I would like to also express my gratitude to the Prime Minister first, for having these discussions. I am very happy to met you because I have known your country for a long time for being very good friends to Romania. It is my first visit to Baku but of course I want to come for a longer time. We had a very good meeting and discussion with your President this morning, about the excellent political relations between the two countries.
Romania is one if not the only member of the European Union having a special relationship with Azerbaijan, and we have always acted as your best friend in Europe and we want to remain like this. The political relationship will develop in all aspects; the Romanian Embassy here in Baku is also the representative point of NATO. You can always count on the positive role of Romania regarding the Eastern partnership between the European Union and the six countries, including yours. My strong message was that after this excellent political relationship, we should also have a successful economic relationship.
We have learnt of course about the decision regarding the southern corridor of gas, we understand the economic motivation of choosing TAP not NABUCCO, but even more, because of this development on the Southern Corridor project, we must have some other economic successful projects.
I have mentioned in our discussions with your President but of course, we will go into details with the Government, two possible projects: one is AGRI project concerning Azerbaijan, Georgia and Romania and I think it is time to go further with this project which is a medium and long project, and the second project is the involvement of your national company, SOCAR in very concrete investments in Romania. I hope your Minister of Energy will come to Romania in September for very concrete talks on this project. I can also assure you that you will have all the support of the Romanian Government and my personal involvement in these two projects. I think that excellent political relationships will always be followed by economic projects.
I would also mention in the end some other areas of cooperation, first we always speak about economic and political issues, but I am also glad to hear that the cultural relations are improving, and I was very proud to be informed by our Ambassador that one of our artists, singer Mandinga is very famous and popular in Azerbaijan. We should include her in our delegation in order to have success; maybe she is better than the politicians.
Once again, I would like to thank you for this meeting, I am very optimistic that we can advance in a very pragmatic way with the economic projects and the other projects, and, because you personally expressed your warm feelings about Romania, I am sure you will also get involved in having these successful projects. We look forward to having your President coming to Romania … Thank you very much.