Learning from History

28 June 2004

“Aravot” reports that the Council of Europe’s newly elected secretary
general, Terry Davis, has publicly disagreed with Kocharian’s statement that
Nagorno-Karabakh has never been part of an independent Azerbaijani state.
Davis, the paper says, told the PACE’s Political Committee after Kocharian’s
Strasbourg speech that the international community and the United Nations in
particular do recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.

Council of Europe: Terry Davis elected Secretary General
CPME publication date: Thursday, June 24, 2004

On 22 June 2004, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe elected
Terry Davis, from the United Kingdom, as the new Secretary General. Mr Davis
will enter into office for five years starting in September, 2004. He will
replace Mr Walter Schwimmer, from Austria.

Mr Davis has been a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe for 12 years and President of the Assembly’s socialist group since
2002.

Quoting from Richard Hovannisian’s “The Republic of Armenia” The first year
1918-1919 copyright 1971 page 157:
“There were, of course, factors other than the legitimacy of Azerbaijan’s
arguments which affected the formulation of British policy. As rulers of an
extensive colonial empire that included millions of Muslim subjects, the
British stood to gain widespread goodwill for supporting the first Muslim
republic in modern history. Moreover, the British strategists maintained
that a politically and economically viable structure would render Azerbaijan
less susceptible to Pan-Islamic or Pan-Turanic agitation and to the
pervasive influences of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of 1918, they also
believed that Armenia would be awarded the Ottoman eastern vilayets. It
seemed reasonable, therefore, to regard Karabagh and Zangezur as
compensation to Azerbaijan, whose aspirations to lands further west would be
disallowed. Several critics have singled out economic exploitation as the
prime determinant in British policy. The reserve of oil at Baku was
apparently inexhaustible, and access to this wealth would naturally be
facilitated through the cooperation of an appreciative, indebted local
government. While officials in London demonstrated that the occupation of
Transcaucasia was imposing great financial strains, Great Britain
nonetheless succeeded in tapping thousands of tons of petroleum products
valued in the millions of pounds sterling. Whether or not “oil imperialism”
dictated British policy in the Caucasus, economic factors could not have
been ignored.”

Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline
The BTC partners
The BTC pipeline is being developed by an international consortium of 11
partners, known as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline Company (BTC Co).
Those partners are: SOCAR (the state oil company of Azerbaijan); BP (UK);
TPAO (Turkey); Statoil (Norway); Unocal (USA); Itochu (Japan); Amerada Hess
(USA); Eni (Italy); TotalFinaElf (France); INPEX (Japan) and ConocoPhillips
(USA).
BP is the largest stakeholder in the project, and is leading the design and
construction phases.