CRISIS “SPECIALISTS” APPEAL TO EU TO COMPETE MORE ACTIVELY WITH RUSSIA AND USA IN SOUTH CAUCASUS

Regnum, Russia
March 21 2006

“Defending its own security, the European Union should be
closer involved in conflict settlement in South Caucasus, to
prevent the conflicts from breaking out as scaled wars immediately
neighboring Europe,” is said in report of International Crisis Group
non-governmental organization. In its “Settlement of Conflicts in
South Caucasus. EU Role” report, the ICG tries to analyze current
efforts of EU “in strained situations, arisen around Nagorno Karabakh,
Abkhazia, and South Ossetia”, and also denotes additional expectations
from EU to settle these conflicts. “Just recently, Brussels started
reacting to the challenges more profound,” stated, in particular,
Director of ISC Caucasus program Sabine Freizer.

According to her, “several very promising steps were made, but a long
way is still ahead to be gone through.”

As it is mentioned further, the UN is occupied with settlement in
Abkhazia, and the OSCE – in Nagorno Karabakh and South Ossetia.

However, decades later, talks are not crowned with peaceful
agreements. “Having authority of ‘honest mediator’, various soft and
hard instruments of influence, as well as ability to offer closer
European integration, EU can play more significant role, and add to
UN and OSCE efforts,” believe ICG authors.

“In order to avoid destabilization of its own borders, the EU
wishes to establish around itself a circle of states with effective
governing. It is interested in South Caucasus because of one more
reason; it wishes to guarantee access to oil and gas of Caspian
region, to develop communication corridors between Europe and Asia,
as well as to restrict such threats as trafficking, smuggling, and
environmental pollution. It is hard to imagine, that the EU will let
have its membership to Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan within the next
few years, and that is why it should find new approaches to ground its
assistance and use it as instrument of influence. Action program of
New European Neighborhood policy is now at stage of generalization. It
provides a good opportunity to strengthen EU role, especially if
peaceful conflict settlement will be fixed as a necessary one. New
special EU representative is to become observer at talks on settlement
of Abkhazian, South Ossetian, and Karabakh conflicts. The European
Union has considerably contributed to reconstruction of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia. It must evaluate, what it may do in Nagorno Karabakh
and neighboring areas,” pointes out the ICG.

“The EU tries to define its role in new neighborhood, where there
is neither peace nor war,” says Director of ICG European program
Nicolas Wait. “If the EU is not able to implement strategy of safe
neighborhood, then, trust in it will suffer comparing with Russia
and the USA. Most of all, the fact worries, that if the conflicts
in South Caucasus continue to escalate, then, the EU can turn out to
be not ready for looking for answers in wars between its neighbors,”
believes Wait.
From: Baghdasarian