Vafa Guluzade Died (video)

A prominent statesman of Azerbaijan, one of the most talented diplomats of Azerbaijan Vafa Guluzade died. In the evening on May 1 he felt bad and attempts to save his life failed.

Vafa Guluzade was born in Baku on December 21, 1940 in the family of the scientist-orientalist Mirzaga Guluzade and the writer - specialist in the Azerbaijani and Turkish literature Yagud Dilbazi.

In 1963 he graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Studies of Azerbaijan State University. In 1962-64 he continued his education at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where he defended his thesis for the degree of candidate of philological sciences.

His diplomatic career began in Egypt in 1970, when he was appointed attache of the Embassy of the USSR. These were the years of the Arab-Israeli war and the postwar peace talks and Guluzade took part in the meetings of Egyptian President Anwar Saadat and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.

Since the mid-1970s until the end of the 1980s he worked in the Communist Party of Azerbaijan and headed the Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the CPA.

In 1990, while on a diplomatic career in Algeria, Guluzade accepted the offer of the first Azerbaijani President Ayaz Mutallibov to take the post of his adviser on foreign policy issues. In this position he also was under the two subsequent presidents of the country - Abulfaz Elchibey and Heydar Aliyev.

Prior to his retirement in late 1999, he was a member of the Security Council of Azerbaijan.

All the while Vafa Guluzade was one of the developers and agents of foreign policy of Azerbaijan. He took an active part in negotiations on the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. He managed the Azerbaijani delegation at the Azerbaijani-Armenian talks, held talks at the summits of the OSCE, international conferences in Geneva (1984) and Istanbul (1986), and participated in the sessions of NATO.

Guluzade was characterized by high professionalism, innate intelligence, human simplicity and humility, and sincere patriotism.

Turan Agency expresses its deepest condolences to the relatives of the deceased.

Let him rest in peace!