From talk of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev with the supreme ‎spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ayatollah Seyyid Ali Khamenei - Teheran, ‎December 10, 1997‎


Seyid Ali Khamenei: Mr. President, I am warmly greeting you and it is a great pleasure to meet you.

Mr. President, welcome! I wish great Allah make your visit pleasurable. The 8th summit of the OIC is an important event for the all member countries, the Muslim world. It is a great wealth to be a member of the Islam Community. The Islamic Republic of Iran will lead the OIC in the coming 3 years and it will create good opportunities for the friendly, fraternal countries.

Heydar Aliyev: Distinguished Ayatollah Khamenei, thank you for kind words. I am very pleased to arrive in Tehran and take part in the 8th summit of the OIC. I want to remind that I participated in the 7th summit of this organization held Casablanca in 1994.

I appreciate the fact that the 8th summit of the OIC is held in Tehran and its chairmanship by the Islamic Republic of Iran in the coming 3 years as remarkable events.

We listened to your speech in the summit with great attention. I congratulate You for the speech and successful organization of the summit. Azerbaijan, which builds a secular state, respects much his religion. We restore and revive those which we lost in the past years, our traditions and we shall create all opportunities for their steady development. Our people were tried to be kept apart from Islam for 70 years. You know that we lived under atheist education and propaganda within the Soviet Union. But despite it, our people have never left its religion, kept it in their hearts and mind and everything were opened when it was possible. It shows once again how strong and powerful our religion, Islam. I state today, once again that Azerbaijan will never give-up its independence and religion anymore. I bring to your notice that Azerbaijan attaches great attention to his contacts with Iran and Azerbaijan-Iran relations have been always friendly and fraternal. It is our wish, desire that these relations be larger, closer and more sincere. It is important to strengthen steadily human, scientific, and cultural and trade contacts to enlarge our cooperation.

Seyid Ali Khamenei: Mr. President Heydar Aliyev I want to say that I share your views. You are really a man of great political experience and experience gained by your country and work under your leadership are new for your state.

Heydar Aliyev: Presently, negotiations are under way in the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group for the peaceful settlement of the Armenain-Azerbaijan conflict and new proposals came from the co-chairs to resolve the conflict. We accepted the proposals as a basis. We want that the occupied territories of Azerbaijan to be liberated, the territorial integrity of our country to be insured and more than one million of our citizens to be repatriated which were forced out of their lands and live under heavy conditions in the tent camps now.

Along with thanking to the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran for humanitarian assistance for the Azerbaijani refugees, I regret that some states support Armenia practically and economically who does not give-up its non-constructive position in the peaceful settlement of the conflict.

I stress my confidence that Iran will effectively use its influence for adoption of the documents denouncing the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan in the Tehran summit of the OIC.

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FOREIGN POLICY

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Azerbaijan - Asia

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Azerbaijan - Asia