President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received Editor-in-Chief of The Business Year magazine Leland Rice and its Regional Director Betul Cakaloglu.

Editor-in-Chief of The Business Year magazine Leland Rice stressed the importance of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's participation and his speech at the World Humanitarian Summit, which was recently held in Istanbul. She underlined Azerbaijan`s role in strengthening the international cooperation and in global economic processes.

President Ilham Aliyev hailed the importance of the World Humanitarian Summit, saying it was the first international humanitarian event in this format and its agenda covered a wide range of areas.

Pointing to the international economic cooperation, the head of state highlighted the work done towards Azerbaijan's integration into the world economic system.

Regional Director of The Business Year magazine Betul Cakaloglu informed the head of state about the activities of the magazine.

Saying the magazine has been cooperating with Azerbaijan for nearly six years, she hailed the magazine's relations with a variety of continents and countries around the world.

Editor-in-Chief of The Business Year magazine Leland Rice said that the magazine named Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev "The World`s Person of the Year 2015", and presented the award to the head of state. She said that President Ilham Aliyev was honored for his role in Azerbaijan's making significant contribution to ensuring energy security of Europe and diversifying energy sources, for establishing and realizing the Southern Gas Corridor project and its integral elements – Shahdeniz-2, TANAP and TAP projects, excellently organizing important international events, including the first ever European Games and showing the world big potential of Azerbaijan, the country's efforts made towards the creation of East-West and North-South transport corridors, Azerbaijan's becoming an international transportation and transit hub, providing practical support for the development of inter-civilizational and inter-cultural dialogue, hosting international humanitarian events for encouragement of multicultural values and other successful activities in ensuring peace and security in the region.

President Ilham Aliyev thanked The Business Year magazine for the award. Saying the most important aspects of the policy pursued by Azerbaijan was highlighted by the magazine's editor-in-chief Lalenda Rice, President Ilham Aliyev stressed the significance of regional cooperation in addressing the issues as economic diversification, energy security, multiculturalism, as well as in Azerbaijan's becoming a center of the international transport and investing in this infrastructure. Underlining that the regional cooperation is based only on mutual trust, the head of state said that the mutual trust in its turn was established through the promotion of multicultural, religious and ethnic tolerance values. President Ilham Aliyev thanked The Business Year magazine for promoting Azerbaijan and delivering the truths about the country to the international audience.

After the meeting they posed for photographs.

AZERTAC