According to Mr. Mamedyarov, during the visit he will discuss implementation of the Baku declaration of January 9, 2001; the Moscow declaration of February 6, 2004; as well as other agreements concluded between the two countries.
In focus will be the settlement of the Nadorny Karabakh conflict, Mr. Mamedyarov said.
"Azerbaijan seriously hopes that Russia as a co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk group will take all effort for the soonest peaceful settlement of the conflict on the basis of the international law with observation of the territorial integrity of the states in the region", the Azeri foreign minister stressed.
As regards economic cooperation, he noted that "formation of the common economic space depends on the establishment of a free trade zone".
" Azerbaijan together with the CIS partners takes an active part in the development and realization of measures aimed at stage-wise elimination of barriers in mutual trade, creation of an efficient payments-accounting system, formation of a corresponding legal base", he emphasized.
Speaking about cooperation within the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Elmar Mamedyarov noted that the CIS "is a mechanism for consultations, exchange of opinions and decision-making in different areas of joint activities".
He stressed that the further development of cooperation within the CIS framework consists, in the idea of Azerbaijan, in "the need of search for an optimal combination of many-sided and bilateral forms of interaction above all in the economic sphere, improvement of the CIS activities and continuation of structural reforms aimed at converting the Commonwealth into a mechanism corresponding tothe modern geopolitical realia".
Mr. Mamedyarov drew the attention to the fact that "within the CIS framework Azerbaijan is not participating in matters of collective security, peacekeeping activities and some other forms of cooperation".
"In these spheres, Azerbaijan is carrying out interaction with many CIS countries on the bilateral basis. Thus, military-technical interaction between Azerbaijan and Russia has been noticeably reinvigorated since 2001," he explained.
As regards the possibility of Azerbaijan's participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Mr. Mamedyarov said that "this question was not presently on the government's agenda".
