The Civilitas Foundation
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Yerevan, Armenia
Telephones: +37410.500119, +37494.800754
Email: general@civilitas.am

PRESS RELEASE

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Mr. Vartan Oskanian, founder of the Civilitas Foundation, and former
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, spoke to BBC World Service’s Owen
Bennett Jones on Wednesday, August 27, 2008, about the Caucasus region in
the wake of Russia’s recognition of S. Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Below, Mr. Oskanian’s responses.

What do you think NATO should do?
I think there’s a big responsibility here. I believe NATO at least publicly
but more so through diplomatic channels should talk to Russia and consider
reviewing their policy vis-à-vis the Caucasus, Ukraine. I’m not suggesting
that they change anything, but at least they should be prepared at this
stage to sit down and talk with Russia and express the willingness to review
things, to see if they can come up with an option that will be viable and
also acceptable to all parties.

So you’re suggesting NATO should back down on their positions on membership?
That has to be mutually agreed upon. I understand NATO’s position, that they
don’t want to be dictated to by anybody as they decide what they will do
with membership issues, but given the circumstances and what we have seen
in these past three weeks and particularly after Russia’s recognition of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, I think it would be worthwhile to put that
=8Cpride’ aside and sit down for the benefit of global harmony and also for
the benefit of the Caucasus, sit down and talk with each other and come up
with a viable option that will be beneficial for all.

Don’t you feel vulnerable to Russian expansion?

We’ve never felt that. We do not have any particular problem with Russia.
What concerns us today is that our room to maneuver will be extremely
limited given the fact that Russia and Georgia, for Armenia, are vital
neighbors. If Russia is our strategic partner, then Georgia is our natural
partner. Our trade goes thru Georgia, historically we have had excellent
ties. So this tension between Russia and Georgia, and I would even go a step
further to qualify this as tension between the West and Russia, by proxy,
will put Armenia in a difficult situation. For a decade, when I was foreign
minister, we implemented a policy of complementarity clearly saying to
everybody that we will not choose between Russia and the U.S. Armenia can
not afford to choose. I think that whole issue now has come closer to home
and Armenia should even enhance that complementarity by clearly telling
everybody that choosing is not an option for Armenia.

Why not? Russia is expanding, why not choose against Russia?
We shouldn’t rush to the conclusion that Russia is expanding. Maybe what
Russia has done is a consequence of a sequence of steps and missteps by both
sides. I’m not putting blame on any one side, or, maybe I’m putting the
blame on everybody. This is the time when cool heads should prevail, not
just in Russia and Georgia but also the West. In the heat of things, lots of
resentments are being expressed. I think there is a moment there. There is
an opportunity so that we sit down and talk – all of us, Brussels, Moscow
and Washington should sit down with Yerevan, Tbilisi and Baku =8B and come up
with a viable option for this region, so that we turn the Caucasus into a
non-aligned Caucasus. Because the Caucasus is too small to accommodate
several security alliances especially when they are exclusionary.

So, keep the Russians out, keep the Americans out, make the Caucasus a
non-aligned neutral area.
I think that will be a viable option. I don’t see how we can proceed with
this kind of tension. It’s not just detrimental for our region but also for
global politics. I don’t think the world these days can afford this kind of
tension, this Cold War redux, because there are more pressing issues before
Russia, the US and the international community. Our focus should be on those
issues rather than fighting proxy wars in different regions.

But it has to be said that with Russia in its current mood and the US in its
current mood, this is not going to happen, is it?

Let’s look at the reasons for those moods. There’s lots of resentment there
that have accumulated since the collapse of the USSR. There has been a
sequence of misunderstandings that have led to this kind of situation. In
the past 400 years, the world has gone through at least four, five major
transformations. After each major war and conflict, a new system has
emerged, at each new mechanisms and new institutions have emerged to
constitute a new world order to regulate state relationships. The end of the
Cold War is the exception. The very institutions that contributed to the
defeat of the USSR remained as the main pillars of the so-called new world
order. That was natural back then when Russia and China were weak. Today’s
Russia and China are not the same. Insisting on those institutions
particularly the security ones, to operate the way they used to, is not
sustainable.