NO INTERIM AGREEMENT BETWEEN BAKU AND YEREVAN AVAILABLE: HURRIYET

news.am
March 10 2010
Armenia

"Two separate developments took place last Thursday at approximately
the same time which, at first sight, seemed totally unrelated. Indeed,
the fact that the Turkish Parliament’s ratification of the
intergovernmental agreement on the Nabucco project was followed
by the adoption of the resolution based on the Armenians’ claims
of genocide by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States
House of Representatives was a pure coincidence," Turkish Hurriyet
daily reports.

"Both developments that took place in two capitals, thousands of
miles away from each other, were monitored with the highest interest
in several capitals, like Vienna, Budapest, Rome, Baku and Moscow.

Because Turkish-Armenian relations and the issue of the recognition
of the 1915 killings of Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans as
genocide play an important role in the fate of the Nabucco project,
at least in the short term," the source says.

"If the Nabucco project, designed to bring Caspian as well as Middle
Eastern natural gas to Europe via Turkey and the Balkans is realized
sooner rather than later, it will reduce European dependence on Russia,
striking a blow against Russia’s dominant position in the European
market. Yet if the South Stream project, which will carry Russian gas
under the Black Sea to Europe, is realized before the Nabucco project,
then Moscow could take a deep breath," the source reads.

"Turkey’s ratification of the Nabucco agreement is expected to be
followed by Romania very soon, and thus, the ratification process of
the agreement will be completed. One of the next major steps is the
transit agreement between Turkey and Azerbaijan, which in the short
run will be the major supplier. Yet this is where the &’Armenian’
issue makes its entrance to the process. It is no secret that
Baku is extremely anxious about the prospect of normalization of
relations between Turkey and Armenia before there is a solution to
Nagorno-Karabakh, which is under Armenian occupation. Even an interim
agreement between Baku and Yerevan on Armenian withdrawal from Azeri
territories surrounding the Karabakh region does not seem in sight.

And Turkey does not want to pass the normalization protocols through
the Parliament unless there is some kind of progress on the Karabakh
issue," the daily informs.

"Baku has so far refrained from fully committing itself to the Nabucco
project. It wants to be sure that Turkey will not open its borders to
Armenia before there is progress on Nagorno-Karabakh. So the current
imbroglio is delaying the transit deal between Turkey and Azerbaijan
and thus slowing down the Nabucco project. But how long can Ankara
and Baku afford to wait before finalizing a deal?" the daily wonders.