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  • Armenia and NATO edging closer

    Institute for War & Peace Reporting
    June 16 2005

    ARMENIA AND NATO EDGING CLOSER

    How far down the road towards NATO membership is Armenia likely to
    go?

    By Ara Tadevosian in Yerevan

    Armenia's defence minister Serzh Sarkisian and NATO secretary general

    Jaap de Hoop Scheffer have come to an agreement that many see as
    proof of a new strategic shift by Armenia towards the West.

    At a meeting in Brussels on June 10, Sarkisian formally presented
    de Hoop Scheffer with his country's so-called Individual Partnership
    Action Plan, IPAP, as well as a personal letter from President Robert
    Kocharian.

    The event marked a breakthrough in relations between Armenia and NATO,
    which were once quite frosty. It also lays out many new obligations
    on Yerevan, which NATO will now monitor very closely.

    Essentially, the latest agreement leaves Armenia facing a long-term
    strategic choice: when the IPAP expires in two years' time, will
    Yerevan take the next logical step and seek to apply for NATO
    membership?

    Since gaining independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991,
    Armenia has been a close military ally of Russia. Moscow still
    maintains a large military base in Gyumri, in the north-west of
    the country.

    But a slight cooling of relations with Russia, overtures from the
    West and the NATO aspirations of neighbouring Georgia and Azerbaijan
    have changed the picture. Visiting Georgia last month, US president
    George W Bush made it clear that he welcomed the idea of Georgia
    joining the alliance.

    "If it turns out that Georgia and Azerbaijan eventually become members
    of NATO and Armenia does not, then obviously this will lead to new
    lines of division in the Caucasus," Armenian foreign minister Vardan
    Oskanian said last year.

    In April, Sarkisian insisted, "After we set ourselves the goal of
    joining the European family, we must have close relations with NATO
    and be responsible for guaranteeing security in Europe."

    Armenia and NATO began to develop a closer relationship prior to the
    alliance's Prague summit in 2002. In November 2002, George Robertson,
    then secretary general of NATO, told the Armenian news agency Mediamax
    that the alliance should pay more attention to the "specific needs
    of its partners in the Caucasus".

    "We need to organise NATO's advice and assistance on an individual
    basis and put our resources where they are needed the most,"
    said Robertson. "We need to improve liaison arrangements between
    Brussels and capitals in the region. In a word - we need to develop
    'smarter' instruments of cooperation, to make the most efficient use
    of our resources."

    This new approach led to the development at the Prague summit of IPAPs
    for countries from the South Caucasus and Central Asia, setting out
    practical steps by which they could converge with NATO standards.

    In June 2003, Armenia played host for the first time to NATO's
    so-called "Cooperative Best Effort 03" military exercise, which was
    hailed as a success. And in February 2004 Yerevan sent peacekeeping
    troops to join the international presence in Kosovo.

    The recent meeting between Sarkisian and de Hoop Scheffer in Brussels
    coincided with the start of moves to shift weaponry from Russian
    bases in Georgia to the Gyumri base.

    But in a sign of a change in atmosphere, a leading official in
    Armenia's opposition Republic Party Suren Sureniants criticised the
    move, saying it "only reinforced the prevailing opinion in the West
    that Armenia is Russia's forward post in the Caucasus". Sureniants
    also said the time had come when "the Armenian political elite ought to
    raise the issue of the withdrawal of Russian bases from the territory
    of our country".

    But many Armenians remain deeply suspicious of NATO, of which Armenia's
    historical enemy Turkey is a member, and continue to regard Russia as
    a more reliable ally. "If NATO needs us so badly, then why doesn't
    it force Turkey to open its border with Armenia?" asked 55-year-old
    teacher Misak Alexanian.

    President Kocharian declined to attend a NATO summit in Istanbul
    last year because of Turkey's refusal to begin diplomatic relations
    with Armenia and open the two states' shared border. But the protest
    achieved little, with NATO officials pointing out that it is not the
    role of the alliance to act as a referee between two countries or to
    insist that a member state change its foreign policy.

    At the same time, Armenians have welcomed the position taken by NATO
    on relations with Azerbaijan. Last September the alliance cancelled
    a planned "Cooperative Best Effort 04" exercise in Azerbaijan, after
    the Azerbaijani government refused to allow Armenian officers to take
    part in the manoeuvres.

    Kocharian had previously won admiration within NATO for permitting
    Turkish officers to travel to Armenia for the 2003 exercises. The
    president said, "On an emotional level I am not thrilled about the
    possibility of a Turkish contingent taking part in exercises on our
    territory...However, as president I understand that well-constructed
    relations with NATO are more important for the country."

    Another problem facing Armenia is that it now finds itself in the
    tricky position of being both a member of the Russian-led Collective
    Security Pact of the Commonwealth of Independent States and a growing
    friend of NATO.

    Nicholas Burns, formerly US ambassador to NATO and now under secretary
    of state, suggested to IWPR last year that Armenia would need to adapt
    to allow for the differences of approach between the two alliances.

    "There are indeed substantial differences in the ways NATO and Russia
    organize their military forces and defence organizations," he said.
    "If Armenia wants to significantly improve its interoperability with
    NATO, it will have to revise some of those structures."

    American political analyst Ronald Asmus, one of the chief advocates of
    NATO's eastern expansion, told IWPR that the alliance, for its part,
    "needs to try to pursue a dual-track strategy where it expands its
    outreach to this region and tries to deepen its cooperation with Moscow
    in parallel. It is clearly in our as well as Armenia's interest that
    we succeed in doing so".

    Armenia will also have to bring its own armed forces under democratic
    control - not an easy process for a country where the military has
    big political clout and whose conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorny
    Karabakh remains unresolved.

    In the meantime, public interest in Armenia about possible NATO
    membership - in contrast to Georgia and Azerbaijan - remains very low.
    Only one of the country's daily newspapers printed a small article
    about the presentation of the IPAP in Brussels.

    And the government has other more serious problems to deal with. A
    decision will have to be made about what will happen to the strategic
    alliance with Moscow when the two-year IPAP comes to an end. And
    Yerevan must consider that NATO now identifies itself as a political
    as much as a military organisation, meaning that Armenia will need
    to implement democratic reforms to achieve a closer relationship with
    the organisation.

    Ultimately, the strategic choice about whether to apply for NATO
    membership will be in the hands of the successful candidate in the
    next round of presidential elections in 2008.

    Ara Tadevosian is director of the Armenian news agency Mediamax
    in Yerevan.
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