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Armenia Against Turkish Veto On EU Military Role In Caucasus


By Harry Tamrazian in Prague

Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian warned on Tuesday that the European Union’s reported readiness to grant Turkey a major role in future operations in the Caucasus by the EU’s embryonic crisis management force is “of serious concern” to Armenia.

Turkey has for months blocked formation of a new EU defense force by refusing to agree to the latter’s use of NATO’s military facilities. Ankara wants to have a say in its operations. The Turkish government announced on Sunday that it will drop the objections.

The Associated Press said Tuesday that the move reportedly followed EU assurances that non-EU member Turkey will be consulted on a case-by-case basis for operations in its sphere of interest such as Iraq, the Caucasus or the Balkans, and that the force will not interfere in Turkey's territorial conflicts with EU-member Greece. According to Reuters news agency, the Turks want the right to participate in any EU security operation in their vicinity as the price for granting assured access to NATO assets and planning resources.


Oskanian said he also has received such information and is concerned that Turkish troops may be guaranteed involvement in a multi-national peace-keeping operation in Nagorno-Karabakh that would be part of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal. He told RFE/RL that Ankara “has no moral right” to demand a veto power with regard to Karabakh because of its hostile stance against the Armenian side.

The fate of the European rapid reaction force is on the agenda of talks in Ankara between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit. Powell arrived in the Turkish capital on Tuesday to rally support for actions of the US-led counterterrorism alliance after the campaign in Afghanistan.

Oskanian made the comments in a phone interview from the Romanian capital Bucharest where he attended an annual meeting of his counterparts from the countries making up the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Speaking at the gathering, he accused Azerbaijan of backtracking on the agreements reached at Karabakh peace talks earlier this year.

“So short is Azerbaijan’s memory and so shallow its commitment to peace, that it is even unwilling to accept any reference to the Paris and Key West meetings in [the OSCE foreign ministers’] statement,” he said.

Armenian officials and the French, Russian and US co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group say serious headway was made at the talks held in March and April this year. The mediators declared at the time that the parties are as close to a long-awaited deal as never before. But the Azerbaijani leaders deny that any major agreements were reached at Paris and Key West.

“That tells a lot,” Oskanian told RFE/RL later in the day. “Azerbaijan is now backtracking on the agreements approved by the three co-chairs.”

Addressing fellow ministers, Oskanian also reiterated the Armenian view that Karabakh has never been part of an independent Azerbaijani state and therefore has a legitimate right to be beyond Baku’s control. He said: “Nagorno-Karabakh’s secession from Soviet Azerbaijan was both legal, peaceful, and just…Just as Azerbaijan was no longer willing to accept the Soviet legacy, and withdrew from the Union, Nagorno-Karabakh was no longer willing to live under conditions imposed arbitrarily by Stalin decades earlier.”
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