RA FM TOUCHED UPON SIGNIFICANCE OF EUROPEAN AND EURO-ATLANTIC STRUCTURES IN REGIONAL PROCESSES

Arminfo Agency
2007-04-30 10:22:00

The significance of the European and Euro-Atlantic structures in the
development of regional processes was touched upon by RA FM Vardan
Oskanyan in his speech at the Forum "From the Baltic to Black Sea –
New Euro-Atlantic Challenges" held in Brussels. As the Information and
Press Department of RA FM told ArmInfo, Foreign Minister of Georgia
Gela Bezhuashvili and Head of the Permanent Commission on Foreign
Relations of AR Parliament S. Seidov also participated in the Forum.

According to the message, during his speech, V. Oskanyan touched
upon some aspects of Armenia’s cooperation with the European and
Euro-Atlantic structures. He acquainted the Forum participants
with Armenia’s approach aimed at assisting to further integration
of Armenia in these structures, in which the interests of other
forces of the South Caucasian region are taken into account. He also
told about the economic progress, fixed in Armenia. Though over the
years passed after concluding the armistice and cease-fire regime,
Azerbaijan and Turkey expected that Armenia would be ruined under the
burden of poverty and economy crisis, it did not happen and will not
do. V. Oskanyan emphasized with regret that no lessons are learned from
this experience, the consequence of which are the steps, undertaken by
Turkey and Azerbaijan, to block Armenia. The evidence of this is the
recent signing of a deal at the cost of $700 mln for construction of a
new railway passing over Armenia. The new railway will not make Armenia
to yield, it will not do more harm than the blocked border. However,
the political environment will suffer. "We shall continue to advocate
the actuation of the available railway branch. We shall go farther
and will demand for Turkey to unblock the last border line with Europe
and establish normal interrelations with Armenia", V. Oskanyan said.

He also noted the discrepancies between the UN initiatives and the
officially published approaches of the GUAM member-states. Vardan
Oskanyan confirmed Armenia’s position, according to which it is
inadmissible to issue one Resolution on four conflicts which differ
from each other.