaijan and
Georgia, whose well-being was tightly inter-connected.

The Georgian prime minister said he would exert every effort to make
bilateral relations more dynamic. As he talked to journalists,
Nogaideli mentioned such major themes of negotiations in Baku as
preparations for the meeting of the bilateral inter-government
commission for economic cooperation, to be held in Tbilisi in April,
and cooperation in the customs, transport and financial spheres.

According to some sources, Nogaidelli discussed the rescheduling of
Georgia’s debt to Azerbaijan on the earlier extended loans, and the
situation on the border, where about 500 railway carriages with
transit cargoes are waiting for customs clearance.

Azerbaijan since 2004 has thoroughly checked all transit cargoes
bound for Georgia in order to prevent their eventual delivery to
Armenia, with which Baku has no economic ties due to the continuing
dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan’s First Deputy Prime Minister Abbas Abbasov has told the
media Georgia has expressed the readiness to provide guarantees
including those in writing the transit cargoes from Azerbaijan would
not be taken to Armenia.