OREANDA-NEWS. December 3, 2010. President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov had a meeting with President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy in the Kazakh capital, where he had participated in the Summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Exchanging hearty greeting s, the sides expressed satisfaction with an opportunity to discuss thoroughly particular aspects of Turkmenistan-EU cooperation and important issues of international politics of mutual interest during a personal meeting.

In this regard, Mr. Herman Van Rompuy emphasized that the European community welcomed the initiatives of the Turkmen leader, whose progressive policy had earned Turkmenistan high international prestige, aimed at promoting wide international cooperation.

Confirming that Europe remained a top priority of Turkmenistan’s foreign-policy strategy, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov highly evaluated the fruitful dialogue with the European Union established in recent years. The Turkmen leader emphasized that today Turkmenistan and the European Union effectively cooperated in many important spheres, including through the OSCE, the European Commission, the European Parliament and other authoritative institutions.

As is known, the main mission of the European Council is to develop guidelines and strategic vectors of integrated development of the EU. In this context the senior EU official expressed an unconditional interest of the European community in establishing firm and reliable relations with Turkmenistan, which used the most constructive approach to building an effective model of regional and interregional cooperation.

A fruitful exchange of views on further expansion of partnership between Turkmenistan and the EU in the whole spectrum of fields took place during the meeting. The sides were unanimous that a critical field that required concerted efforts was strengthening peace and global security, including energy security.

In this regard Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov said that Turkmenistan, which had world’s hydrocarbon resources, stood for building up the energy dialogue that was to facilitate developing the effective mechanisms for ensuring reliable and stable transit of energy to word markets. In particular, this was the initiatives put forward by the Turkmen leader at the Astana Summit was aimed at.

Sharing fully and supporting this position, the President of the European Council underscored considerable significance of energy projects promoted by Turkmenistan aiming to put its resource potential at the service of the international community and expressed utmost interest in implementing new joint projects that would certainly promote relations and mutual understanding between the neutral Turkmenistan, which played the key role in Central Asia, and EU member countries.

Upon concluding the meeting, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and Herman Van Rompuy expressed belief that the friendly, constructive dialogue between Turkmenistan and the European Union brought now to a qualitatively new level would be furthered successfully.