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  • Armenia is no stranger in the Arab world

    PanArmenian News Analysis
    Jan 21 2005

    ARMENIA IS NO STRANGER IN THE ARABIC WORLD

    This is proved by the fact of granting a status to Armenia, as a
    country, specially invited to the League of Arab States.

    Armenian foreign minister has returned from Cairo. His visit was not
    only aimed at holding negotiations with the political leadership of
    the friendly country. It was also aimed at creating a contractual
    base for improving cooperation with the League of Arab States. Vardan
    Oskanyan and the secretary general of the Arab League Amra Musa
    signed a memorandum of understanding between Yerevan and the
    influential regional organization.

    /PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian foreign minister also had meetings with
    his Egyptian colleague and with the representative of
    Armenian-Egyptian intergovernmental commission Faiza Abul Naga. The
    partnership between Armenia and Egypt has old traditions, but the
    same cannot be said about the League of Arab States which was
    established only a few years ago. On January 19, Armenian-Arabic
    relations gained a new quality. Thanks to the signed memorandum
    Armenia obtains the status of a country, specially invited to the
    League of Arab States. This will open extensive perspectives for
    mutually beneficial economic and cultural cooperation.

    The steady interest of Yerevan to the Arab League is very natural.
    Armenia strives to stir up cooperation with all the influential
    international organizations. The high level of influence of the Arab
    League is proved by the fact that among its members there are more
    than 20 countries with huge political, economic and military
    potential. The population of the League's member countries reaches 25
    million. The ability of Arabic world to speak on important
    international issues from a united front gives a lot of influence to
    the League of Arab States.
    It is the League of Arab States that determines the policy to which
    22 capitals adhere.


    For Armenia the opportunity of getting nearer to the Arabic world is
    conditioned first of all by the presence of certain difficulties in
    the relations with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)
    which often speaks out from openly anti-Armenian positions. Taking
    the opportunity of the vote in OIC, official Baku sometimes manages
    to persuade its partners in OIC to support UN initiatives against
    Yerevan. Things were just like that during the last voting in UN
    concerning putting on the agenda of General Assembly the question of
    the situation in the security zone around Nagorno Karabakh. 95
    percents of the countries supporting the Azerbaijanian project were
    members of OIC. However, it is pleasant to realize that several Arab
    countries having influence in the Islamic world nevertheless refused
    to support Azerbaijan. This is the result of Armenia's successful
    diplomacy in Arabic direction.


    Recently, an encouraging tendency is observed in OIC. Disagreements
    concerning the purposefulness of absolute support to Azerbaijan in
    international structures have emerged between OIC member countries.
    This is the consequence of the struggle for the influence in the
    Islamic world. As the largest and the most influential Muslim
    countries, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia compete for the
    influence in the Islamic world. This is not convenient for Arabs who
    have enough grounds to make claims for a special role in the Islamic
    world. Armenia can benefit from this contradiction, since the three
    from the mentioned countries are marked for their pro-Azerbaijanian
    policy and have hostility towards Armenia.

    Strengthening relations with Arabic countries, Iran and the Muslim
    countries of CIS, Yerevan can achieve prohibition of openly
    anti-Armenian initiatives in OIC. Besides, the dialogue with the
    League of Arab States will help the organization's member countries
    to form an objective idea about the nature of Karabakh conflict. It
    will also help to work out a unified approach to our region, to
    Armenian-Azerbaijanian confrontation and the problem of genocide. At
    the same time Yerevan continues to develop cooperation with separate
    Arabic countries. Successful lines of cooperation are already
    established with Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait
    and Qatar. There is a huge potential of developing ties with Iraq and
    Palestine.

    In Azerbaijan they are extremely worried about the development of
    connections between Armenia and Arab states. In the beginning of
    December President Ilham Aliev, being very sad to learn that not all
    the Islamic countries supported Azerbaijan in UN, went on a tour to
    the Arab states. Visiting the headquarters of OIC in Qatar, the Baku
    leader appealed to the leadership of the organization to exert
    influence on the countries that hadn't supported Azerbaijan in UN.
    The spiritual leader of Azerbaijan also visited the East with the
    same aim.

    Azerbaijan's top Muslim cleric, sheikh-ul-islam Allakhshukur
    Pashazade had official meetings with the Libyan dictator Moammar
    Gadhafi, king of Jordan Abdullah II, the presidents of Maldivian
    republic and Sierra Leone, vice president of Philippines, ministers
    of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Oman and Kuwait. All the meetings had
    only one aim - to persuade them not to cooperate with Armenia.

    Both the political and the spiritual leaders of Azerbaijan were well
    aware that the League of Arab States is going to grant Armenia a
    status of a specially invited country. It would be strange if they
    didn't try to intervene since in Baku they realize that the
    involvement of Armenia in the structures of the League will allow
    Yerevan to actively influence on the processes in the Islamic world.
    The memorandum signed on Wednesday in Cairo indicated to the fact
    that the efforts of Azerbaijan turned to be useless again.
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