2006 BECAME YEAR OF GREATER DIVERSIFICATION OF FOREIGN POLITICAL GUIDELINES OF RA, ALEXANDER ISKANDARIAN CONSIDERS
Noyan Tapan
Jan 08 2007
YEREVAN, JANUARY 8, NOYAN TAPAN. "Nothing new took place in the
issue of Nagorno Karabakh settlement in 2006, the problem was in a
static condition."
Alexander Iskandarian, Director of Caucasian Media Institute, declared
this in his interview to Noyan Tapan correspondent, commenting upon
the results of 2007.
At the same time, in his words, in spite of absence of advancement in
the issue of conflict settlement, the past year was very interesting
for Armenia in the respect of foreign political changes, which is
connected with three processes that seem to be absolutely different.
The first process is negotiations on Turkey’s membership to EU
that gave rise to quite different moods in Europe. In the analyst’s
words, no doubt this regards rather Turkey than Armenia but it also
indirectly has an impact on interrelations between Armenia and Turkey:
"Thanks to Turkey-EU negotiations, thanks to Europe’s pressure, the
situation in Turkish public changes to certain extent. The point is
will Armenians manage to make use of it or not."
The second issue is the New European Neighborhood program that means
more rapprochement of Armenia to Europe.
The third is significant deepening of process of reduction of Russian
influence in Armenia that started as early as in the early 90-s. In
A.Iskandarian’s opinion, Russian policy towards Georgia played
a great part here, which gave rise to sympathy to Georgia in the
Armenian public.
Constant closures of Verin Lars (Upper Lars) check-point also
had a negative impact on Russian influence in Armenia, which
resulted in geographical isolation of RA from Russia and at the
same time contributed to activization of not Poti-Novorossiysk,
but Poti-Ilyichevsk transport line.
As the analyst estimated, all three above mentioned processes are
shifts in the same direction – greater diversification of Armenia’s
foreign political guidelines, and in this sense the year 2006 was
special.