Statement of Heydar Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan, in the meeting with the journalists leaving Saudi Arabia for Azerbaijan - 13 July, 1994

This visit can be regarded as a big achievement of the foreign policy of our country. Saudi Arabia is one of the notable countries of the world, it occupies worthies place both in the Islamic world and in the world community, and it\'s economically a developed country. Saudi Arabia is the country close to Azerbaijan with its historical traditions and religion. And that\'s why it\'s very important for the young and independent Azerbaijan build relations and to improve cooperation with this country in future.

It needs to note that there weren\'t any relations between Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. We decided visit this country just three month ago. Now, on visit I saw that, there is some information about Azerbaijan in Saudi Arabia. A lot of information comes from the informational organizations of big countries, and a lot of them convey biased in character.

So it\'s a big achievement to come to Saudi Arabia, to introduce Azerbaijan here, and to propagate the real situation our country.

I appreciate highly my meetings with the head of the government of Saudi Arabia and other chief persons and our negotiations and I consider that all of them are good for improving the future relations between Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia.

Our participation in the religious ceremonies and official visits are interconnected. Saudi Arabia is an Islamic country. The holy monuments of the Islam are here. Because of this it is a characteristic feature for this country to propagate Islam, holy Medina and Mecca in its home and foreign policy and also to make conversations about them. Besides the visit, we had very rational and useful negotiations. It\'s especially concerns negotiations. It especially concerns the negotiations with the Melik of Saudi Arabia Fahd ibn abdul Aziz al-Saud.

We discussed the economic problems of Azerbaijan in the sitting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Saudi Arabia and held negotiation with Mr. Melik Fahd Ibn Aziz al-Saud. He charged the Haj minister give me information about that sitting of Ministry Cabinet, he noted that they had discussed the issue of the aggression of Armenia, occupation of our lands and exposed the position of Saudi Arabia in international organizations and international world. The position is that, Saudi Arabia and Melik Fahd Ibn Abdul Aziz al-Saud accuse Armenia for its aggression and consider that the captured lands must be liberated and the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan must be restored. The meeting the also discussed the question of the establishment of economical relations and it was decided that by the order of the president nowadays a group of delegation will be sent for collectively public, political and even economical information.The Group will look through our suggestion just on the spot. Melik will be informed about it and then Fahd ibn Abdul Aziz al-Saud will get some decisions about the economical relations with Azerbaijan.