PRESIDENT HALONEN TO CAUCASUS FOR A WEEK

Helsingin Sanomat, Finland
Sept 26 2005

President Tarja Halonen, who recently returned from a one-week visit
to New York and a brief trip to St. Petersburg, is off again on Monday.

This time, the President will visit three South Caucasian countries –
Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, all of which have had fairly little
official contacts with Finland.

Tarja Halonen has visited the area before. She was in Georgia in the
Soviet period in 1980, and in Armenia and Azerbaijan as Finland’s
Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1996, when Finland was actively
involved in seeking a solution to the conflict in Nagorno Karabakh.

Halonen’s visit this week will be the first by a Finnish head of
state to the countries since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991
led to their independence.

Armenia has had to examine its official protocol arrangements more
than usual, as Halonen will be the first woman president ever to
visit the country.

In addition to opening high-level contacts between the countries and
Finland, a key purpose of the visit is to acquire fresh information
on the situation in the countries, and on crisis areas, with respect
to Finland’s turn at the rotating EU Presidency in the second half
of next year.

The EU is heavily involved in the development of the three
countries. Georgia is especially keen to develop its ties with the
West, and all three are seen as likely to join the EU at some time
in the future.

President Halonen’s host in Armenia will be President Robert
Kotsharian. In Georgia, the host will be the young (37 years old)
and notoriously impulsive Mikhail Saakashvili, whose Dutch wife Sandra
is pregnant. In Azerbaijan the host will be President Ilham Aliyev.

Halonen will be granted an honorary doctorate in the Armenian capital
Yerevan, and she will also meet the leader of the Armenian Orthodox
Church, Karek II.

In the Georgian capital Tbilisi she will get a chance to visit
outside the city, and in the Azeri capital Baku she will take part
in a business seminar.

Among the speakers at the seminar will be President Halonen herself and
the Finnish Minister of Trade and Industry, Mauri Pekkarinen (Centre).