AZERI THINK-TANK GROUP LOOKS INTO PROJECTS AIMED AT STABILITY IN SOUTH CAUCASUS

Turan News Agency
Sept 26 2008
Azerbaijan

>From the Balkan Pact to the Caucasus stability platform

On 11 August 2008, at the height of the military and political crisis
in Georgia, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came out with
an initiative to set up a Caucasus Peace and Stability Platform on the
basis of the OSCE principles. Within the framework of this initiative,
the Turkish prime minister shuttled from Ankara to Moscow, Tbilisi
and Baku. He also briefed Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad on
his idea, and Turkish President Abdullah Gul informed his Armenian
opposite number Serzh Sargsyan of this [proposal] in the course of his
"football visit" to Yerevan.

Erdogan’s initiative generated wide-ranging reactions which were mainly
of sceptical nature. And Washington expressed its surprise at Ankara’s
initiative to set up the Caucasus Peace and Stability Platform. "We
thought Turkey and the USA pursue concurrent policies in the South
Caucasus region. Nevertheless, Ankara did not inform Washington of this
matter and we were openly surprised at the behaviour of our partner,"
US Deputy Secretary of State Matthew Bryza noted cunningly.

It is unlikely that Americans, who first initiated this project,
were not aware of the launched move. For the first time, the idea of
establishing a system of the regional security in the South Caucasus in
line with a western interpretation sounded at a NATO jubilee summit in
Washington in April 1999. At that time, US representatives supported
peace in the Caucasus region through economic cooperation and put
forward an initiative to establish a Caucasus Cooperation Forum and
all the three Southern Caucasus countries were suggested to join it,
naturally under the aegis of the USA without involvement of Russia
and Iran.

In the same year, at the OSCE Istanbul summit, [then] Azerbaijani
President Heydar Aliyev developed this idea and proposed to sign a
pact for security and cooperation in the South Caucasus on a formula
of 3+2+2 (the South Caucasus countries + Turkey, the EU plus the
USA). [Then] Armenian President Robert Kocharyan came out with a
similar proposal at the summit. He proposed to set up a system of
the regional security under a formula of 3+3+2 (the South Caucasus +
Iran, Russia, Turkey + the EU and the USA as observers). The difference
between the initiatives of Aliyev and Kocharyan lied in the fact that
the Azerbaijani president gave preference to the Euro-centrist project
patronizing (Turkey-Russia-EU-USA), whereas the Armenian leader backed
the regional one (Iran-Russia-Turkey) assigning the EU and the USA
a role of observers.

In 2000, then Turkish President Suleyman Demirel initiated the pact of
stability in the South Caucasus. The pact should have been implemented
under the aegis of the OSCE which excluded Iran from it. Demirel’s
plan also assumed to envisage the Black Sea basin with an exit to
the Balkans where the pact of stability for south-western Europe had
already shaped. Demirel’s project was broader and more exact for the
circle of the players and geography, relying on the Euro-Atlantic
patronage. [Passage omitted: reference to various initiatives put
forward]

An important precondition is also a plan for a peaceful resolution of
conflicts within the framework of the stability pact (for example,
the Karabakh problem) which coincide with the fundamentals of the
OSCE Minsk Group, (with Russia’s involvement) envisaging a stage
by stage resolution of the problem, the liberation of the occupied
territories, the return of the refugees, the establishment of all
forms of cooperation in the region and the return to the issue of
future status in a completely new and favourable conditions.

The last stipulates formation of democratic governments elected
through free and just elections and establishment of democratic
forms of government, an accession of the region to NATO, EU and
other organizations. That is to say, this means the transition of the
negotiating process from the platform of distrust and offence to the
platform of trust and mutual respect. The platform provides unique
opportunities for all the sides in the region to come out from the
complicated and dangerous situation that has emerged after the Georgian
crisis. First of all, we speak about Russia – a key regional player
which has fallen out of the Euro-Atlantic cooperation process with
heavy consequences for itself. At the same time, Russia’s involvement
in he Caucasus stability and cooperation platform in alliance with
the EU-USA, which is unavoidable, would give an impetus not only to
pacification of the South Caucasus but also of the restless North
Caucasus.

Regrettably, one of the influential regional players Iran, despite its
wish to join the process, will so far remain outboard from the South
Caucasus peace project. This is mainly connected with nuclear ambitions
and open hostility of the clerical Tehran to the global leadership of
the USA. Proceeding from the unity of positions of the UN Security
Council members with regard to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Russia and
other potential players of the stability platform in the Caucasus
will not insist on the Islamic Iran’s involvement in the Caucasus
peace process within the framework of Erdogan’s plan. Nevertheless,
in the future, given democratic reforms are conducted in Iran, this
country’s accession to the stability project will become unavoidable.