NABUCCO PROJECT IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT IRAN: DIRECTOR OF ACNIS
ArmInfo
2009-05-21 14:03:00
ArmInfo. Implementation of Nabucco project without involving Iran
and reckoning with the interests of that country is impossible,
Richard Giragosian, Director of the Armenian Center for National and
International Studies (ACNIS), said at a Roundtable on Armenian-Iranian
relations at ACNIS Thursday.
‘Today when some states including the neighbors of Iran try to isolate
it from the project imposing economic and political sanctions, Iran
like Armenia has serious problems with access to outside world, which
allows me to speak of common interests of Iran and Armenia’, he said.
In this context, it is necessary to study the activation of the
Armenian-Iranian relations as well as the state visit of Armenian
President Serzh Sargsyan to Iran. ‘It is general interests of Tehran
and Yerevan in politics and economy that allow me speaking of their
joint participation and counteraction to the external challenges’,
Richard Giragosian said.
In this context, he highlighted such challenges as tense political
relations of Iran with Turkey, the Karabakh problem, the problems
of the two states with Azerbaijan, as well as the economic isolation
that Armenia and Iran are subjected to at different levels.
The Nabucco pipeline will run from Central Asia to the EU member-states
with total length of 3,300 kilometres (2,050 mi) and designed capacity
of 26-32 billion cubic meters of gas annually. The construction
will be completed in 2013. The consortium comprises OMV Gas GmbH
(Austria), BOTAS (Turkey), Bulgargaz (Bulgaria), S.N.T.G.N. Transgaz
S.A. (Romania), MOL Natural Gas Transmission Company Ltd. (Hungary)
and RWE AG (Germany).