BELARUS: Azerbaijani President visits Belarus

Record ID: 218273

  • Title: BELARUS: Azerbaijani President visits Belarus
  • Date: 28th August 2012
  • Summary: VARIOUS HONOUR GUARD MARCHING IN FRONT OF ALIYEV AND LUKASHENKO BELARUS FLAG
  • Embargoed: 12th September 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Belarus
  • Country: Belarus
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAF3BN9HICRZJ21KBUXG9N5UHYZ
  • Story Text: Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko meets President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev who visits Belarus for bilateral talks on developing international cooperation and strengthening economic ties.


    Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev arrived in Belarus on Tuesday (August 28) on a two-day visit for talks on political and economic relations with the Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko.
    The leaders of the two post-Soviet republics signed a number of agreements on bilateral cooperation, after which Lukashenko announced that Aliyev would be awarded with the country's national Order of People's Friendship.
    The two leaders held talks in the presidential residence near Minsk, where Lukashenko thanked Azerbaijani President for his role in retaining the country's independence.
    "You have come to a very friendly country where you are loved and respected for the great deeds which you have done - sometimes not standard ones - to support our country in hard times, connected with the issues of our state independence. Not only I personally know and appreciate it very much, but the Belarussian people as well," Lukashenko told Aliyev, referring to the support Belarus got from Azerbaijan during tensions with Moscow over energy supplies.
    Azerbaijan supplies crude oil to Belarus on behalf of Venezuela since 2011, after a number of oil disputes with Russia prompted the country to diversify some of its sources of oil away from it's bigger neighbour.
    "I'm glad to visit your wonderful country again and to have an opportunity to discuss the issues on the vast agenda of our bilateral relations again. Before we start discussing the issues in particular, I want to express our attitude to your country, to your people, which is based both on historic roots and friendly feelings," Aliyev told Lukashenko in return.
    Azerbaijan continued its oil supplies to Belarus this year even though Minsk recently managed to reach a deal on oil exports duties with Moscow, cooling fears of an energy stand-off that could have hit supplies to Europe and rekindling relations that had gone cold.
    Lukashenko often manoeuvres between Moscow and Brussels, part of his strategy to play them off against each other to extract favours from both, according to Western observers.
    Russia, which has long subsidised the Belarussian welfare-state economy with cheap energy supplies, sees Belarus as a buffer against the West while the EU hopes to promote economic and political reforms in the nation of 10 million.
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