NORWAY SUPPORTS AZERBAIJAN’S INTEGRATION TO EURO-ATLANTIC STRUCTURES

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
Sept 1 2005

The Norwegian State Secretary Kim Traavic now visiting Azerbaijan on
1 September held at the Embassy of Norway in Baku a news conference
on results of his visit.

Stating that the key goal of the visit was to discuss development of
bilateral relations between two countries and regional questions,
the State Secretary informed on his meetings with President Ilham
Aliyev, with the Foreign Minister, with the representatives of UN,
OSCE, the Council of Europe in the capital of Azerbaijan, in which
he discussed regional questions, noting that he had received detailed
information also on the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh conflict,
and the upcoming parliament elections in November.

Noting that as a member of the North Atlantic Alliance, Norway
supports integration of Azerbaijan to the Euro-Atlantic structures,
the diplomat said he welcomes participation of Azerbaijan in the NATO
PfP program, its participation in the coalition in combat against
global terrorism. Underlining that though Norway is not the EU member,
it supports admission of Azerbaijan to the “New Neighboring Policy”
of the European Union, Mr. Traavic said “we shall continue working
in this direction both with Azerbaijan and EU”.

Then, he answered questions of mass media representatives.