“During today’s meeting, we discussed all issues of interest to the sides, and party leaders had their say. There were different views, of course, but the common agreement was that the meeting between me, the representative of the Presidential Administration who is head of the structure working with political parties, and party leaders should be topical and continuous,” Ali Hasanov, Head of Political and Public Affairs Department at the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, said in his comments on the results of the meeting with a number of opposition party leaders.

The department head said this form of meetings will be held once every two months.

“We’ll discuss issues of concern to people, the government, and domestic and foreign institutes in a manner agreed beforehand,” said Ali Hasanov.

A. Hasanov noted that the issue of the meeting’s format was discussed too.

“We came to the decision that any party active in politics can participate in this meeting. Those invited here are the ones that are active. Some were absent, while they’d been invited. Perhaps there are some reasons they didn’t manage to join [the meeting]. They will probably join in future. Our doors are open for them,” he underlined.

According to the PA official, the other issue, which was agreed on, is to pre-define the topics to be discussed.

“It was decided to make a list of the topics to be discussed, send the list to all parties, and discuss a topic selected by the parties in the next meeting. A variety of topics including the Khojaly genocide and elections was offered. All the topics of socio-political nature were recommended for discussion. The other point that we agreed on, is to ensure the issues reviewed in the meeting to be mulled in the society as well. The position of the Azerbaijani government and President Ilham Aliyev is to ensure all institutions, NGOs, political organizations, media outlets to take part in formation and implementation of public policy, Azerbaijan to have transparent society and political reforms to be continued. In this regard, such meetings and discussions are important”, he completed.

More about: