Wed 10 March 2010 | 08:56 GMT Text size:

Maxim Minchev

News.Az interviews Maxim Minchev, general director of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency.

I would like to start to the interview without a question! This has been my third visit to Baku in the past five years and I was lucky to meet your president, Ilham Aliyev. The first visit took place in autumn 2007 when AzerTaj and BTA signed a contract on exchanging information. At that time I was a member of the delegation of the Bulgarian president. I was impressed that your president spoke Azerbaijani.

In autumn 2008 I had my second visit to Baku as the general director of BTA. At that time Baku was hosting a meeting of the heads of information agencies of the Asia Pacific region. The agencies of most countries including Bulgaria were represented there. We had a meeting with President Aliyev at the presidential palace, he received the heads of all delegations and spoke a great deal about Azerbaijan's economy, the political system, living standards, the goals of the government and current life in Azerbaijan. I was impressed that your president spoke English to all the delegations.
 
And when on 11 March I attended the 90th anniversary of AzerTaj, we again had the honour of meeting President Aliyev, where he had a long and substantial conversation with us in Russian. It means that I had three meetings with Ilham Aliyev and every time he spoke different languages - Azerbaijani, English and Russian. I have always been very impressed by him as a state figure, who seems to be regulating his country very well.

I was also impressed by dramatic changes in Baku in the 18 months since my last visit. Extensive construction, new buildings, new streets, new modern villas can be seen here. The country seems to be developing  by the hour and it is really impressive. I am impressed by the scale of construction and scale of change in the city and I do hope that the quality of life and living conditions are changing along with the city.
 
Do you think the collapse of the USSR led to a gap in the exchange of information between Bulgaria and the post-Soviet countries, including Azerbaijan? You said earlier that BTA and AzerTaj signed agreements on exchanging information in 2004. Has this promoted contact?
 
You have asked two important questions. First of all, a vacuum certainly appeared after the collapse of the system and the USSR, since Bulgaria and the USSR had been members of the Warsaw Pact. It was especially obvious in the first two to three years. I would say the vacuum lasted from 1989 until 1992-93 when there was a serious lack of information. But at that time all our countries, including Bulgaria and Azerbaijan which had become independent, Russia, Poland, Moldova or Uzbekistan were all dealing mostly with their own issues. Soviet Azerbaijan had given way to the modern state of Azerbaijan, which already had its independent foreign policy and economic reference point.

When Bulgaria left the Socialist commonwealth, it turned towards NATO and EU membership. Today Bulgaria is a NATO member and a member of the European family which helps its further development. So in those years we really had a lack of information and were reluctant to look for it. Then when our countries started to develop institutions, it became clear to us that we could not do without this information.
 
Numerous information agencies and national mass media have emerged from the once powerful TASS and Bulgaria tried to set ties with our partners in different regions. This is what happened to Azerbaijan. Bulgaria and Azerbaijan established diplomatic ties, we started to conduct free trade, started to develop information and cultural exchange, economic cooperation, as is usual between independent states. And all those agreements that were signed in the political and economic areas would have been ineffective, had it not been for the agreement on information exchange.
 
I would like to tell you about a small peculiarity, but in fact it is great. If the contract between BTA and AzerTaj had been signed 20 years ago when we were inside the socialist camp, this would have been a pompous agreement ‘on paper’. It would have meant nothing in reality.
 
Let’s admit that Azerbaijan is not interested in everyday news in Bulgaria. And we are not interested in everyday news in Azerbaijan either. This is natural because it is daily life. For example, you are not interested in everyday news in Portugal, Denmark  or Vietnam. However, the existence of this information channel helps us get photos from AzerTaj which we often use. When something connected with our countries occurs, we make active use of information received through this channel. When government sessions are held, when ministers pay visits and when cultural and sporting events take place, we use these contacts and they help us very much, even economically. For example, when a Bulgarian minister attends an event in Baku, we do not send our correspondent here, but use the photos from AzerTaj. Sometimes, we call our colleagues and ask them to provide specific information about an event, send photos about the official representative of our country who is visiting Azerbaijan, or we may be interested in a Bulgarian exhibition in Baku. It means that today these channels are used very actively, unlike in the past ones when it was all just a matter of ticking boxes. I am very satisfied with the level of cooperation and exchange of information between our countries.
 
What's your opinion of the current level of relations between Bulgaria and Azerbaijan?
 
Bulgaria and Azerbaijan have traditionally good relations. I am not saying this just for show. To be honest, Bulgaria and Tajikistan do not have such close relations as Bulgaria and Azerbaijan. First of all, this is connected with the geographical proximity of our countries. We are separated just by Turkey or, roughly speaking, the Black Sea. We should not forget the traditions that we had in the times of Soviet Azerbaijan. I remember that we had hundreds of Azerbaijani students who graduated from the University of Sofia and very many Bulgarian citizens studied at the literature faculty in Baku. There was an exchange of students.

We have established serious economic cooperation. Azerbaijan is a state with rich natural resources including oil and gas and our countries also have oil pipelines. In turn, Bulgaria also occupies a strategically important place in the Balkans and is a transit state. It all encourages the development of strong ties between our two countries in the economic sense. And we also have good political relations. It means that I cannot single out any special sphere because Bulgaria and Azerbaijan maintain comprehensive cooperation. The fact that we have an embassy here and that Sofia has an Azerbaijani diplomatic mission – I know the Azerbaijani ambassador in Bulgaria – as well as the existing high-level dialogue – I have been with our president in Azerbaijan and Ilham Aliyev has paid a visit to Bulgaria – all prove normal,  and good relations. I am confident that they help both countries live well not only now but also in the future.
 
Anyway, my colleagues and I, Azerbaijani journalists, meet on a high level at least six times a year. Together with our friends from Azerbaijan we attended a big conference in Bulgaria in November last year. Before that we had been in Switzerland, Croatia, which means that we meet regularly. Now we are in Baku and in a couple of months we are planning to gather again in Budapest.
 
Probably, the media should interact not only in the sense of information exchange but also assist each other in resolving the common and individual problems that our countries face. You may know about Azerbaijan's most pressing problem, Karabakh. 

Yes, I do know. Everyone has problems if we look at different regions. This is connected not only with political processes but also with natural disasters. For example, a devastating earthquake has occurred in Chile. The European commissioner, that is the Bulgarian minister leading the institution dealing with natural disasters, Kristalina Georgieva, has left for Chile to sort out issues European Union assistance for the reconstruction of infrastructure. One can say that Chile is a long way away, but the direct participation of Bulgaria in the resolution of the problems facing the country is clear. 

You settle your regional problems, both economic and political, with neighbours and your historical problems and you get support. The media are of great significance for several reasons. The first is that the world has changed so much that we now feel and see that almost all political processes in the world are regulated by the media. If an event is not shown on television or covered by news agencies, it may seem unreal. Barack Obama became president thanks to Facebook and the spread of information. The war in Iraq mostly occurred because of television. It means that the mass media today are so active that they are active participants in political and economic processes. In this sense, they have a powerful responsibility, because unlike 20 years ago, when problems were settled with the use of political mechanisms of influence, diplomacy, pressure or military actions, the media can today provide real assistance. In this sense, cooperation is very important, because when the media of different countries unite, their strength increases.

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