Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is paying a working visit to Ulyanovsk, where he has spent the day with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev welcomed Aliyev at Ulyanovsk airport, RIA Novosti reported. The presidents left the airport together in the same car.
They attended a ceremony to open the upper deck of a bridge across the Volga in Ulyanovsk.
Medvedev said construction of the bridge began in the early 1980s. He said that the then first deputy chairman of the USSR Politburo, Heydar Aliyev, was directly involved in the decision to construct the bridge. Medvedev said he was glad that Heydar Aliyev's son, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, could attend the opening ceremony.
The two presidents laid flowers at Heydar Aliyev’s memorial in Ulyanovsk and met representatives of the Azerbaijani diaspora who attended the ceremony. The diaspora representatives said there is an Azerbaijani school, football team and music groups in Ulyanovsk.
Aliyev said he is "happy that Azerbaijanis preserve their traditions, remember their state figures and at the same time are good citizens of the country where they live”.
Bilateral meeting
The Russian and Azerbaijani presidents think that ties between the two countries are an example of neighbourly, friendly relations. Opening their bilateral meeting, Medvedev said the new bridge in Ulyanovsk, Heydar Aliyev’s memorial and the square named after Heydar Aliyev are all symbols of friendship and show how relations should be built in the post-Soviet area.
“We can calmly and fruitfully discuss our economic and political problems, discuss complex regional problems,” Medvedev said.
Ilham Aliyev said that “if everyone in the world had such relations as those between Russia and Azerbaijan, there would never be any problems".
He said that “the newly opened bridge and the memorial show that Heydar Aliyev is remembered and this shows the level of our relations”.
Earlier the Russian and Azerbaijani presidents visited an exhibition of advanced transport technology.
They looked at a transport system based on GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System) technology. The presidents were shown a sample city, in which the system enables the location of one of its vehicles to be shown at any time, for example, snow ploughs, and their speed and operation to be determined. A video signal can be received from the vehicle in real time.
Interfax-Azerbaijan APA