Dashnak Leader Wants Cautious Line On NATO

DASHNAK LEADER WANTS CAUTIOUS LINE ON NATO
By Ruben Meloyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Dec 8 2006

Armenia should exercise caution in forging closer links with NATO
because of its strained relationship with alliance member Turkey,
a leader of the governing Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Dashnaktsutyun) said on Friday.

Deputy parliament speaker Vahan Hovannisian claimed that Ankara has
long been acting against "Armenian national and state interests"
and may use NATO for that purpose.

"We have many unresolved issues with Turkey," he told an international
conference in Yerevan. "We must not let Turkey put those unresolved
problems on NATO’s shoulders. We don’t need that. We have a problem
with Turkey, not NATO."

Hovannisian and his nationalist party, a member of Armenia’s governing
coalition, regards Turkey as a grave threat to Armenia’s national
security. Dashnaktsutyun also takes the view that Turkish recognition
of the 1915 Armenian genocide must be the main prerequisite for
normalizing relations between the two nations.

President Robert Kocharian and his administration as a whole favor
a softer line, saying that Ankara should establish diplomatic
relations with Yerevan and open the Turkish-Armenian border without
any preconditions. But they share Dashnaktsutyun’s position, reaffirmed
by Hovannisian, that membership of NATO should not be on the Armenian
foreign policy agenda in the near future, despite growing public
support for it.

Yerevan is instead trying to step up cooperation with the U.S.-led
alliance under an "individual partnership action plan," or IPAP,
launched earlier this year. Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian discussed
the implementation of Armenia’s IPAP with NATO’s Secretary General
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Brussels on Wednesday.

Speaking at the Yerevan conference, Oskanian’s deputy Arman Kirakosian
said closer ties with NATO will not only strengthen Armenia’s security
but also facilitate its "European integration."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Emil Lazarian

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS