Montenegro Boosts Ties to Azerbaijan :: Balkan Insight

Igor Luksic, the Montenegrin Prime Minister, started his first official visit to Azerbaijan on Monday.

After a meeting with President Ilhman Aliyev, he said that Montenegro was determined to expand economic relations with Azerbaijan.

Last week, a representative of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic, SOCAR, signed an agreement for a 90-year lease of the former military barracks in Kumbor, on Montenegro?s coast, with Predrag Sekulic, Minister of Tourism.

The oil company promised to build a tourist resort at the site, investing more than 250 million euro over the next eight years.

The two officials on Monday welcomed the signing of this agreement and also talked about deepening co-operation in the field of energetics and trade.?

They also suggested opening direct or charter airplane connections between the two countries.?

In a recent interview with the daily newspaper Pobjeda, Eldar Hasanov, ambassador of Azerbaijan, said his country planned to invest in a number of social projects in the municipality of Herceg Novi and in the north.

Some Montenegrins, including Vanja Calovic, head of the NGO Network for Affirmation of Non-Governmental Sector, MANS, have criticized the moves. Calovic says that "instead of eliminating corruption in order to bring in serious investors, the government is focusing on firms from Azerbaijan." MANS has been one of the main organizers of frequent civic protests in Podgorica.

However, Dragoljub Jankovic, Dean of the Business School at the "Mediteran" university, said that fears that investors from certain countries are not ?clean" enough were unjustified.

?No matter from where they come, investors should be respected as far as their intentions do not interfere with politics," Jankovic added.

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Source: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/montenegro-foster-ties-with-azerbaijan

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