The region's energy reserves and unique transit potential are key to Europe's energy balance in the years immediately ahead. This is why European interests require a comprehensive stabilization of the South Caucasus, beginning with serious progress on resolving regional conflicts that would lay the basis for a regional security framework. That in turn would facilitate institution-building, orderly government and Western investment in the region.

Absent a guiding EU vision, however, the Sept. 30 annual meetings produced no substantive results. They did let all sides air their main concerns. For instance, the Western-oriented countries of Georgia and Azerbaijan urged the EU to become, in its own interest, a direct player in the efforts toward conflict resolution in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Karabakh. The extant negotiating forums, under U.N. or OSCE aegis, are almost a decade old and merely conserving those conflicts.

But the EU--said the Georgians and Azeris in Brussels--has the interest, political influence and economic resources to promote stability and security in the region, alongside the U.S. And even the Russian-oriented Armenia joined its two neighbors in urging the EU to give all three countries a positive signal regarding the prospect of EU accession over time, linked to conflict resolution and internal reforms.

Brussels itself recognizes that the prospect of associate membership and ultimate accession is the EU's most effective stimulus for conflict resolution and internal reforms in countries within the EU's new neighborhood. This is stated in the EU's recently unveiled Wider Europe document. The problem is that the EU has simply excluded the three South Caucasus countries from both the Wider Europe and the New Neighbors Initiative. The concept and the initiative variously include all the countries from Morocco to Syria, as well as Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Russia, but incredibly leave the South Caucasus out.

As a sop for that exclusion, the EU has instituted a Special Representative for the South Caucasus in July of this year, and sent him on a get-acquainted visit to the region in August. There were four years of internal discussions before Brussels finally took this step. Those discussions at times turned into dialectical exercises: Should the EU wait some more, and create that post only after formulating a strategy for the South Caucasus? or should Brussels create that post in order to facilitate the subsequent adoption of a strategy?

As it turns out, the Special Representative's mandate does not empower him to promote oil and gas pipelines and other energy interests, nor Asia-Europe transport corridors via the South Caucasus. The mandate authorizes him merely to "assist" the existing, U.N.- and OSCE-sponsored negotiations on conflict settlement; it stops shy of a role for the EU in its own right based on its interests. Otherwise, the mandate is wide-ranging on reform and democratization issues.

This Special Representative for the South Cacasus will, however, be based in Helsinki because he happens to be a Finnish diplomat. The 1939-born, Kekkonen-era veteran Heikki Talvitie was ambassador to the former Soviet Union and to the former Yugoslavia. He served for one year (1995-96) as co-chairman of the OSCE's Minsk Group which mediates negotiations on the Karabakh conflict.

Meanwhile, the EU contents itself with a modest role in pipeline and other transit projects. This is triply incongruous. First, EU member and candidate countries are the main prospective consumers of Caspian oil and gas. Second, European companies (such as British Petroleum and Norway's Statoil in Azerbaijan, Italy's ENI and France's TotalFinaElf in Kazakhstan) are among the main players in Caspian energy projects. And, third, the EU itself had originally envisaged direct imports of Caspian oil and gas, as one of the main functions of the European Union's Traceca (Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia) and Inogate (International Oil and Gas Transport to Europe) programs, launched amid great expectations in 1993 and 1995, respectively. Almost a decade later, however, Traceca and Inogate languish underfunded and no longer seem to envisage Caspian pipelines.

The U.S.-promoted East-West Energy Corridor, from the Caspian basin via the South Caucasus and Turkey to Europe, would fulfill part of Traceca's and Inogate's initial objectives. The EU, however, now seems only remotely interested. Some EU officials simply tell their American counterparts that the transit of Caspian oil and gas is a matter for the EU-Russia energy dialogue. This shift seems to allow Russian transit of the lion's share of Caspian energy supplies to Europe in the years to come.

Russia's policy seeks to combine Caspian energy resources with Russia's own into a single pool for export under Russian physical and commercial control. This would defeat the common American and European interests in diversifying Europe's energy supplies and in avoiding European exposure to supplier leverage. American policy, focusing (though not always consistently) on those common goals, continues a long-standing Euro-Atlantic policy. This fact does not seem to inspire the EU's current energy policy.

In sum: Brussels should include Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the New Neighbors initiative, and give them positive signals regarding association and eventual accession prospects, with conditions and timetables. In no way must these countries' EU status be linked to Turkey's hypothetical entry in the EU, inasmuch as the Turkish candidacy itself is a very long shot, dependent on multiple linkages and adverse political interests.

There is no valid reason for the EU to subsume South Caucasus-Caspian countries to the EU-Russia energy dialogue. Brussels should hold a direct dialogue with the region's oil and gas producer and transit countries, bilaterally and multilaterally. It should adequately fund Traceca and Inogate for the purposes originally envisaged by these strategic projects.

Regular meetings of EU bodies with the South Caucasus countries, both bilaterally and multilaterally, would be especially useful at both the policy-making and functional levels. The EU clearly needs to increase its expert staff on this region. At present, the West's sole comprehensive program on Black Sea Security Studies is located in the U.S. at Harvard, with an active outreach in the South Caucasus countries. There's nothing comparable in Europe.

The EU must join the U.S. in the conflict-resolution efforts, so as to achieve a critical mass that would stabilize the region in accordance with Western interests and those of the region's countries. And the next EU Special Representative's office should be based in Brussels or, better still, in the region itself, with an adequate mandate and staff.

If all this looks like a tall order in Brussels now, it is because far from enough has been done these past 12 years. At the moment, EU policy toward this region is a case of too little. It must not also become a case of too late.

* Mr. Socor is a senior fellow of the Washington-based Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies.