Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has congratulated US President Barack Obama on the national holiday of the United States - Independence Day.

The letters says:
“Dear Mr President, on my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan, I sincerely congratulate you and through you all the people of your country on the national holiday of the United States of America – Independence Day. We attach special importance to relations between Azerbaijan and the United States of America. These relations have gone through a long path of development since the day we gained independence, reaching the level of strategic partnership in a range of areas. It’s one of the priorities of our partnership to jointly participate in Azerbaijan’s large-scale energy projects, ensuring global security, counter-terrorism, and NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

We, at the same time, have high hopes about the efforts of the US as the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair and personally You, Mr President, to settle the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, for whose resolution our people have been waiting since a long time ago, liberate our Armenian-occupied lands, return over one million refugees and IDPs to their homelands. I wish You robust health, success in your activity, peace and prosperity to the friendly American people”.