President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama, who is on an official visit to the country, have held a one-on-one meeting.

Welcoming the Albanian Prime Minister, President Ilham Aliyev said:

Mr. Prime Minister, Welcome to Azerbaijan. I am very glad to see you. Very good opportunity to see each other to discuss important issues on our agenda. Your visit once again demonstrates the high level of political dialogue between our countries. We met many times and also communicated by telephone, also during the international events always used opportunity to see each other. I am sure the visit will give a new impetus to our bilateral ties. Also we will discuss issues of regional development, issues which is now on top agenda of the world. Coming to bilateral relations, I was looking at some information, of course, we need to work harder on increasing our trade turnover. It is very modest but I think there is a potential to increase. We will discuss it today and, of course, our cooperation in energy sector. Because already for more than a year Azerbaijan became exporter of natural gas to Europe and Albania always was supporting this initiative. Your high level representatives always participated in the meetings of the South Gas Corridor Advisory Council and contributed a lot to implementation of this project. So we are in one team of countries which implemented successfully this historical project and the importance of the Southern Gas Corridor and Trans Adriatic Pipeline, in particular, I think now is more visible than ever before. This is a very good sector of our cooperation which has a big potential to grow. Our representatives having their meetings on the bigger portfolio of our energy cooperation consisting of natural gas, transit, supplies also electric energy and it really could be a big part of our bilateral agenda. I am sure that what is now in the process of negotiations will result in new development. Also I think there is a good chance to talk about opportunities for mutual investments, of course tourism opportunities. I think we can provide our citizens different types of touristic opportunities. And in general, we look broader at our partnership to give a push and to see good results in the future.

So I am very glad to see you and once again welcome.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama said:

-Thank you, Mr. President. It is a real pleasure to be here and first and foremost at a time when you successfully brought back a part of your country that was for so many years in a situation that became unbearable. As you know both in the capacity of a chairman of the OSCE and now in the capacity of a member of the UN Security Council, Albania has been, it is and will be fully supportive of Azerbaijan, of truth and historical rights of Azerbaijan. Also, last but not least, we very much praise your incredibly exemplary efforts for peace and longstanding cooperation with your neighbor Armenia. At the same time we are both blessed to have a very strong bridge as Turkey and I strongly believe that we can do more as you mentioned various potential increase of our cooperation and for sure I am very much looking forward for your view and prospects and also to see what our mutual teams will come out with both in the energy sector and in tourism.

We are looking forward to your visit to Albania, now COVID has somehow smoothened, so the way is open.

Thank you very much, Mr. President, again for this very warm hospitality we felt since the first step after we landed in this beautiful capital city of yours.

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President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev then had a working dinner with Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama.