Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-26-Speech-4-034"
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"en.20040226.2.4-034"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the South Caucasus is a region in crisis on Europe’s doorstep, and, ever since the Soviet Union disintegrated and the Nagorno Karabakh conflict broke out, the European Union has had a strategic rather than merely humanitarian interest in keeping it economically and politically stable. One of the consequences of the enlargement of the European Union is that these hotspots are closer to us, and the prospect of a neighbourhood policy based on the present partnership and cooperation agreement should help to stabilise this region.
Last year, elections were held in all three Caucasus states, and an ad hoc delegation from the European Parliament, of which the rapporteur was a member, found that these elections did not always bear any relation to our democratic conceptions of what elections and democracy are about. If you combine ethnic conflicts, mass poverty, corruption and a lack of democracy, you get an explosive mixture, to which you can add the still-unresolved conflict centred on Nagorno Karabakh, the consequence of which for Azerbaijan was the loss of 20% of its territory, along with great floods of refugees, and which from 1992 to 1999 alone, cost the European Union something like EUR 180 million.
The Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats sought to avoid pouring oil on the flames, to take account of the opposing parties’ sensitivities, and also to give due consideration to Russian and Turkish influence in the region. Political solutions cannot be imposed through the back door; the parties involved, along with their strategic backers, must themselves help to defuse tensions. Non-intervention is of course inadequate as a strategy.
The appointment of a special representative to the region may, therefore, have been helpful, not least because it gave the EU a more visible presence in South Caucasus. What would be most helpful, though, would be a visible
in relations between Turkey and Armenia, which would involve Turkey lifting its blockade. The Stability Pact that this House is quite right to want for the South Caucasus has no real prospect of success unless the conflicts between neighbouring states are resolved, particularly Turkey’s with the countries there.
It is our humanitarian and democratic interests, and also our energy strategy considerations, that mean that there is no alternative to a more in-depth strategy for the South Caucasus. At the beginning of this year, the foreign ministers, too, took this into account when they called on the Commission and the High Representative to include Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the new ‘Wider Europe’ initiative. If tension is to be reduced, there must be an awareness that, although the concept of a Wider Europe is worthwhile, there is hardly any prospect of it becoming reality unless the countries between which there is conflict involve Turkey, Russia, the USA and the European Union in their efforts at resolving it."@en1
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