06
May 2003
2. "Cyprus May See an Accord", tens of thousands of Greek and Turkish Cypriots are visiting each other across their divided Mediterranean island, demonstrating with their feet that they want to see the collapse of the wall of concrete, dirt and mistrust between them.
3. "General Staff denies internal rift", the Turkish military lashed out Monday at media claims hinting an internal rift of moderate and conservative groups within the army, saying such reports were ideologically motivated and promoted by a marginal group.
4. "The Shadow Of Change", as President Bush declares that combat operations are over, Iraq's neighbours are starting to face up to the war's consequences
5. "After the War: Iraqis Seek to Document a Brutal Past", all over Iraq, a massive effort is underway to collect and catalog evidence of the atrocities of the Baath Party regime. The ideas are different, but the impulse is the same: to create a historical record before the physical proof disappears.
6. "Iran's increased security concerns in Caucasus", an Armenian newspaper says that the recent visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi to the South Caucasus can be viewed as a response to the increased activity of the USA and NATO in the region and its own security concerns.
1. - THE WASHINGTON TIMES - "Turkey seeks to upgrade ties with Syria":
NICOSIA, Cyprus / May 6, 2003
by Andrew Borowiec
Turkey is seeking closer military and economic ties with Syria to
regain Arab world influence damaged by the coalition's victory in
Iraq, diplomats report.
The recent visit to Syria by Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul
has set the stage for a series of other meetings, including a trip
to Turkey by Syrian President Bashar Assad, planned for September.
It will be the first visit to Turkey by a Syrian head of state since
former Turkish and French possession Syria's independence in 1946.
The official Turkish view is that Syria intends to upgrade its relations
with Turkey to the "strategic level" after years of difficulties
because of Syria's support for Kurdish rebels and accusations that
Turkey was blocking the flow of the Euphrates River to favor its own
dams.
The developments stem to some extent from Turkey's refusal to join
the coalition in the war against Iraq, the resulting difficulties
with the United States and a loss of prestige in parts of the Middle
East.
For its part, Turkish officials say, Syria needs a new ally in the
area to reduce its isolation and to limit the extent of U.S. pressure.
The United States accuses Syria of sheltering extremist Palestinian
organizations.
According to the Istanbul Cumhuriyet daily, Syria feels vulnerable,
"squeezed between the United States and Israel after the collapse
of the Saddam regime in Iraq. Syria is seeking to eliminate its isolations.
As far as Turkey is concerned, diplomats say, a major opening to the
Middle East and the Arab world is one of the objectives of the government
of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development
Party, which is sympathetic to the tenets of Islam.
The efforts to solidify rapprochement with Syria come against a background
of Turkey's increased economic problems and a dispute between the
political leaders, who are sympathetic to Islam, and the highly secular
military establishment.
Both share power in the National Security Council, where the military,
although in a minority, has the final word as the ultimate guardian
of the secularism imposed by Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish
republic.
Diplomats have reported clashes between Mr. Erdogan and Gen. Hilmi
Ozkok, chief of the General Staff, at a recent National Security Council
meeting on issues including Turkey's ambition to join the European
Union, its desire to improve links with the Arab world and the appointment
of politicians from an Islamic party to sensitive government posts.
On some occasions, according to one report, President Ahmet Necdet
Sezer "instead of acting as an arbiter, allowed the military
to assert its influence."
The president's attitude has caused appeals for his resignation by
members of the Justice and Development Party.
According to Mustafa Balbay, columnist for the Istanbul Cumhuriyet,
"When we look at the government-army relations, we do not see
a comforting picture."
Turkish commentators stress that since 1960, the military has played
a dominant role in Turkish politics. Writing in the Istanbul Saban
newspaper, Metin Munir pointed out:
"Politicians cannot do anything without getting the necessary
permission from the soldiers on critical issues. ... Not a single
army in other countries has the great role and influence enjoyed by
the Turkish army."
2. - The Associated Press - "Cyprus May See an Accord":
NICOSIA, Cyprus / 6 May 2003
by Donna Bryson
Tens of thousands of Greek and Turkish Cypriots are visiting each
other across their divided Mediterranean island, demonstrating with
their feet that they want to see the collapse of the wall of concrete,
dirt and mistrust between them.
The human drama, unfolding while world attention is transfixed by
the war 600 miles away in Iraq, raises hopes for a solution to one
of the world's most intractable conflicts -- one that divides NATO
allies Greece and Turkey in an already unstable region.
