The invitation for President Ilham Aliyev to attend the 4th Nuclear Security Summit in Washington is a manifestation of the US attitude to Azerbaijan as a leading country in the Caucasus, which pursues its own independent policy, Elkhan Alasgarov, PhD, head of the Baku Network told Trend Jan. 6.

Earlier, Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration, chief of the administration’s foreign relations department, tweeted that the US President Barack Obama invited the Azerbaijani president to attend the 4th Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C.

“Relations between Azerbaijan and the US became a topical issue in connection with the anti-Azerbaijani resolution of the Helsinki Group, submitted for the US Congress’s consideration”, said Alasgarov. “But time has shown that the relations didn’t change significantly.”

“We must remember that along with negative manifestations on the part of the US, there have been a lot of positive signals, including on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue,” the expert said.

“Relations between the two countries cover different areas of collaboration – from the government to energy sector,” he added.

“Azerbaijan was the first country to express condolences and condemn the heinous terrorist attacks in the US in September 2001. Since then, relations between the two countries have come a long test period, during which Azerbaijan has shown itself as US’s reliable partner,” said Alasgarov.

“Meanwhile, the Armenian diaspora organizations tried to damage relations between the two countries, but Baku and Washington have always valued their relations, trying to take into account the mutual interests in economy and politics,” he added.

The invitation for Azerbaijan to the summit in Washington became the next stage of development of relations between the two countries, noted Alasgarov.

The 4th Nuclear Security Summit will be held in Washington, D.C. from March 31 to April 1, 2016.

The first Nuclear Security Summit was held in Washington in 2010, the second – in Seoul in 2012, and the third one in The Hague in 2014.