OREANDA-NEWS. August 27, 2010. Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov met with Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Syrian Arab Republic Walid Al-Muallem. "We consider your visit to Ukraine as a benchmark for the political dialogue between our countries. I understand that the main purpose of your visit is to discuss with the Ukrainian side the organization of a visit to Ukraine of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad", the Prime Minister noted, adding that Ukraine will carefully consider all proposals of the Syrian side concerning the visit and will do everything possible the forthcoming visit of the Head of the Syrian state to be the most productive.

Mykola Azarov noted that the most effective and established inter-state mechanism, which allows to develop well not only trade and economic, but also other fields of our mutually beneficial cooperation with Syria is the Intergovernmental Ukrainian-Syrian commission on trade-economic and technical cooperation. The Head of the Government has announced that the next meeting of the commission will be held on November 1 in Kyiv.

The Prime Minister has stressed that he is ready to give instructions for preparing an agreement on free trade area between Ukraine and the Syrian Arab Republic, which can be initialed at a meeting on November 1. This agreement will promote bilateral trade and enhance trade and economic cooperation.

In turn, the Foreign Minister of Syria has said that his country is interested in bilateral cooperation with Ukraine, a number of joint investment projects, developing cooperation in maritime, railway links between the Baltic countries and so on. "We have the political will and instructions from the President of Syria to the Government of the state in order to build very good relations with Ukraine, as well as increase significantly our turnover", he said.