PanArmenian News Analysis
Jan 21 2005

ARMENIA IS NO STRANGER IN THE ARABIC WORLD

This is proved by the fact of granting a status to Armenia, as a
country, specially invited to the League of Arab States.

Armenian foreign minister has returned from Cairo. His visit was not
only aimed at holding negotiations with the political leadership of
the friendly country. It was also aimed at creating a contractual
base for improving cooperation with the League of Arab States. Vardan
Oskanyan and the secretary general of the Arab League Amra Musa
signed a memorandum of understanding between Yerevan and the
influential regional organization.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian foreign minister also had meetings with
his Egyptian colleague and with the representative of
Armenian-Egyptian intergovernmental commission Faiza Abul Naga. The
partnership between Armenia and Egypt has old traditions, but the
same cannot be said about the League of Arab States which was
established only a few years ago. On January 19, Armenian-Arabic
relations gained a new quality. Thanks to the signed memorandum
Armenia obtains the status of a country, specially invited to the
League of Arab States. This will open extensive perspectives for
mutually beneficial economic and cultural cooperation.

The steady interest of Yerevan to the Arab League is very natural.
Armenia strives to stir up cooperation with all the influential
international organizations. The high level of influence of the Arab
League is proved by the fact that among its members there are more
than 20 countries with huge political, economic and military
potential. The population of the League’s member countries reaches 25
million. The ability of Arabic world to speak on important
international issues from a united front gives a lot of influence to
the League of Arab States.
It is the League of Arab States that determines the policy to which
22 capitals adhere.

For Armenia the opportunity of getting nearer to the Arabic world is
conditioned first of all by the presence of certain difficulties in
the relations with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)
which often speaks out from openly anti-Armenian positions. Taking
the opportunity of the vote in OIC, official Baku sometimes manages
to persuade its partners in OIC to support UN initiatives against
Yerevan. Things were just like that during the last voting in UN
concerning putting on the agenda of General Assembly the question of
the situation in the security zone around Nagorno Karabakh. 95
percents of the countries supporting the Azerbaijanian project were
members of OIC. However, it is pleasant to realize that several Arab
countries having influence in the Islamic world nevertheless refused
to support Azerbaijan. This is the result of Armenia’s successful
diplomacy in Arabic direction.

Recently, an encouraging tendency is observed in OIC. Disagreements
concerning the purposefulness of absolute support to Azerbaijan in
international structures have emerged between OIC member countries.
This is the consequence of the struggle for the influence in the
Islamic world. As the largest and the most influential Muslim
countries, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia compete for the
influence in the Islamic world. This is not convenient for Arabs who
have enough grounds to make claims for a special role in the Islamic
world. Armenia can benefit from this contradiction, since the three
from the mentioned countries are marked for their pro-Azerbaijanian
policy and have hostility towards Armenia.

Strengthening relations with Arabic countries, Iran and the Muslim
countries of CIS, Yerevan can achieve prohibition of openly
anti-Armenian initiatives in OIC. Besides, the dialogue with the
League of Arab States will help the organization’s member countries
to form an objective idea about the nature of Karabakh conflict. It
will also help to work out a unified approach to our region, to
Armenian-Azerbaijanian confrontation and the problem of genocide. At
the same time Yerevan continues to develop cooperation with separate
Arabic countries. Successful lines of cooperation are already
established with Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait
and Qatar. There is a huge potential of developing ties with Iraq and
Palestine.

In Azerbaijan they are extremely worried about the development of
connections between Armenia and Arab states. In the beginning of
December President Ilham Aliev, being very sad to learn that not all
the Islamic countries supported Azerbaijan in UN, went on a tour to
the Arab states. Visiting the headquarters of OIC in Qatar, the Baku
leader appealed to the leadership of the organization to exert
influence on the countries that hadn’t supported Azerbaijan in UN.
The spiritual leader of Azerbaijan also visited the East with the
same aim.

Azerbaijan’s top Muslim cleric, sheikh-ul-islam Allakhshukur
Pashazade had official meetings with the Libyan dictator Moammar
Gadhafi, king of Jordan Abdullah II, the presidents of Maldivian
republic and Sierra Leone, vice president of Philippines, ministers
of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Oman and Kuwait. All the meetings had
only one aim – to persuade them not to cooperate with Armenia.

Both the political and the spiritual leaders of Azerbaijan were well
aware that the League of Arab States is going to grant Armenia a
status of a specially invited country. It would be strange if they
didn’t try to intervene since in Baku they realize that the
involvement of Armenia in the structures of the League will allow
Yerevan to actively influence on the processes in the Islamic world.
The memorandum signed on Wednesday in Cairo indicated to the fact
that the efforts of Azerbaijan turned to be useless again.