On 22 February, MEPs from the Committee on Foreign Affairs met with academics and other experts at a public hearing to discuss the EU's role -- past, present and future -- in promoting stability and democratisation in the troubled South Caucasus.

Following the failure of the recent Rambouillet peace summit, the conflict in the breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh -- between Azerbaijan, which lays claim to the province, and the separatist Armenian majority, which controls it -- shows no signs of abating. Ditto for South Ossetia, where the Georgian government now demands the withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping forces from the breakaway republic. Ditto for Abkhazia. Ditto for Adjaria.

Such regional conflicts, argued Oksana Antonenko, a Senior Fellow at The International Institute for Strategic Studies, represent the main obstacle to the development of the South Caucasus. Unless they are settled there can be no peace, no regional cooperation, and no closer integration with the EU. It is very important, for this very reason, that the international community make progress on conflict resolution in the region.

However, as Ms. Antonenko put it, "no quick fixes can be expected". Recent efforts, she claimed, have failed to address regional security challenges. The rise of constituencies which advocate hard-line solutions; the threat of conflicts, such as that in South Ossetia, spilling over into the region as a whole; the "radicalisation of public opinion"; and lastly, the militarisation of the South Caucasus in general -- all of these factors, noted the speaker, point to the fact that the present situation is deteriorating. Without concrete security guarantees for the people of the region, she argued, "we cannot imagine voluntary demilitarisation in the conflict areas".

Prospects for EU involvement

"What can the EU do?" asked Adrian Severin, of the Council of Europe. "First and foremost, define the nature of its own interests in the region" -- without this, he argued, it will be difficult for Europe to define its policy priorities. Stimulating public awareness and education in the region is also essential, argued MEP Arpad Duka-Zolyomi (EPP-ED, SK), as is promoting local NGOs, especially in places where people do not know of their activities. "Civil society has to be included in the democratisation of these young republics", concluded Marie Anne Isler Beguin (Greens/EFA, FR).

To play a tangible role in the Caucasus, said Heikki Talvitie, EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus, European institutions should try project a coherent notion of the EU's "identity" -- its institutional structure and policy aims -- into the region. As he later put it, "There has been a deficit of European policies [with regard] to the expectations of those countries".

The tension in the Caucasus, argued Mr. Severin, "is part of a larger, more coherent problem: that is, the post-Soviet order in the region". What is important, noted Ms. Antonenko, is not whether the conflict areas -- South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh -- are pro-Russian. The question, for Europe, is why are they pro-Russian? She explained: "It was not the EU but Russia which gave these people their basic needs" in the wake of the break-up of the USSR. "Nobody offered them any means for survival -- Russia did that". The EU, she added, has not offered them any security guarantees.

The Russian factor meets the Kosovo factor

Russian president Vladimir Putin's recent remarks on the Caucasus cast a shadow over the discussions. "If people believe that Kosovo can be granted full independence", Mr. Putin had said during a speech in late January, "why then should we deny it to Abkhazia and South Ossetia?"

As Vytautas Landsbergis (EPP-ED, LT) saw it, Putin's policy in the region was painfully simple: support the separatists favourable to Russia and undermine all those opposed to it.

Hannes Swoboda (PSE, AT), for his part, asked participants to focus on the "knock-on effect from the Kosovo problem". For the most part, answered Bruno Coppieters from the Free University of Brussels, regional players have drawn all the wrong lessons from the Kosovo experience. The conclusion arrived at by Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Georgian president, remains the most troubling -- it is that "the use of military force remains the most effective instrument to end the contest of wills in a secessionist conflict".

Reference :
2006/02/22 15:00:00
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Chair : Elmar Brok (DE) - EPP-ED
Joint hearing of Foreign Affairs Committee and Delegations to the EU-Armenia, EU-Azerbaijan and EU-Georgia Parliamentary Cooperation Committees

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