Deputy Prime Minister Meredov,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great honour for me to address you here today at this International Conference on a very timely topic these days – Dialogue as a Guarantee of Peace.

I would like to start by congratulating Turkmenistan on the occasion of the Neutrality Day you are celebrating tomorrow, and thank our hosts for organising this Conference as well as inviting the European Union to be one of the speakers at it.  

European Union was established as a Peace process and exactly 10 years ago, on 10 December 2012, the European Union was awarded Nobel Peace Prize for its contribution to peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe. Today European Union invests a lot of political determination/will and financial resources in a global dialogue, defending European values and building stronger regional and global resilience. We support peaceful solutions and dialogue all over the world, and hold to our values and the principles of the UN Charter especially now - trying to stop the devastating war in Ukraine.

In today’s world, the rules based multilateralism is challenged and questioned. Dialogue becomes even more pertinent. We have to use dialogue to guarantee peace and to solve most challenging issues. We also need multilateralism to be effective and networked to address the urgent global challenges.

Dialogue has a multi-layered nature. It is much more than a guarantee of peace. It is about security and sustainable development, and building more resilient and inclusive societies where women and youth play a significant role in reaching sustainable development.

Dear participants of the Conference,

Now that I am here in beautiful Ashgabat city, I am very glad to say that our dialogue with Turkmenistan and Central Asia region is strengthening and deepening, and has been recently raised to the highest level at the EU-Central Asia Leaders’ meeting in Astana.

As the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice President of the European Commission Josep Borrell has said recently – Central Asia’s geostrategic role is growing globally.

We have a long standing partnership with Central Asia and we are already celebrating the 30^th anniversary of our diplomatic relations with Central Asian countries, including Turkmenistan. European Union supports Central Asian partners in their reform process, helps to overcome socio-economic challenges, facilitates new job creation, and pursues the goal of prosperous and resilient Central Asia through our support projects and programmes.

As we want to see both - enhanced inter-regional and intra- regional dialogue, we also aim at closer connectivity in such areas as digitalisation, transport and transit, green economy, water and energy, which were very much supported by all our Central Asian partners at the EU-Central Asia Connectivity Conference in Samarkand. 

As we look at the challenges we all face these days, I want to highlight that we, in the European Union, are very glad to see that regional dialogue in Central Asia is also getting stronger and stronger. Turkmenistan has played an important role in improving this dialogue too. We commend leaders of all the Central Asian countries, including Turkmenistan, for their pragmatic views on the regional cooperation, which is a key to security, and prosperity of the Central Asia.

To conclude, let me just say that Dialogue is about joint goals and joint efforts. To guarantee peaceful future, to support our common multilateral order and the UN, we need improved dialogue and we cannot let the dialogue fail.

With this, I wish us all a very fruitful discussion today and I hope we can continue working together towards stronger and closer dialogue for our future and our next generations.