ARMENIA SHOULD GAIN CONTROL OVER NAGORNO KARABAKH, NATO PA HEAD CONSIDERS

PanArmenian News
Dec 21 2004

21.12.2004 17:01

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “Europeans, Americans and Russians have to jointly
find a compromise, in compliance with which Armenia would gain
temporary control over Karabakh, and further the Karabakh status would
be determined via a referendum – within five of ten years,” head of
the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Pierre Lellouche and former Spanish
Foreign Minister Ana Palacio write in Putin and the Phantoms of the
Empire joint article in Le Figaro today’s issue. In the article the
relations between the EU and Russia against the background of the
Ukrainian events. “The success of the democracy in Ukraine should
underlie the common strategy of our democratic countries. This strategy
aims at putting an end to the “frozen” conflicts at the threshold of
Europe,” the article authors consider. In the future the fate of the
peoples, who live at the threshold of Russia and the EU, will depend
on whether the “Russian neo-imperialism or the EU is able to establish
“pax europa”. To that end “the Western democracies” in the opinion of
the authors should come out with initiatives to solve the conflicts in
the post-Soviet space. “The frozen conflicts” in Georgian provinces –
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as well as in Pridnestrovie have much in
common. “The conflict, in which Armenia and Azerbaijan collided in
Nagorno Karabakh, is more difficult and has a different nature than the
conflicts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Pridnestrovie, Ana Palacio and
Pierre Lellouche write. “As of Turkey, it has got the opportunity to
show that the country wishes to enter the European family: for that
the border with Armenia should be opened and it would facilitate
the life in the republic, which has been blockaded for already 15
years. Finally, in exchange for cooperation with Azerbaijan in the
conflict, the West has to arrange close partnership ties with the
country,” the authors sum up. Both authors had visited Armenia and
Nagorno Karabakh in late October this year as part of the delegation
of the German Marshall US fund. They came for the participation of
Nagorno Karabakh in the conflict settlement talks.