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Estonian MEPs worried about S. Caucasia

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  • Estonian MEPs worried about S. Caucasia

    Baltic News Service
    January 17, 2008 Thursday 11:57 PM EET


    ESTONIAN MEPS WORRIED ABOUT SOUTHERN CAUCASIA

    TALLINN Jan 17


    Estonian members of the European Parliament on Wednesday expressed
    concern about the situation in Southern Caucasia.

    Tunne Kelam, taking the floor on behalf of the EPP-ED faction in a
    discussion over cooperation with Southern Caucasia and the Black Sea
    area, appealed to the European Union to take much clearer obligations
    than earlier concerning the Southern Caucasian region.

    "It is our challenge to take the role of a reliable
    stability-creating agent as well as of an independent mediator,"
    Kelam said during the discussion last night. "To do it it is
    necessary to shed hesitations and indefiniteness and to shape a
    policy of the European Union with a clearer profile in the region in
    question."

    Kelam said the European Union's active dedication to Southern
    Caucasia, planned as a long-term venture, could help find a solution
    to the so-called frozen conflicts, which the parliament's foreign
    affairs committee has decided to refer to by a conbsiderably more
    realistic term, unsolved post-Soviet conflicts.

    "It is therefore important that our report rejects any foreign
    country's attempts to create exclusive zones of interest in the given
    area," the speaker said. "We are appealing to Russia not to obstruct
    participation of the European Union in the regulation of conflicts
    and peace keeping operations in Southern Caucasia."

    Kelam found that the European Union has an important role in
    promoting a democratic dialogue culture in countries of the area.

    "Members of the European Parliament can mediate and encourage normal
    political communication between opposing parties who much too often
    speak with each other only by street demonstrations," he said.

    Besides, Kelam encouraged the European Commission to make
    preparations to the signing of free trade agreements with Georgia and
    Armenia.

    Siiri Oviir, member of the parliamentary cooperation committee
    between the European Union and Armenia, Azerbiajan and Georgia,
    underlined that the three South Caucasian countries need the European
    Union's substantial and targeted aid in the implementation of
    democratic reforms.

    She said one of the aims of the European Union must be to support and
    encourage the development of the three countries into open, peaceful
    and stable states without ignoring their peculiarities.

    "They all have the same background, they all have struggled out from
    under the influence of Soviet-style ideology," said Oviir, "but they
    have not yet fully gotten free from the presence of the armed forces
    of Russia, the legal successor of the Soviet Union."

    Oviir appealed to the European Commission and the European parliament
    to take more advantage of the knowhow of their former peers and
    today's EU members as they are familiar with the local circumstances
    and problems and have the experience of building up law-governed
    states and market economies.

    Oviir drew the parliament's attention to the circumstance that
    democracy was not some kind of thing, but a frame of mind and it
    could not be just lifted from one day to another or from one country
    to another.

    "Perfect democracy is not born overnight," she said.

    Toomas Savi focused on Georgia's problems. He said that despite
    violations discovered in the presidential elections it was absolutely
    irresponsible to give grounds to make the situation in the country
    tenser that it already was.

    "It is dangerous to undermine legitimacy of the electoral results in
    the eyes of the people, creating a suspicion that the elections were
    not fair and just," Savi said.

    He expressed the opinion that the politicians of those Georgia's
    neighboring countries and EU members countries who had decided to
    remain sceptical and at the same time voluble, had not acted in the
    interests of Georgia's sustainable development and consolidation of
    democracy.

    Savi drew the European parliament's attention to the circumstance
    that according to information of the international observation
    mission, the presidential elections in Georgia corresponded by their
    substance to international standards concerning democratic elections.
    But she admitted that considerable failures were discovered and it
    was necessary to deal with them urgently.
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