Italian ambassador highlights growing cooperation with Azerbaijan amid peace progress

Italian Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Luca Di Gianfrancesco, highlighted the significant potential for cooperation between Azerbaijan and Italy, particularly in the context of the ongoing peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Speaking to Italian media on the sidelines of the States General of Diplomacy at the Farnesina, Di Gianfrancesco emphasized that the evolving peace process opens up promising opportunities for both countries and their international partners. He underlined Italy's crucial role in Azerbaijan, where it is the leading trade partner and a key energy supplier, while also noting the growing potential for broader economic, cultural, and academic collaboration, Caliber.Az reports.

“The negotiation between Armenia and Azerbaijan "is a very important development, because a new phase of peace and tranquillity opens up very interesting prospects first of all for the two countries involved, but also of course for all those partners who are interested in the stability of the region and also in the advancement of certain regional dossiers, including those of economic cooperation,” Ambassador Di Gianfrancesco said.

“From this point of view, Italy has a very important role to play, first of all in Azerbaijan where we are already the country's leading trade partner by far and it is a country, as you know, that is very important for us because it is, among other things, also our leading energy supplier if we consider oil & gas together, he noted.

“Between the two countries political relations are very intense, we have had numerous visits over the course of this year and they are a very important precondition also for advancing on the front of economic and cultural relations. Because if we wanted to summarise, we could say that Azerbaijan never has to be just energy, but can be much more than that: economy, investment, both in Azerbaijan by our companies but also with growing interest from the Azerbaijani side in Italy, and also academic and cultural cooperation,” the ambassador added.

By Vafa Guliyeva