William Haig discusses with Aliyev the case of the arrested Anar Mamedli

During his meetings with President Aliyev and Foreign Minister Mammadyarov was touched a broad range of issues of bilateral relations in the economic and political spheres, as well as regional issues, said at a press briefing in Baku  the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague.

"We have considered the problem of energy cooperation between the two countries, the Iranian nuclear issue, the situation in Syria. At the  both  meetings were touched  the issues of human rights,  and the cases of civil affairs. Our sincere and business relationships allow us to raise these issues, and we do  it regularly. Our desire is to encourage Azerbaijan to make progress in this area, and to guarantee political freedoms.

We continue to express our concerns in this area at the bilateral level and within the EU, the Council of Europe and the OSCE.

At these meetings, we also touched specific cases of harassment of civil society activists, such as yesterday's arrest of Anar Mamedli. This same topic was discussed at  my today's meeting with a group of local civic activists," said Haig . -02B-