Oklahoma National Guard Chief Commander: We have a lot of similarities with Azerbaijan

General Deering, it is your fourth visit to our country. Could you please inform us about the meetings that you will have during the visit?

We tried to have diverse schedule of meetings. We are trying to enhance the cooperation between the state of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma National Guard and Azerbaijan in terms how we can help and assist in any way. We met with Minister of Defence general Abiyev, Minister of Agriculture, will have meetings in ministry of education and universities - Medical University, Azerbaijan State University in Ganja- this week and discuss the opportunity to enhance our cooperation and relationships.

How do you estimate the cooperation between Oklahoma and Azerbaijan? As we know, you have already met with Defence Minister Safar Abiyev. How is the military cooperation developing?

Very good, we have a lot of similarities. That is the reason why Oklahoma being a partner of Azerbaijan. Because Azerbaijan has the oil and natural resources, as the Oklahoma.

What can you say about the educational cooperation with Azerbaijan? What projects are planned in this field?

Azerbaijan State University in Ganja is much like Oklahoma state university, focuses on
Agriculture. So we are going to talk about opportunities to change agricultural experiences between US and Azerbaijan and specific in Oklahoma.

You said that Oklahoma and Azerbaijan have oil. Is there any exchange in this field?

So far we have had exchange in University of Oklahoma on oil and gas, we helped to develop some of that in the future. As we grow and mature this program there will be more opportunities to do the exchanges. But I don’t know the statistics, how many students participated the program.

In such hot summer forest fires is very actual topic. The Oklahoma National Guard is also dealing with forest fires. Are you also planning to cooperate with Azerbaijan in this sphere?

Absolutely, any sphere we can share experience there Azerbaijan or Oklahoma can benefit on that we going to do that. In Oklahoma we have fires too and we have to respond the fires, national disasters. It is ongoing plan, there are such plans in the works and it’s on the table. We continue to develop our relations. This is not a new relationship between Oklahoma and Azerbaijan. We are partners since 2003. We would like to have relations with Azerbaijan and the relationship to continue for many years to come.


/APA/