"The people want a solution. The people can push the politicians,"
said Ozkan Ozge, a Turkish Cypriot businessman who on Friday made
his third trip to the other side since holes started opening in the
U.N. buffer zone that runs across the Connecticut-sized island and
through the heart of its capital, Nicosia.
The initiative came from Turkish Cypriot authorities, who divided
the island nearly 30 years ago, and since April 21 have allowed Turkish
and Greek Cypriots to make day trips across the so-called Green Line.
People power seems to have pushed politicians at least this far, but
the real engine for change is the 15-nation European Union. Cyprus
is getting ready to join the wealthy, borderless bloc, but only its
Greek sector will enjoy the benefits. The Turkish sector wants in
too. So does Turkey itself. And both know that can't happen as long
as Cyprus remains divided.
Since Turkey invaded in 1974 to abort a coup by Greek nationalists,
the Turkish sector of Cyprus has been an international pariah, and
its people are getting fed up. In March, when Turkish Cyprus rejected
a U.N. plan that would have gotten it into the EU, tens of thousands
staged unprecedented protests.
It isn't clear whether opening the border is just a tactic to ease
the frustrations, or a sign of a fundamental change of heart. But
it has produced rare shows of human kinship, exchanges of flowers
and pastries, and emotional visits to homes abandoned in the mid-1970s.
The only reported incident was an attack on an elderly Turkish couple
by the current occupants of the home they abandoned in Limassol, on
the southern coast. The Greek Cypriot government angrily condemned
the assault.
Otherwise, says the government, recent days have seen a "wave
of brotherhood in Cyprus, which proves the desire of the Cypriot people
to overcome the past."
Ozge, 53, was born in a village near Paphos on what is now the Greek
Cypriot side. He said he has tried to teach his 17-year-old daughter,
Pinar, that Greek Cypriots could be friends, despite textbooks and
official pronouncements that they are the enemy, and he brought her
with him on Friday to see for herself.
Ozge wants to see permanent reunification of the two sectors and their
several hundred thousand inhabitants on each side. Turkish Cypriot
leaders are trying to dampen expectations. Rauf Denktash, elected
president of a northern Cypriot state that only Turkey recognizes,
has said repeatedly that easing travel restrictions should not be
seen as a prelude to political concessions.
Denktash's son Serdar, who is head of his father's party as well as
the Turkish Cypriot deputy prime minister, sounds somewhat more forthcoming.
"This is not the solution, but this is a first step toward a
solution," he said Friday.
Many credit Serdar Denktash with persuading his father to ease the
travel rules. Serdar Denktash said it was an experiment to see whether
Greek and Turkish Cypriots can meet without reviving their long history
of communal violence.
3. - Turkish Daily News - "General Staff denies internal rift":
ANKARA / 6 May 2003
The Turkish military lashed out Monday at media claims hinting an internal rift of moderate and conservative groups within the army, saying such reports were ideologically motivated and promoted by a marginal group.
"One aspect of the prejudiced and purposeful publications is about an unacceptable attitude, which argues that there are there are groups within the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), which have different views and which are discordant with each other," the General Staff said in a written statement.
The media comments that angered the General Staff have said that there were growing disagreements between two factions of the military. An article that appeared in the Washington Post said last month that Chief of Staff Hilmi Ozkok, whom he said is an "owlish, soft-spoken man who does not fit the mold of a military strongman," was representing a faction in the military that sought strong ties with NATO.
His opponents, led by, among others, Land Forces Commander Gen. Aytac Yalman, on the other hand, represent an increasingly influential group that advocates building stronger ties with nations such as Russia and China and is more suspicious of Europe and the U.S., said the newspaper, a claim also held by some media commentators in Turkey.
The General Staff statement described the comments as "ongoing efforts of a small group of people who put their ideological obsessions ahead of laws and their own logic" and pledged that the military would spare no effort to make sure that such an attitude be corrected by the public opinion and legal steps.
The statement said the Turkish army would continue, in an uncompromising manner and through democratic means, with its duty to safeguard the Turkish Republic and added that it was fully united while doing this against "enemies of the Republic that attempt to damage this unity."
Claims of rift have been coupled with reports of last-minute changes in appointment of to some key military posts in the Supreme Military Council's (YAS) annual meeting last year.
"These reports and comments, if they are not purposeful, stem from a deep lack of information" on TSK rules and traditions, said the statement, explaining that YAS was not dealing with appointments to military posts.
The statement also used a stern language on media reports that last year's YAS meeting and high-level appointments that followed this meeting had been discussed in last month's National Security Council (MGK), warning that they would face legal sanction.
