Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov believes the Inter-parliamentary Forum of Central Asia and Russia will raise relations between the states to a brand new level, the message by the Turkmen leader to the participants of the Inter-Parliamentary Forum of Central Asia and the Russian Federation, which opens in Ashgabat on Thursday, reads.
"The inter-parliamentary forum held in the region for the first time in the Central Asia-Russian Federation format will be important in the transition to a qualitatively new level of traditionally friendly Turkmen-Russian, Turkmen-Kazakh, Turkmen-Kyrgyz, Turkmen-Tajik, Turkmen-Uzbek relations," Berdimuhamedov said in a statement published on the website of the State News Agency of Turkmenistan.
"Mutually beneficial cooperation, which originates from the commonality of spiritual and cultural values, is a solid foundation of relations between the Russian Federation and the countries of Central Asia. Our peoples are linked by historical roots that go back centuries, the bonds of primordial good-neighborliness, friendship and brotherhood," Berdimuhamedov stressed.
"Interparliamentary cooperation, which is an integral part of the interstate relations between Turkmenistan and the Russian Federation, is becoming more and more active in recent years," the Turkmen leader said.
He expressed confidence that "this forum will be an effective platform to exchange views, and by strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation between the Central Asian countries and the Russian Federation, it will serve the further development of constructive multilateral relations between our countries".
The First Inter-Parliamentary Forum of Central Asian countries and the Russian Federation opens Thursday in the capital of Turkmenistan, as well as the plenary session of the Women`s Dialogue. A delegation of the Federation Council headed by Valentina Matvienko, chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament, left for Ashgabat on Wednesday to participate in the forum. During her visit, she will also meet with the leadership of Turkmenistan.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: Vladimir Smirnov/TASS
Based on materials from TASS