"Azerbaijan is more important for Israel than France," the Foreign Minister of Israel and leader of the "Our Home is Israel" party, Avigdor Lieberman has announced. "The annual volume of our exports to Azerbaijan today amounts to $5 billion, while our exports to France amount to only $3 billion ... Maybe because there has never been anti-Semitism in Azerbaijan, or perhaps because of the warm personal relationship that I have established with the leadership of this country, but I always feel particularly comfortable in Azerbaijan. I was taking a direct flight to Tel Aviv from Baku, and I was pleased that there was not a single empty seat in the plane. Moreover, among the passengers there were not only members of our delegation, but also prominent businessmen and ordinary citizens who were travelling to visit relatives, or visitors coming back. All this pointed to the fact that both economic and personal ties between our countries and peoples have successfully developed and, therefore, everything we have been working on was not in vain."
Summing up the preliminary results of his service as foreign minister, Lieberman said he considers deepening of relations between Azerbaijan and Israel as one of his main achievements, along with development of relations with the Balkan countries and "countries of the Black Sea."
Answering the question of a VK correspondent about a possible Israeli strike on Iran and the consequences of such attack for Israel, Lieberman said: "I wish that journalists and politicians would gabble less in this regard, and I myself will do the same." The very question, in his opinion, should be resolved exclusively behind closed doors by those responsible for the security of the country.
Lieberman also noted that, unlike other ministers, he does not consider the regime of Bashar al-Assad more favourable to Israel than the one that can replace it. "It is difficult for Israel to come up with a regime which would be worse than the Assad regime, which has long been turned into a puppet of Iran and which has been encouraging the "Hezbollah" to fight against Israel. If we have something to regret after the fall of the regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, than we have nothing to regret if the regime of Assad falls.... " Lieberman said. He also noted that when Israel proposed sending humanitarian aid to Syria, it meant not the Syrian regime, but the Syrian people.
Author: Petr Lyukimson, Israel. Exclusively for VK
