BULGARIAN MEPS URGE EU TO BE PROACTIVE IN SOUTH CAUCASUS

Novinite.com
May 20 2010
Bulgaria

The European Parliament has approved a report of a Bulgarian MEP
urging the EU craft a strategy for the critically important South
Caucasus region.

The report of the Bulgarian Socialist MEP, Evgeni Kirilov, stresses the
need for the Union to be proactive with respect to the stabilization
and encouraging the development of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia,
the three South Caucasus states.

"The main goal of the EU in the South Caucasus should be to help
Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia became stable democratic states
that can have good neighborly relations with one another, and be
integrated with the EU policies," Kirilov declared before the vote on
his report entitled "The Need for a Strategy in the South Caucasus,"
which was adopted with an overwhelming majority by the EP on Thursday.

"The South Caucasus is not only a region bordering the EU (i.e.

Bulgaria and Romania through the Black Sea), but also a region
of enormous strategic importance with respect to our economic and
security policies because of its increasingly crucial role as an
energy, transport and communications corridor connecting the Caspian
Region and Central Asia with Europe," declared Kirilov.

He expressed his hope that the most recent initiative of the EU for
the region, the Eastern Partnership, will contribute substantially
the integration of the three South Caucasus states with the EU, and
mentioned that the realization of the Nabucco gas transit pipeline
project necessitated deeper EU presence in the region.

"Yet, these ambitious policies of the EU will be hard to realize
because of the shadow cast by the unresolved conflicts in Georgia and
Nagorny Karabakh. The conflict in Georgia in 2008 made the EU realize
that it has to play a more active role in the region. This conclusion
is even more valid for the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh between
Armenia and Azerbaijan where EU’s absence is felt very strongly,"
the Bulgarian Socialist MEP underscored.

Kirilov stressed the issues of the hundreds of thousands of displaced
persons in the region which burdened the development of the three
states there, and were a serious humanitarian problem.

"The EU has the means and the expertise to contribute to the creation
of a tolerant atmosphere in the Southern Caucasus," he said.

The report of the Socialist MEP was supported strongly by his Bulgarian
colleague from the European People’s Party, Andrey Kovachev, who is
the Chair of the Bulgarian delegation within the EPP-EP group.

"I welcome wholeheartedly the report of Mr. Kirilov which stresses the
need for a more active EU role in the South Caucasus, a region whose
positive development is in the interest not only for the neighboring
Black Sea region – for which, unfortunately, the EU does not have a
clear strategy as well – but also for the entire EU," Kovachev stated
during the EP debates.

He expressed his concern over the delay of the ratification of the
protocols singed last October between Turkey and Armenia, and urged
the EU to use its experience from the Balkans and Georgia in order
to help settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"The Lisbon Treaty has provided the EU with a framework for becoming
a truly global actor. An example in that direction would be the
participation of the EU as a member in the OSCE Minsk Group, while at
present only the individual member states participate in the group,"
Kovachev said referring to the Minsk Group set by the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe set up in 1992 in order to
help for the settling of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem.