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Heads of Turkic-speaking Countries to Get Together in Baku in Summer

Politics Materials 6 May 2008 14:24 (UTC +04:00)

Azerbaijan, Baku, 6 May / corr. Trend M. Aliyev/ The heads of Turkic-speaking countries will gather in Baku in summer, Zakir Hashimov, the Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Turkey said to Trend on a telephone 6 May.

"The ninth meeting of the Turkic-speaking countries is scheduled to be held in Baku in June. The countries have already given their preliminary consent to participate in the summit," said Ambassador.

There are 6 independent Turkic-speaking countries including Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. About 20 autonomous Turkic states are part of the other world countries.

The participants of the summit believe the goal of the summit is to establish unified economic space on the basis of Turkic-speaking countries.

The first summit of head of the Turkic-speaking countries took place in 1992 in Ankara and later high level meetings were held in Istanbul, Bishkek, Astana and Baku. The last but one summit was held in Istanbul in 2001 and after a 5-year break, the heads of the Turkic-speaking countries got together in Turkey in 2006 once again

During the last summit the president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev proposed to establish inter-parliament assembly of the Turkic-speaking states. According to the Kazakh president, the Assembly should be supplemented with the Council of Elders of the Turkic-speaking nations which should include authoritative people in the Turkish world, as well as renowned political, public and cultural figures. He proposed Suleymn Demiral as a candidate to the post of the chairman of the Council.

The Parliament Assembly (PA) is expected to consist of the Turkish nations living in various world countries. "They include South Azerbaijanis living in Iran, Turkic people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine and Russia," Nizami Jafarov, head of the working group of the Azerbaijani parliament in relations with Turkey said to Trend earlier.

Sayad Alasgarov, the national secretary of the working group from Azerbaijan to establish a PA of the Turkic-speaking countries said to Trend that 'there is disagreement among Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey and Kazakhstan. Therefore, these counters refuse to join the Parliament Assembly of the Turkic-speaking countries'.

At present, talks are being held regarding Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan's joining the PA of the Turkic- speaking countries.

The correspondent can be contacted at: [email protected]

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