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| 16:36:06 | 25-05-2005 | Politics |

BAKU-JEYHAN IS NOT ONLY OIL

Yesterday in Baku Kazakh President Nazarbayev officially announced that they
join the oil-pipeline Baku-Tbilisi-Jeyhan and offer to rename it as
Aktau-Baku-Tbilisi-Jeyhan. The Kazakhs have agreed to give the pipeline 7.5
million tons of oil in the first phase, reaching up to 20 million tons
later.

`We guessed that Baku-Jeyhan will be not only an oil but also a
geographical-political factor. And it is possible that the so-called Baku
declaration be adopted soon. A new geographical-political pivot is created
around which Azerbaijan, Georgia, USA, and Turkey go, and possibly Ukraine
will join them in future`. This is the opinion of economist Edward
Aghajanov. Today in the Armenian Center for National and International
Studies a seminar was organized with the theme `Baku-Tbilisi-Jeyhan: the new
pulse of the region’.

Mr. Aghajanov blames the authorities for passive and weak diplomatic policy.

`In 2002 when the construction of the had just started, Heidar Aliev
announced in his speech that the pipeline will carry not oil but policy.
Unfortunately, our authorities did not take his words seriously’. According
to the participants of the discussion, Armenia is left out of the
consortium.

But there is still hope that you cannot become a leading country with oil
only; democracy is also needed which does exists neither in Azerbaijan, nor
in Georgia, nor is Kazakhstan, nor in Turkey. Many participants agreed that
Armenia must use that only possibility and to become a democratic country as
soon as possible.