THE TERRITORY OF INTEGRATION

The leaders from three continents have made visits to Baku in recent days. The Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro and the Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović discussed with the Azerbaijani leadership the development of bilateral relations and the issues extremely relevant to regional and world politics and economy. The results of these visits have reaffirmed Azerbaijan's growing authority and weight in the international arena.

Friends-allies

Azerbaijan and Pakistan have long established strong friendly ties expressed in mutual support in all matters vital for the future of our peoples. Islamabad's position on the Karabakh issue means a lot for Azerbaijan. Pakistan still has not recognized Armenia as an independent state due to the occupation of the one fifth of Azerbaijani territories. During his visit to Baku, the Prime Minister of Pakistan Muhammad Nawaz Sharif reiterated his country's position, advocating for full and unconditional liberation of all occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Also, he praised the support of Azerbaijan to Pakistan regarding the Kashmir conflict, which the former believes should be resolved peacefully based on UN Security Council’s resolutions. “The mutual support on the Kashmir and Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts proves the mutual understanding and identical positions between our countries”, stated Sharif.

Meanwhile, the strategic alliance between Azerbaijan and Pakistan is not limited to the political sphere. Both parties believe that the current level of trade turnover between the two countries does not reflect the potential of bilateral cooperation. Therefore, Baku and Islamabad intend to expand the cooperation in various areas including but not limited to trade, energy, agriculture, industry, science, and culture. “We need to expand our economic cooperation, cooperation in the investment sphere, to develop mutual trade turnover, to pay greater attention to humanitarian issues, and to conduct an extensive and fruitful cooperation”, said President Aliyev.

In evaluating the current level and prospects of the Azerbaijani-Pakistani cooperation, it is important to consider the civilizational dimension. Both countries are among the most respected countries in the Islamic world. Pakistan is the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons. Azerbaijan also demonstrates globally the successful model of a secular state in the country with traditional Islamic culture, being a unique spot of multiculturalism and inter-civilizational dialogue. In addition, Azerbaijan is one of the most rapidly developing countries of the Muslim world. “The development and achievements of Azerbaijan are a source of pride for all Muslim countries and an example of governance for many developing countries”, said Nawaz Sharif during his visit to Baku.

It is worth noting that Pakistan has long been keeping the friendly ties with Azerbaijan. The outcomes of Nawaz Sharif’s visit is good reason to believe that the expansion of alliance between Azerbaijan and Pakistan is turning into one of the most important factors in geopolitics plagued by numerous conflicts and contradictions in Eurasia.

Driven by energy

Following the leader of one of the leading powers of Asia, the president of a distant Latin American country, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, visited Baku. President Ilham Aliyev invidted his Venezuelan counterpart on October 10, 2016 in Istanbul, where the both leaders attended the World Energy Congress. However, Mr. Maduro had his own motives for negotiations with the Azerbaijani leadership, which have coincided, in a certain sense, with the interests of Azerbaijan. The topic of discussions was the situation in the global energy market, which requires stable oil prices. Caracas is making considerable efforts to convince the OPEC member- and non-member-states, the need to restore the old pricing trends in the global oil market. To this end, Maduro has made visits to a number of oil-producing countries, including Azerbaijan.

In Baku, the Venezuelan president proposed to develop a new formula for the oil price determination to stabilize the prices for the next 10 years. According to him, as a short-term solution (within six months), it is important to stabilize the oil market, and then to develop a new mechanism for determining the oil price and the formula to stabilize them for the next decade. In this regard, Venezuela expects to conclude agreements with other oil-producing countries to stabilize the world oil prices. Mr. Maduro acknowledged that it was very important not only for the global economy, but also for the Venezuelan. It is known that due to the fall in world oil prices, the country faces a severe economic crisis. The growing protests threaten the authorities led by left-wing forces under Maduro. Therefore, the Venezuelan government is vitally interested at least in a relative recovery of the former price level, and therefore offers the oil-producing countries the reduction of oil volumes globally.

The current situation with global oil prices caused some damage to the economy of Azerbaijan. Therefore, Baku supported the idea of Nicolas Maduro in principle. Moreover, after the talks with the Venezuelan president, Mr. Aliyev said that Azerbaijan was ready to unilaterally stop the increase of oil production, i.e. without waiting for the other producers. At the same time, he expressed hope that other oil-producing countries would support this approach.

The positions of Azerbaijan and Venezuela are very important in the context of the OPEC decision taken at an informal meeting in Algeria on September 28. The member organizations agreed to limit the oil production to 32.5 million barrels per day. However, so far no specific limitations, that would satisfy each of the member-states, have been achieved. It is likely that the final decision will be taken at the next OPEC meeting in Vienna on November 30, 2016.

According to the Venezuelan president, the OPEC countries and oil-producing states that are not members of this organization are close to signing an agreement on oil prices. Azerbaijan, as one of the largest oil-producing countries in the Caspian basin, and the initiator and the drive behind many energy projects in the Eurasian crossroads, made it clear that the country was ready to join the OPEC decision regarding the level of oil production.

The European dimension

The official visit of the Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović to Azerbaijan had a distinct European dimension. It marked a major breakthrough in bilateral relations, and also showed that the cooperation between Azerbaijan and Croatia turns into a significant factor of integration in the south-east Europe.

Both presidents support the idea of deepening and broadening bilateral cooperation. But the basis to the revitalised Azerbaijani-Croatian cooperation will be the energy sphere.

On the eve of her visit to Baku, Ms. Kitarovic was interviewed by Caspian Energy. She has re-expressed Croatia’s interest in strengthening cooperation with Azerbaijan in the energy sector, namely under the umbrella of the Southern Gas Corridor. Partly, this project assumes the construction of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which should ensure the transportation of natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. As is known, Brussels considers TAP as one of the significant energy projects for the EU. Recently, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the upcoming construction of the Ionian-Adriatic Pipeline (IAP), which is supposed to connect to the TAP.

President Aliyev has made a statement for the press, where he has expressed his satisfaction with the fact that the Southern Gas Corridor is becoming a reality. “I hope that at a later stage of the project, Croatia and other Balkan countries will also join this significant project aimed at ensuring the energy security, diversification and cooperation”, said Ilham Aliyev.

During the visit, the Croatian President discussed the prospects of cooperation in other sectors of the economy. Azerbaijan is interested in the experience of Croatia in terms of the development of non-oil sector. Hence the attractiveness of Zagreb’s proposal to strengthen the cooperation in the fields of transport and construction, as well as the use of the Croatian territory, especially the seaports for shipping to Azerbaijani products to the Western Europe.

The Azerbaijani-Croatian business forum dedicated to the visit of Ms. Kitarovic to Baku supported the initiatives on increasing trade between the two countries and strengthening their roles in the new Silk Road - a transport corridor between the East and the West, as well as developing cooperation in the fields of culture, education, and tourism.

However, the full implementation of all these plans is possible only if a lasting peace is achieved in the South Caucasus, particularly the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Ms. Kitarović expressed her country’s support for relevant UN resolutions and called for a political solution to the problem based on the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Zagreb’s position on this issue means that Azerbaijan has gained yet another friendly country of Croatia, which expresses the unacceptability of the Armenian aggression to security interests not only of the South Caucasus region, but also throughout Europe.

Successfully implementing an independent and balanced policy in the international arena, Azerbaijan hereby confirms itself as an important player in regional integration processes on the continent linking the strategically important geo-economic areas.