THIRD ROUND OF TALKS ON PREPARATION OF NATIONAL ACTION PLAN WITHIN EUROPEAN NEIGHBORHOOD POLICY MAY BE HELD IN JULY
Author: I.Khalilova

TREND, Azerbaijan
June 29 2006

European Union (EU) submitted to Azeri Foreign Ministry the project
of National action plan within the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP),
Mahmud Mammadguliyev, Azeri deputy foreign minister, Told Trend.

According to him, at the moment discussions are being held and the
date of conducting the third round of talks on preparation of action
plan within ENP will be defined in the near future.

According to the Ministry of Economic Development and Coordination
Bureau of the technical assistance program to Azerbaijan of EU
(Tacis), the date of conducting the meeting has been scheduled
for the first half of July. The third round had to be held on May
15, but it was annulled due to disagreement upon several aspects
of the document. The document didn’t include the issue that the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be regulated on base of territorial
integrity of Azerbaijan. EU took out this point from the document,
but Azerbaijan was dissatisfied with this. The position of Azerbaijan
was that if this point isn’t included in the document, Azerbaijan
will not continue that talks. Although this point remains open in
the submitted document, there is an agreement with EC and the text
will be formed at the next meeting.

80-90 percent of the economical part of the document has been agreed
and there isn’t special divergence of opinion. But there are several
technical aspects, as long as the issue of Azerbaijan’s entrance to
European Charter on small entrepreneurship and System for business
registration remains open. The proposals of Azeri side in this
direction were not accepted by EU.

It is intended that the third round will be the final. After an
agreement is reached on the document, indicator programs will be
prepared, for 2-3 years. The finance of EU will start from 2007 and
it will be conducted within the two programs – Tacis and MEDA. The
budget of ENP for 2007-2013 is intended in amount of 15 billion euros.