The head of the Ministry of foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation S. Lavrov Century on Tuesday begins two-day official visit to Azerbaijan.

The program of the visit envisages dialogues With his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov and meeting With the President of the Republic Ilham Aliyev. This is the fourth meeting of the foreign Ministers this year.

As told in the Department of information and press of the Ministry of foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, during the visit the sides will discuss the key aspects of regional and international agenda.

" Will focus on Caspian issues in the context of the preparation of the 4th Caspian summit in Astrakhan. In the agenda of the talks the issues of the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, With an emphasis on the need to unblock the current situation and access to real consensus, " said the Russian Ministry.

Azerbaijan and Armenia conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh Since 1988, when the predominantly Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous region (NKAR) said on secession from Azerbaijani SSR. After the hostilities in 1992-1994, Azerbaijan lost supervision over Karabakh and seven adjacent districts.

Since 1992, conducted dialogues on peaceful resolution of the conflict within the OSCE Minsk group, co-chaired by the USA, Russia and France. Azerbaijan insists on preserving its territorial integrity, Armenia protects the desires of the unrecognized Republic, because Karabakh is not a party to the negotiations.


Moscow believes Baku its important strategic partner in the Caucasus and the Caspian region. In the Russian international Ministry stressed that countries build their relations on the basis of equality, respect of interests of each of the close person and good neighbourliness ".

the Ministry of foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation said trade and economic component of the bilateral partnership." in 2013, the volume of bilateral trade amounted to more than 3, 5 billion dollars and increased by 4% compared With the year 2012 ", - have noticed in the Russian office.

now Azerbaijan is one of the leading trade partners of Russia in the CIS space, ranking among the States of the Commonwealth of fifth place, underlines the Ministry of economic development.

" In foreign trade With Azerbaijan enterprises involved more than five hundred of our organizations from 71 regions of Russia. Now we are preparing to the next, the XIV session of the Russian-Azerbaijani intergovernmental Council for the economic cooperation ", - stated in the Ministry of foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. There are also reminded that on June 23-24 in the Azerbaijani city of Gabala will pass the Russian-Azerbaijani inter-regional economic forum.

Of great importance and dialogue between countries in the humanitarian field, but mainly in the spheres of education, science and culture.


Moscow and Baku are actively cooperating in the oil and gas sphere. Thus, in the framework of St. Petersburg international economic forum Rosneft and state oil company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) signed an agreement on establishing a joint venture for exploration and production of oil and gas in Azerbaijan, Russia and third countries.

In 2009 Gazprom and SOCAR signed a contract of purchase and sale of Azerbaijani gas. Russian Company buys gas in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. It is believed that the purchase of gas in the region provides an opportunity to preserve and increase the share of Russian gas on the European market, to respond to the increased demand in the CIS States and to diversify its export portfolio of " Gazprom " From the standpoint of geography of sales.

now in the European Union After a sharp aggravation of the political situation in Ukraine and Crimea became part of Russia began to sound proposals on a possible reduction of import of Russian energy resources. For today " Gazprom " provides 30% of European gas needs.

it is planned that actively promoted by the European Union a project of TRANS-Caspian gas pipeline (TCGP), which is part of the " southern gas corridor ", will connect Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan's Caspian coast to export gas via Azerbaijan to Europe. Russian Federation scare plans Brussels on construction of TRANS-Caspian gas pipeline without taking into account international legal and environmental components, and the lack of consensus among the Caspian countries.

sections: Politics