OREANDA-NEWS. July 22, 2009. President of Romania Trajan Basescu arrived in the Turkmen capital on the first official visit.

Vice Premier, Minister of Foreign Affairs R. Meredov and other official persons greeted the honorary guest at the Ashgabat International Airport decorated with the national flags of the two friendly countries.

The Romanian leader’s visit is a vivid illustration of the readiness of Romania and the European Union as well to bring the dialogue up to a higher level meeting the modern realities and mutual interests.

It is symbolical that during the NATO Summit in the capital of Romania last April President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov presented Turkmenistan’s firm position to abide by the policy of wide constructive cooperation in various formats and in the framework of the authoritative international organisations and associations as well.

Romania was the first country of the European Union that Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov visited as the leader of the Turkmen state. This fact testifies to the significance of the top level talks in Bucharest that focused on a broad range of the issues of further intergovernmental cooperation. The sides stated that on a basis of the priorities of social and economic development of the two countries, similarity of their views on the international political issues and existing profound economic potential this cooperation had every requisite to develop into large-scale partnership meeting the interests of the Turkmen and Romanian peoples.

Success of the top level talks in Bucharest, the agreements reached by the partners predetermined to a larger extent the dynamics of development of intergovernmental collaboration in a number of the field including trade and economy, fuel and energy sector, agriculture, construction, industry and other sector where concerting efforts is deemed most effective.

Humanitarian cooperation with the sphere of education as an essential component is quite illustrative. In the framework of the 2008-2012 programme of educational cooperation signed a year ago y the Ministry of Education of Turkmenistan and the Ministry of Education, Science and Youth of Romania 20 Turkmen students started to study at the Oil and Gas University in Romanian town of Ploesti – one of the leading educational establishments and oil and gas research centres in Europe last September.

Tourism industry is a very promising field for cooperation. As is known, this sector, which is a basic one in Romanian economy, is rapidly developed in Turkmenistan where the Avaza National Project is being implemented on the Caspian Sea coast on the initiative of President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. The Turkmen leader focused on the potential of cooperation in this sector during the visit to the world-known ski resort Sinaia – the pearl of the Carpathians.

These and many other issues of cooperation will be discussed during the top level talks in Ashgabat. The day before the Romanian President’s official visit to Turkmenistan the intergovernmental Turkmen-Romania commission for economic, scientific and technical cooperation held the first meeting in Ashgabat. The partners were unanimous that the commission played an important role in implementing the political agreements, promoted establishing long-term contacts between the ministries and departments and the business communities of the two countries. During the meeting the co-chairmen of the commission discussed in detail the potential and ways to diversify mutually advantageous partnership and expressed belief that the intergovernmental dialogue built on a long-term mutually advantageous basis would be maintained further.

In a word, there are enough requisites for intensifying constructive versatile cooperation between Turkmenistan and Romania. The most important of them is the positive intentions of the leaders of the two countries who are determined and willing to bring the intergovernmental dialogue up to a qualitatively new, higher level meeting mutual interests and potential.