Armenia hopes to join the EU in 20 years

Interview by Leon Mangasarian, Deutsche Presse Agentur, Berlin, 17/11/2004
[See editor's note at the end of the interview]

"We would like to be a European Union (E.U.) member ... the sooner the better," said Oskanyan in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa, after talks between German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Armenian President Robert Kocharian in Berlin.

Oskanyan said the path used by the 10 mainly east European nations, which joined the E.U. earlier this year, showed Yerevan the blueprint it had to follow. "More needs to be done but a lot will depend on Armenia," he said, adding Armenia had to reform its legislature, institutions and democratic system as well as fight corruption to be on track for possible E.U. accession negotiations. But he stressed the process of completing reforms to meet E.U. standards was highly positive in itself and that the journey toward joining the Union was just as valuable as the final prize. Asked when his country expected to join, he said: "Maybe in 15 or 20 years."

Turning to Turkey's bid to join the E.U., Oskanyan said his government had no objections but was noting with concern that the E.U. seemed to have watered down some of its criteria in the case of Turkey. Armenia, he said could not understand how Turkey could be recommended for E.U. membership talks while its border to Armenia remained closed. Oskanyan also noted that Turkey's penal code banned any mention of the term genocide in reference to the killing of Christian Armenians by Moslem Turks during and after the First World War. Armenia and many historians say the killings amount to a genocide as between 800,000 and 1.5 million Armenians died during this period. But Turkey has always rejected this and insisted a smaller number of Armenians were killed during the war when they rebelled against Turkish rule. Nevertheless, Oskanyan said Armenia had "no problem" with Turkish E.U. membership because this would lead to European standards of minority rights and full freedom of speech in Turkey as well as an E.U. member state bordering on Armenia. He said Turkish recognition of "genocide" was not a precondition for normal ties between Ankara and Yerevan. Turkey is expected to get a green light at the scheduled December 17 E.U. summit in Brussels to begin accession talks. Turkish leaders admit it could take until 2019 before their country becomes a full member.

Turning to an uneasy truce over the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region between Armenia and mainly Moslem Azerbaijan which has held since their war over the region ended in 1994, Oskanyan complained that Azerbaijan was backtracking on moves aimed at a final accord. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a bitter war over Nagorno-Karabakh in which an estimated 35,000 people were killed and some one million became refugees. Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic Armenian region but lies within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan. The Armenian state supports ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and it military occupies about 16 per cent of Azerbaijan. Oskanyan said his government wanted the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to continue to mediate the dispute, and he opposed recent moves by Azerbaijan to shift talks to the U.N.

Editor's note: IE policy is to circulate articles of interest to Armenia-EU relations. These articles are chosen for their originality, relevance and quality, not on the basis of the opinions they advocate.

We would however guard the reader against taking this article's representation of the controversy about the genocide and of the origins and nature of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict for fact. In particular, the persistent use of inverted commas around the word "genocide", also very frequent in the English speaking press, is far from neutral: it suggests the facts are unknown, and probably doubtful. Recurrent misrepresentations of well documented facts parading as caution and neutrality are an indictment on the media that endorse them.

Links:
groong.usc.edu/news/msg97241.html