Saakashvili is calling for creating a “Common Caucasian House”

[MosJan]

A Dream House: Georgian president shared his vision of "United Caucasus" again

 

By Aris Ghazinyan

ArmeniaNow reporter

 

Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili is calling for creating a "Common Caucasian House" – some kind of a union of South-Caucasian countries, that would minimize Russia's influence in the region and "would further a common concept of a political course maximally matching the interests of the whole region".

 

Early this week the Georgian president discussed this project with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu visiting Tbilisi. "United Caucasus is my long-time dream," stressed Saakashvili on February 14.

 

He admitted that there are many difficulties to be overcome on the road leading to the realization of that dream, among them the unresolved conflicts like "for example between Azerbaijan and Armenia", however, he is convinced that such conflicts would be much easier to settle "within the united Caucasus".

 

Yet in November of 2010, Saakashvili addressing the UN General Assembly stated: "We can live in different states and present different ethnic groups on different sides of the Caucasian mountains. But in human and cultural perspectives there is no division between the South and North Caucasus. There is one united Caucasus belonging to the world civilization and Europe".

 

It should be noted that the idea of creating a common Caucasian house as a mechanism of minimization of the Russian influence in the region is not exclusively Georgia's initiative. The project itself, one way or another, has been developed separately by Turkish, British and American political circles since the 19th century.

 

Turkey's interest is traditionally based on the necessity to involve the Caucasian region in the zone of its unreserved influence. For that purpose at the end of WWI the Turkish authorities declared a number of puppet states in the Caucasus.

 

However, the only surviving state among them turned out to be Azerbaijan. Turkey's interest to take possession of the region became urgent with the collapse of the USSR, and Ankara's Caucasian policy is dictated by that very interest. No wonder that the recent surfacing of the issue happened during Davutoglu's visit to Tbilisi.

 

The British policy, in its turn, is oriented towards the consolidation of its own positions in this strategically important region, obviously, at the expense of weakening the Russian influence. After the collapse of the USSR the British interests were presented by Links NGO lobbying the creation of a single South Caucasian parliament.

 

In February-April 2003 at the Marriott Hotel in Tbilisi a memorandum of mutual understanding among the parliaments of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia was signed. By then Links had been arranging meetings of South Caucasian law-makers in London and Tbilisi for two years.

 

In 2005, the then Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly Artur Baghdasaryan openly stated: "Armenia is hoping for the opening of a parliament of South Caucasian states."

 

The Western interest is also based on the weakening of Russia's position in the region and, correspondingly, the strengthening of that of the West.

For this the US State Department and George Marshall European Center for Security Studies developed a project called "3+3", providing for "curatorship" of the three former Soviet Baltic republics over the three former tarns-Caucasian republics.

 

In order to enhance "Armenia's trust" in that project the Lithuanian parliament (Seim) even recognized the Armenian Genocide in 2005, which was immediately followed by President Valdas Adamkus's visit to Yerevan. It is noteworthy that the Western and British projects, although independent from one another, were developing in the same direction.

 

On June 10 of 2005, in the course of negotiations with the Lithuanian parliament speaker Artur Baghdasaryan stated that that "Armenia espouses the development of relations with all its neighbors; moreover it is for the transformation of the South-Caucasian parliamentary initiative into an Assembly".

 

However, the subsequent resignation of the Armenian speaker who went into opposition reflected on the general mood in the Armenian parliament leading to a gradual decrease of either the activities of the Links or the American "3+3" project.

 

Last year from the UN General Assembly's rostrum the Georgian president tried to attract the attention of western countries to the importance of reanimating the frozen project. Nonetheless, under the new geopolitical conditions, Turkey is the one most actively working in that direction, and Davutoglu's visit to Tbilisi and their discussion of a Caucasian House is a proof of that.

 

Taking into account the Turkish positions in the Armenian-Azeri conflict, Armenian law-makers would doubtless be extremely cautious while considering the issue of resurrecting the project. Official Yerevan has not commented its attitude to the initiative, perhaps considering the project to be unrealistic at this stage.

[gamavor]

Saakashvili must have been smoking something funny:) After appropriating the Armenian Lusignian flag as the national flag of so-called Georgia (read Caucasian Iberia), after stealing Armenian church property and Church lands within Georgia, after denying basic social and cultural rights of Georgian Armenians for years, after openly supporting AZVERISTAN and Turkey....now wants to have common caucasian house?!

[Zartonk]

Amen