AZERBAIJAN WANTS TO STRENGTHEN MILITARY CO-OPERATION WITH PAKISTAN
Trend News Agency
July 7 2008
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan wants to strengthen military co-operation with Pakistan.
"Pakistan has large experience in training personnel, military
technical training. Azerbaijan wants to use this experience," the
first Vice-Speaker of Azerbaijan Parliament, Chairman of Standing
Commission on Security Affairs and Defence, Ziyafyat Askerov, said
at the meeting with the Chairman of the Foreign Committee of Senate
of Pakistan on 7 July.
There is an agreement on bilateral co-operation between the Ministers
of Defence of Azerbaijan and Pakistan. The Ministry of Defence of
Azerbaijan co-operates with 50 countries.
Askerov noted that Azerbaijan and Pakistan successfully co-operate
in many spheres, including in the military and military technical
areas. According to him, Azerbaijan closely co-operates with Pakistan
in combating international terrorism.
The Chairman of the Foreign Committee of Senate of Pakistan, Mushahid
Hussein Said, said from the point of view of security, Azerbaijan
with Pakistan faces similar problems. "Both countries sustained
aggression of other country. For a period of long years, the fair
has not been able to triumph in Nagorno-Karabakh and Kashmir, and the
resolutions by the UN Security Council are not fulfilled. Therefore
it is important to strengthen co-operation," Said noted. He said that
unless the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is regulated, Pakistan will have
no relations with Armenia, because it is an aggressor country.
The conflict between the two countries of the South Caucasus began in
1988 due to Armenian territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan
lost the Nagorno-Karabakh, except of Shusha and Khojali, in December
1991. In 1992-93, Armenian Armed Forces occupied Shusha, Khojali and
Nagorno-Karabakh’s seven surrounding regions. In 1994, Azerbaijan
and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement at which time the active
hostilities ended. The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Russia,
France, and the US) are currently holding peaceful, but fruitless
negotiations.