Turan News Agency
14, January 2008

Baku, 14 January: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev received the US delegation led by Senator Richard Lugar yesterday. The head of state noted the successful development of cooperation between the USA and Azerbaijan in all spheres. Aliyev expressed his confidence in the future development of Azerbaijani-US cooperation, noting that this would contribute to the security of whole region.

In turn, Lugar said that strong bonds of partnership tied the USA and Azerbaijan. He highly assessed Azerbaijan's active participation in the antiterror coalition.

The delegation led by Lugar will hold talks with the leaders of the Azerbaijani opposition, MPs, heads of SOCAR [State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic] and the State Oil Fund.

On 14 Jan opposition Baki Xabar newspaper reported that "political analyst Ilqar Mammadov has told BBC [Azeri service] that the impact of regional processes is behind the consecutive visits by the Americans to Azerbaijan. He thinks that the Tbilisi government promoted its policy to join NATO after the latest election in Georgia. 'Following Tbilisi, the Americans want also Baku to chose NATO,' he said."; The delegation led by the head of a working group on Azerbaijan of the House of Representatives of the US Congress, Bill Shuster, and the delegation led by the chairman of the Europe subcommittee of the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressman Robert Wexler, visited Azerbaijan on 9 and 11 January respectively