Baltic-Caspian Amber Route reaches Azerbaijan

On May 25 - 27 members of the Eastern Investigational Business-Cultural Expedition Amber Route BC will be in the Republic of Azerbaijan, visiting from Lithuania. The expedition started in Vilnius on May 23 and by 10 June it will have traversed Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. The principal object of the expedition is the ancient Amber Trade Route.

The members of the expedition, which was organised on the initiative of the Baltic, Atlantic and Mediterranean Trade and Investment Council (BAMTIC), will be trying to revive an ancient trade route that existed for many centuries and was known in history as the Amber Route. It used to connect Lithuania with a number of other European countries, including countries in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea regions. As times changed, and economic and political régimes along with them, the once famous and important trade and international relations route got covered in the dust of history.

The ten-member expedition team, composed of archaeologists, business leaders and professionals from the fields of law, science, culture and journalism will not just revive history as they search for new historical facts and evidence, but they will also try to give the Amber Route a new and contemporary content by establishing as many new mutually beneficial partnership and cooperation links as possible in the fields of business, science and culture. The expedition leader, BAMTIC President Rokas Volungevi?ius, says both regions, the Baltic and the Caspian, as well as both countries, Lithuania and Azerbaijan, are interesting to each other not only as countries of ancient history and deep culture and tradition, or the links that once existed between them. He is convinced that today the Amber Route BC is a road of unused opportunities providing great perspectives and that cooperation between the countries would undoubtedly be useful and effective, assisting development, business, investment and culture and helping the countries to grow.

That is precisely why a large amount of attention during the expedition will be directed to specific meetings with leaders of the countries' Government institutions and with specific experts in particular fields, also to information gathering and sharing.

The Amber Route BC project was born from a private initiative, but it has grown into a long-term international project. In Lithuania, several Ministries, embassies of foreign countries, influential cultural institutions and the media have become partners of the Amber Route BC project. Partners in the other Baltic countries have taken an interest in the project idea and they support it.


Over the next few years it is planned to undertake several more investigational business-cultural expeditions, which could open up new possibilities of renewing the links between these nations and countries.

We hope to find similar support and enthusiasm to take part in the Amber Route BC project among new partners in your country. To this end we have planned an intensive and full expedition program, consisting of meetings with representatives from the fields of science/learning, business, culture and history. Let's hope that these contacts will become - if not immediately, then in the near future - the first steps toward cooperation, specific agreements and collaboration. We are open to offers, ideas and partnerships.

The participants in the Amber Route BC project stress the expedition's diplomatic mission: to bring countries together and to spread information about Lithuania and its potential more widely in an interesting region that has great prospects for the future, while bringing back to Lithuania information about your country, its people and its economic achievements and prospects.

A broad public information campaign is planned in conjunction with the expedition: reports on national television, items in newspapers and Internet websites, a video film giving an outline of the travels and a book of photographs. We are certain that the sort of collaboration to be achieved by this project will be able to be no less effective and useful than official bilateral cooperation between countries. This will be a contribution toward improved mutual understanding, increased dialogue and partnership prospects and the creation of a more favourable international climate.

At all times and in all cultures, roads have always symbolised movement, goal-seeking, openness to new ideas and the possibility of cooperation. Amber Route BC is reopening the route from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea.


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