BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 27. I think that there are chances for normalization of relations between Israel and Syria, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with Saudi TV channel Al-Arabiya, Trend reports.
''First, I'd like to respond to your comments about natural gas to Syria. You know, we didn't have any relations with the government of President Assad for more than a decade. They treated Azerbaijan in a very unfair way in our confrontation with Armenia, and they took the Armenian side, which, for us, was very strange. This was because we enjoyed strong support from Muslim countries during the years of occupation, and the Islamic Cooperation Organization always supported us. Azerbaijan is a country that highly values the principles of Islamic solidarity. So aligning with Armenia against Azerbaijan, aligning with a country that demolished mosques and kept pigs and cows in mosques, was unacceptable for us. So both sides, the team of President Assad and our team, cut all contacts for more than a decade. When the new government in Syria came to power, we were very enthusiastic about that, and definitely we supported it. I had a meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Türkiye this April, and invited him to visit Azerbaijan, and he came on an official visit. We started to provide humanitarian assistance to Syria. I sent a big team to Syria, led by the Deputy Prime Minister, to see how we could be helpful, and what we could do. We only want peace for this country, for these people who suffered for so many years, and we want them to live in peace and see development there. This started, and then the issue of shortage of electricity came to our attention, and we started to think about how we could be helpful. We had a trilateral and even quadrilateral arrangement between Azerbaijan, Syria, Türkiye, and Qatar, in order to help Syria with natural gas for conversion into electricity. So the ceremony marking the start of that process took place on the second of August. Azerbaijani gas, through Türkiye, is coming to Syria, and the Qatari government was so generous as to provide funds for that. So far, we have agreed on about 1.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Syria, but their demands are higher. So in the future, we can increase the volume of gas so that they experience fewer shortages.
In the meantime, negotiations between officials from Israel and Syria took place with our mediation. We want peace around us. We, as a country and people who have suffered from aggression, from war, understand what it is to be a refugee, what it is to be homeless, not to have gas, electricity, water, or food. We actually became, already for many years, a donor country. We provide financial support, humanitarian support, to almost 100 countries, more than 80 countries. So our goal was only to help, to achieve normalization, and to create a predictable situation between Israel and Syria. If we have helped even a little, we are happy with that. We see that there is a potential for normalization, and that will bring additional elements of peace and predictability to the Middle East,'' the head of state noted.