TUSK IN ARMENIA FOR EASTERN PARTNERSHIP TALKS

The News
7307_tusk-in-armenia-for-eastern-partnership-talks .html
March 12 2010
Poland

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has flown to Yerevan. Armenia in the last
leg of his four-day journey through the south Caucasus.

Previously, PM Tusk has had talks with heads of state in Azerbaijan
and Georgia.

In Yerevan, Donald Tusk will meet with President Serzh Sargsyan and
Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan.

The head of the Polish government will try to persuade Armenian
authorities to forge closer ties with the European Union.

On Thursday, in Tbilisi, he said that during the Polish six-month
presidency of the EU in the second half of 2011, Poland will prepare
a brief lifting of the EU visa scheme in countries targeted by the
Eastern Partnership programme.

The program includes the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Moldova and Belarus, conditionally. By 2013 Brussels wants to spend
approximately 600 million euros on the Eastern Partnership.

One of the topics for talks in Armenia is the conflict with Azerbaijan
over Nagorno-Karabakh, an unrecognised de facto independent state,
internationally understood to be under the control of Azerbaijan. On
Wednesday in Baku, Tusk called the problem a "Gordian knot" and
admitted that at this moment there is no chance of settling this
dispute.

This evening, Donald Tusk will return to Poland.