ESTONIAN PRESIDENT VISITS OIL TERMINAL, HISTORICAL PARK IN AZERBAIJAN
Baltic News Service
January 15, 2009 Thursday 3:07 PM EET
Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, now on an official visit to
Azerbaijan, Wednesday visited the Sangachal oil refinery and the Gala
historical and ethnographic reserve and discussed with the minister
for industry and energy alternative energy supply opportunities to
countries of the European Union.
Ilves and members of the Estonian business delegation were given an
overview of production and technology at a terminal of the Azerbaijani
state oil company that went into operation in 2001, the Azertac news
agency reported. Through that terminal oil arrives at end users
via the Baku-Novorossiisk, Baku-Supsa and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil
pipelines and gas via the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline.
On Wednesday the Estonian president also visited the Gala historical
and ethnographic reserve in the vicinbity of the Azerbaijani capital
of Baku. The park has unique historical and cultural monuments starting
from the 3rd century BC.
During Ilves’s meeting with Natig Aliyev, the industry and energy
minister of Azerbaijan, the energy capacity of the country in the
future and the Nabucco pipeline project for the supply of gas to
Europe was discussed.
Commenting on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, President Toomas Hendrik
Ilves Wednesday one more time underlined Estonia’s respect of the
principle of countries’ territorial integrity. Ilves gave an interview
to Azerbaijan’s state television, answering to questions pertaining
to cooperation between the two countries, neighbourhood policy of
the European Union, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, energy security,
the situation of the Azeri community in Estonia and other aspects of
relations between the two countries.
Speaking about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Ilves said that Estonia
had always respected the principle of territorial integrity, pointing
out that war had never solved any problems. Ilves added that the
Nagorno-Karabakh issue was not a problem for Azerbaijan alone but to
many countries.
Azerbaijan and Armenia waged a war over Nagorno-Karabakh from February
1988 until May 1994. Because of the war Azerbaijan lost 9 percent of
its territory and more than 800,000 fugitives were forced to return
to Azerbaijan.
After the war a mainly Armenian-populated Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh
with its capital in Stepanakert was established and only the Republic
of Armenia has recognized its independence.