Thank you, Mr. President!
Firstly, I would like to express our appreciation for warm hospitality and also the invitation for me to attend the second conference—second CICA summit in Baku and official visit today.
We had earlier the meeting as the President have mentioned, we covered a wide range of issues that we can work together to improve bilateral cooperation. Plus, we have three agreements that we signed, which set up a platform for further engagement in trade, education, and other potential areas.
I agree with Mr. President that our commercial or trade relations and other relations is—still modest. We have over 30 years of relationship. We had a visit by Samdech Techo Hun Sen in 2014, which set up the roadmap for our engagement so far.
So, I am confident from my visit today on that we can work together to improve areas of trade relationship. For example, we agreed to have a framework agreement and which established the joint trade working group, which will work to implement and then agree on the concrete action to improve our trade relationship.
On the defense security and also on education that we have worked and we have discussed.
On the multilateral level, we reiterated our shared commitment to strengthen the cooperation across international platforms. We have been in the past, and Cambodia support Azerbaijan’s seat as observer for ASEAN and the engagement with the ASEAN community.
I think in the situation—the world situation has become very complex. Interaction between regions, between countries have become more important, especially in the international arena. So, in this case, Cambodia and Azerbaijan’s commitment to strengthen cooperation bilaterally will contribute to this multilateral engagement, also.
Other matters, I think President have well covered on all the issues that we have discussed. The next step is to find ways to work together to have what we discussed into turning into concrete action and real result on the ground.
This afternoon, I will have a chance to meet with the community from private sector of Azerbaijan, and we hope to invite the business delegation from Azerbaijan to Cambodia so to explore the opportunities. Because I think the private sector to private sector engagement is quite important in term of promoting the real opportunity and identifying real opportunities for investment connections.
We discussed also the possibility of having civil aviation to meet each other to discuss the possibility of establishing the agreement on the flight so that to facilitate more connectivity.
So, once again, Mr. President, I really appreciate your invitation. And on behalf of the people of Cambodia, I lwould ike to thank the government of Azerbaijan that in the past were support Cambodia especially in education, providing scholarships. And we hope to have more engagement in other sectors to follow.
So, before the end, I like to convey His Majesty King Norodom Sihamoni’s invitation for Your Excellency to visit Cambodia in the future so that we can have more discussion on the further cooperation between our two countries.
And once again, I wish you all the best as the chairmanship of the CICA summit in a few days.
Thank you!
