The main topic of the quadrilateral meeting between Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia and Iran, held in Baku, was the creation of a consortium for strengthening startups and increasing their income, Iranian Minister of Information and Communication Technology Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said in an exclusive interview with Trend.

"It was suggested that each of these four countries invest a certain amount of funds," he said. "It was decided to start with the investment worth $2 million at the first stage."

The Islamic Republic of Iran has always focused on a strong regional initiative, he said.

"The Middle East countries, the CIS countries, by strengthening their bilateral economic relations, can make the whole region stronger from the economic, social and technological points of view," he noted. "We see that the EU, the ASEAN countries and various countries are taking steps in this direction."

He added that this issue is a priority in ICT as well.

"In our opinion, our region, which has well-educated, well-developed, powerful and active human resources, has the potential for joint projects," he noted. "Thus, with simplification of rules, ICT markets should be open for us so that we can use our own markets and expand our capabilities."

"Iran offered such an initiative a year ago," he said. "Over the past year, many discussions have been held with the ministers of communication of Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkey. This issue was investigated at a meeting in Ashgabat. At the meeting in Dubai, this issue was again in focus."

"Yesterday, the quadrilateral meeting started with a certain agenda proposed by Iran," Azari Jahromi noted.

It was decided to hold the next meeting in Iran in the second half of January; the sides should agree on the details of this issue and start its implementation, he said.

The Iranian minister said that 2-3 issues were also put forward. There were proposals and talks on strengthening cyber security, satellite communications, postal operations, he added.

At the meeting, the negotiations were mainly about startups, he said.

It was decided that detailed talks should be held on the mentioned areas at the Tehran meeting, he noted.

"Let’s conduct joint research, jointly manufacture products with participation of public and private sectors, jointly invest, support, and carry out joint training. Let’s open our markets for each other, so that we can have a breakthrough in these areas," said Azari Jahromi.