Israeli President Herzog visits Azerbaijan for 1st time

Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, travelled to Azerbaijan for the first time on a state visit on Tuesday.

During the two-day visit to the capital, Baku, Herzog plans to talk with Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliyev, about deepening the strategic relations between the two countries.

Azerbaijan is “a friendly, close, important country, a key country,” Herzog said.

According to the Israeli news site, ynet, thousands of security forces have been deployed in Baku for the visit.

It should not be forgotten that Azerbaijan is a neighbouring country of Iran, Herzog said.

“Iran is an unstable factor in the region that constantly pursues actions against the State of Israel and against the developing alliance of peace and security in the region, and I will certainly discuss this,” ynet cited the president as saying.

Muslim-majority Azerbaijan opened an embassy in Tel Aviv in March.

Israel has had an embassy in Baku since 1993.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, attended the opening of the embassy in Israel in March.

His Israeli counterpart visited Baku the following month.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been engaged in a conflict over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh for decades.

In the 1990s, the Armenian-majority region broke away from Azerbaijan in a bloody civil war.

In 2020, Azerbaijan, which had been militarily highly equipped for years thanks to revenues from oil and gas sales, regained control over a large part of the territory after new fighting.

Many of the weapons in Azerbaijan came from Israel.

In spite of the ceasefire, fighting has continued to break out and spread to other border areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Most recently, the two former Soviet republics expressed their willingness to settle their conflict.