"Reports that have been cited in the press following this meeting like a scenario have nothing to do with the reality and have elicited the TSK's deep hatred... The MGK meeting did not take up 2002 YAS meeting and the general/admiral appointments that followed. Those reports that have publicized such allegations, partly fictitious and partly a product of purposeful whispering of certain circles, will certainly be subject to a serious legal scrutiny."
The Washington Post article said the rift within the army complicated the decision-making on whether or not to send troops to northern Iraq during the Iraq war.
It said Ozkok, who preferred a moderating role, was "under pressure from senior officials who want him to be more forceful with the United States."
In its comment, the newspaper also said Ozkok was distinguished from
many of his colleagues in supporting democratic reform and wanting
to limit the military involvement in civilian affairs.
4. - The Economist - "The Shadow Of Change":
As President Bush declares that combat operations are over, Iraq's neighbours are starting to face up to the war's consequences
May 5, 2003
FROM the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, steaming home from the Gulf, President George Bush has declared an end to combat operations in Iraq. The next phase of the campaign will involve policing, rebuilding the economy and helping to establish an interim government, which could be set up as early as mid-May. But the overthrow of Saddam Hussein means such changes will reverberate well beyond Iraq.
Colin Powell, America’s secretary of state, visited Syria at the weekend and gave warning that it will be closely watched for changes that reflect the region’s new landscape. As the invasion of Iraq neared its end, America and Syria appeared close to starting another war. American officials openly criticised the country for harbouring not just Iraqi fugitives but hiding some of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction as well. Syria’s own alleged arsenal of chemical weapons, along with its support of Palestinian and Lebanese terrorist groups, led some to suspect that Mr Bush had marked Damascus as next in line for “regime change.”
Mr Bush insists otherwise. But America does expect to see some policy changes by the government of Bashar Assad, who succeeded his late father, Hafez Assad, in 2000. American forces have cut an Iraqi pipeline that was used to deliver cheap oil to Syria to reinforce its message. “It’s very clear that there’s a new strategic situation in the region,” Mr Powell said after his visit to Damascus. “Syria has to realise that things have changed.” He added that the Syrians had started cracking down on radical Palestinian groups that operate from the country, but some of the groups insisted nothing had changed.
Countries in the region will be watching what happens in Syria closely, none more so than Iran. The Iranians remained neutral in the war on Iraq and the government welcomed the removal of Saddam, who used chemical weapons against Iranian troops during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Nevertheless, America has accused Iran of interfering in the process of forming a post-war government in Iraq by backing some Shia religious activists.
While there are some people in neighbouring countries who would like to see an Islamic republic in Iraq, the conservative theocrats in Iran might not in fact see it as being in their best interests. Saddam's secular regime, run by Sunni Muslims, brutally repressed the country's Shia majority. This helped Iran’s Shia clerics to develop their country—in particular, the Iranian city of Qom—as Shiism's main centre of learning. Since the toppling of Saddam, Shias have reasserted themselves in Iraq—most vividly by staging a huge pilgrimage that had hitherto been banned. A strongly religious government in Baghdad, coupled with a revival of Iraq’s many Shia holy places, could result in an Islamic power base that would rival Iran’s position in the region. Iran is already in a state of flux, with reformists keen to have better relations with America and conservatives obstructing them.
Saudi Arabia's royal family, which rules in alliance with a hardline Sunni religious establishment, is already having to adjust to a post-war change in its relationship with America, which is withdrawing nearly all its forces from the country. This is said to be by “mutual agreement”, although during the war Saudi Arabia had refused to allow air attacks against Iraq to be launched from its giant Prince Sultan air base. A combat air-control centre has already moved from the base to Qatar. The heavy presence of American troops in the kingdom, since the last Gulf war in 1991, has annoyed many Saudis—and it was used by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden to justify terrorist attacks against America.
Jay Garner, the retired American general given the job of rebuilding
Iraq, said on May 5th that an interim leadership should be set up
by the middle of the month. It would consist of some returned exiles
and some local Iraqis. Eventually, this transitional authority will
hand power over to a new Iraqi government, which America maintains
must be democratically elected and representative of all the Iraqi
people. The emergence of such a government in the region will put
pressure for change on many of the various regimes that run neighbouring
countries. Already, Saudi Arabia's acting ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah,
has been petitioned to allow an elected government, improve the rights
of women and foster equality between different groups. The war on
Iraq may be over but it seems that the repercussions have only begun.
5.
- The Los Angeles Times - "After the War: Iraqis Seek to Document
a Brutal Past":
NAJAF, Iraq / May 6, 2003
by Megan K. Stack, Times Staff Writer
Hussein Safar drives north toward the blinding washes of sand where he was shot and left to die in a mass grave more than a decade ago.
