Azerbaijan is a fundamentally important player in the region for Russia, the deputy director of the Fourth CIS States Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Dmitry Trofimov, said today at the constituent session of the Russian-Azerbaijani Business Council. "Our bilateral relations with Azerbaijan are designated as strategic. This strategic partnership is built in different directions. Azerbaijan is one of the key players in this region, it is fundamentally important for us in terms of our strategy in the South Caucasus, in terms of building a balanced policy in the Caspian region. Naturally, the Karabakh problem is particularly acute, just like the entire peace negotiation process, mediation, in which Russia participates in this direction," Trofimov stated.
At the same time, according to him, bilateral trade and economic relations have developed quite stably, but they don't quite match the depth, the dynamics of development of what can be called a strategic partnership. "We reached a great trade turnover of 4 billion. Unfortunately, it slightly decreased last year, by almost 30%. But the mechanism of the Business Council will allow the necessary dynamics to be added to the trade and economic partnership, adding these economic instruments to the general complex of our strategic partnership."
Dmitry Trofimov
The chairman of the Russian-Azerbaijani Business Council Peter Fradkov explained to Vestnik Kavkaza that the idea of this council is not new: "It was voiced in April, during the visit of [Russian Prime Minister] Dmitry Medvedev to Azerbaijan, at the meeting with its president. The correct idea received administrative support, and we started to actively work on it, we created the Russian-Azerbaijani Council. Now we will ask colleagues from the Foreign Ministry to inform the Azerbaijani side (I'll go there in the near future), and we expect that the Azerbaijan-Russia Council will also be formed, my counterpart will be appointed, my partner on the Azerbaijani side, and we will be able to work directly in a bilateral mode."
According to Fradkov, this format proved itself in many countries: "It's amazing that with such a level of strategic partnership and pretty good political relations, we did not have such an important element as a business partnership, or rather this element was not formalized. I think it is wrong, because we have business councils with many countries, where existing volume of cooperation and potential are much smaller. Here, we should have simply set the status quo, so I think that the creation of such a council is completely justified."
