Poland Lends Support to Azerbaijan in Energy, Foreign Minister Says

Poland fully supports Azerbaijan's efforts to diversify the gas market, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has said on a visit to Azeri capital Baku.

The visit to Azerbaijan by the Foreign Minister was to mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of political relations between the two countries. Energy was one of the main topics of discussion, Minister Sikorski told reporters today, discussed at several meetings in the Baku.

"Energy was one of the main topics of our meetings in Baku," the Trend news agency reports him as saying. "Poland supports the diversification of gas supply routes to Europe."

Energy talks were initited between Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and Azeri Minister of Foreign Affairs Elmar Mammadyarov, a statement released today on the website for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. These talks included discussion of sale, growth and cooperation between the two countries.

At the meeting with Minister Mammadyarov, Minister Sikorski said that gas consumption was set to rise among several countries who might be well served by Azerbaijan's energy capabilities. These countries include the four countries in the Visegrád group (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary), he said, as well as Romania and Bulgaria.

"This group [the Visegrád group] plus Bulgaria and Romania could increase their consumption of gas by tens of billions of cubic meters per year," Minister Sikorski said. "It seems to me that this creates interesting business opportunities for Azerbaijan."