As reported earlier, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has today accepted credentials of the newly appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Greece Nikolaos Piperigos.

AZERTAC publishes some excerpts from President Ilham Aliyev's remarks at the meeting.

“Frankly speaking, I think the last few years have seen very low levels of cooperation between us. We had more active contacts in the past. As you know, I have paid an official visit to your country, two presidents of Greece have paid official visits to Azerbaijan, and so has the prime minister of your country. However, these contacts stopped after the previous Greek government came to power, and this was an initiative of the Greek government. Thus, there are almost no active contacts at present. There is no exchange of delegations.”

“We need to think about how to plan on our cooperation in the future. Mr. Ambassador, I will speak to you openly. Of course, diplomats have their own style of communication. I studied at an institute that trains diplomats, so I know what diplomatic language is like. But I think that in order to have a clear idea of where we are, what we want and how we can move forward, it would be good if we know each other's positions.”