The burial ground was a longtime open secret in this city; it reportedly holds the bones of some of the thousands who disappeared in 1991, after most of Iraq's provinces rose up in a failed revolt against Saddam Hussein.
"The families ought to know that people have been killed here," Safar said last week, standing over the graves. "They have to come to see the graves, because this has to be a part of history."
All over Iraq, a massive effort is underway to collect and catalog evidence of the atrocities of the Baath Party regime. The ideas are different, but the impulse is the same: to create a historical record before the physical proof disappears.
Muslim groups in Najaf want to turn the burial ground into a commemorative cemetery. In Karbala, they want to build a museum. The elders of Nasiriyah are planning a public archive. In town after town, plazas and mosques have been converted into slapdash tributes to the thousands of victims whose murders and kidnappings were witnessed in silence — until now.
With black banners strung over garden gates and teahouses, families are announcing the loss of sons and daughters who have been dead for 20 years. Cities are sending out gravediggers to unearth killing fields. Behind the activity is the deep fear of a long-repressed people — that if Iraqis can't document the past, their history will never be told.
"If you had asked me about this a few months ago, I would have told you, 'I will give my blood and my soul for Saddam Hussein,' " said Majid Safar, a tailor who was imprisoned and tortured for more than a year on suspicion of associating with Kurds. "That's all we could say."
Their tongues are freed now — but much of the evidence has been lost. Agents, assassins and police have gone into hiding, been killed or melted into the human landscape of their tribal villages. The documents have been burned and stolen. The prisons and interrogation rooms are bombed to dust.
And so this country's religious and civic leaders are putting out crude television spots and posting pleas around town. They are asking the people to gather any evidence they can find and bring it back to makeshift public repositories. City leaders are stuffing paperwork into boxes and bags, and hoarding their stashes in back closets.
Stored in Memories
In the meantime, three decades of Iraqi history are borne in the memories of the people. There was a covert oral tradition here, of tales whispered to children and neighbors. And there were always the scars — the cigarette burns, the dog bites, the knife trails fanning like feathers across bellies and backs.
"It isn't written. It isn't something you learn. It's something that the people know," said Abu Adi, a hotel manager in Najaf. "Everybody knows certain details about some things. Dates. How many people were killed. These things we know."
Adi had been planning to escape to Syria in the late 1980s, but the government found him out. The men came for him as he climbed out of his car, blindfolded him and shoved him into an ice cream truck. He was locked away for three years and four months.
"If I told you what happened in prison," he said, "you would quit journalism."
At night he drinks tea in the mirrored lobby of his fading hotel and dreams about filing a lawsuit against the former head of public security. One day, he says, there will be a court. In the first days after the U.S. invasion, looters dropped by to peddle stolen intelligence files to journalists and local merchants.
"I was angry, because the papers belong to the public," he said. "Future generations should never utter the word 'Baath.' "
At the hands of the secular regime, it was the southern Shiite provinces that bled the most, along with the Kurdish regions of the north. People here say they were arrested for carrying religious tracts, or for reading books published overseas — or for nothing at all. In the string of cities and villages stretching south from Baghdad toward the Persian Gulf, rare is the man or woman who went unscathed by the battery of arrests and murders.
In these parts, systematic repression figures into city history, neighborhood history — even religious history. Shiite clergy are eager to review official accounts of the religious purge that killed scores of Shiite scholars in the 1990s.
"We aren't the only ones concerned — everybody is outraged," said Mohammed Rodha, spokesman for the Bureau of Islamic Revolution. "All of the people are asking, 'Where are the documents?' "
They are trapped in the heaps of bombed buildings, torn and sodden, fluttering in the hot winds like whispering leaves. They are shredded amid abandoned rockets in the public security building in Nasiriyah; tromped on by stray donkeys in Karbala.
There isn't much left. Receipts for cash paid in trade for a neighbor's secrets. Torn scraps of gun registrations. Handwritten notes detailing the movements of Iranian visitors.
They say the old regime hauled off many of the documents, threw them into rivers or squirreled them away. In the streets of Baghdad, the widespread burning of government offices was rumored to be an organized campaign meant to protect the men with blood on their hands. Some say the U.S. troops seized the documents.
"But the most important proof," said Abdul Munem, the interim mayor of Najaf, "is the people themselves."
The afternoon was almost gone when an out-of-work taxi driver named Yahiyeh Jassim wandered into the ruins of the Karbala intelligence office. A dust storm screamed across the plains and blotted out the sky. Jassim kicked through the rubble.
