KIEV, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his visiting Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a meeting here on Monday to discuss bilateral and regional cooperation, Poroshenko's press service said.
According to Poroshenko's spokesman Svyatoslav Tsegolko, the meeting between the two leaders started with closed-door talks, which lasted for three hours instead of the planned 45 minutes.
Later in the day, Poroshenko and Erdogan co-chaired the 6th meeting of the Ukraine-Turkey High-Level Strategic Council, where nine intergovernmental documents were signed.
In particular, Ukraine and Turkey have inked the agreements on the mutual investment protection and the avoidance of double taxation.
During the meeting, the two leaders discussed the work of the mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the conflict-hit eastern Ukraine and the possibility of deployment of United Nations peacekeeping troops to the region.
Besides, Poroshenko and Erdogan discussed the collaboration between their countries in all strategic areas, such as trade, aviation, security and other sectors.
While speaking at a joint press briefing after the talks, Poroshenko expressed satisfaction with the achievements made by the two countries in their strategic partnership and voiced the hope for enhanced cooperation.
"Our goal is to deepen the strategic partnership between Ukraine and Turkey. Our goal is to ensure confidence, stability, sustainable development, prosperity in the whole region on the basis of respect for international law," Poroshenko said.
For his part, Erdogan said the two countries set a target to triple their trade turnover, which reached 3.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2016.
"We have decided to bring our trade turnover to 10 billion dollars as soon as possible," Erdogan said.
Erdogan arrived in Kiev earlier on Monday for a one-day official visit, his first trip to Ukraine since March 2015.