Like most of the old bureaucracies, the intelligence office was bombed into mounds of snapped rock and blasted concrete. In a curious scene of regeneration, a peasant family and its mule had taken up residence in the wreckage. The children had mixed mud, and were busily plastering together a new house from the broken bricks of the Baath regime.
"We have only the things we have seen," Jassim said, looking on. "We have only ourselves to witness."
Like thousands of others in this city, Jassim was arrested and tortured in the uprisings of 1991. He was jabbed with sticks, hung from the ceiling and shocked. He was 14 years old.
"We were accused of resisting the army," he said. Then he paused, glanced around and smiled a little.
"We all participated," he blurted out. "Until now, we were afraid to say it. I was taken with my uncle and his friends, and I never saw them again."
Failed Revolt
The uprisings were the convulsion of a tormented people — and a dark counterpoint to the forced elections and referendums in which Hussein collected 100% of the votes. But the revolt failed, and the people paid dearly.
Punishment from the regime was collective and arbitrary, and went on for years. The torture, arrests and executions set a new standard for a regime already notorious for random brutality.
Many rebels — those who weren't killed — remain marked for life. In Hussein Safar's case, it is the crater of a bullet wound in his left shoulder, deep pink, the size of a crab apple.
It was in the aftermath of the uprisings that Safar was stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint on the road to Najaf. His name figured on a list of those wanted for rebellion, the soldiers told him. They drove him to the Salaam Hotel, and herded him into the garden along with scores of others. Then trucks came rumbling to take them away.
Out in the desert, pits had been dug into the sand. Four at a time, the men were lined up along the rim. Four at a time, the rifles were fired, and the bodies dropped down.
A bullet tore into Safar's shoulder, cut up through his neck and burst out his cheek. He landed atop dying men — their bodies were still moving.
"I couldn't tell whether I was alive or dead," he said. Numb and bleeding, he played dead for a time, then crawled from the trench into the darkness. He still speaks as if he died that night. "When I got better I went to see a man whose father was killed with me," Safar said, fingering a bullet he's picked up from the sand. "I said to him, 'Your father died with me.' I thought he should know."
Years later, villagers who live at the edge of the burial ground listen to his story, and nod, because they have seen the graves. It's been a few years since the desert flooded and the bones came to light. The men from the government showed up with shovels, they said, and forced the villagers to dig fresh sand over the old remains.
In downtown Najaf, local lawyers and relatives of the disappeared
are holding meetings this week to discuss what to do with the graves.
After years of pretending they weren't there, everybody wants the
bodies exhumed. There is no government to ask, so they wait.
6. - BBC - "Iran's increased security concerns in Caucasus":
2 May 2003
An Armenian newspaper says that the recent visit by Iranian Foreign
Minister Kamal Kharrazi to the South Caucasus can be viewed as a response
to the increased activity of the USA and NATO in the region and its
own security concerns. It says that if Russia opposes US attempts
to bring about a speedy resolution of the Nagornyy Karabakh issue
and France remains neutral,
Iran could play a more important role in the mediation process. Iran
wants to become a "fully-fledged participant" in the process
of weighing up the mutual interests of the USA, European Union and
Russia in the Caucasus, the paper adds. The following is the text
of the report by Sargis Gevorkyan, "Why is Iran becoming active?",
published by Armenian newspaper Ayots Ashkar on 2 May:
The visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi to the three
South Caucasus countries is a prelude to the serious developments
expected in our region after the Iraqi war. Identifying the nature
and direction of the threat hanging over it, Iran - which has a thousand-year-old
tradition of statehood - is undertaking a number of diplomatic activities
aimed at
blocking the formation of the Transcaucasus "cordon sanitaire"
with the help of NATO forces for the potential neutralization of the
Russia-Iran axis. The aim of the latter is to try to speed up the
settlement of regional conflicts in order to allow the entry of Georgia
and Azerbaijan into NATO. This means that unexpected pressure will
be exerted on Armenia and Azerbaijan to settle the Karabakh issue.
This will also untie the hands of Azerbaijan and Turkey in raising
the issue of South Azerbaijan and the implementation of the programme
of Iran's partition. And this also presupposes disrupting the direct
link and communication system between Iran and Armenia, as a result
of which Iran will be deprived of the opportunity of a maritime link
with Russia (via the Caspian Sea) and a land communication system
with Europe (via Armenia).
The visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi to the region
is a direct answer to the visit by US-NATO Committee Chairman Bruce
Jackson to Baku and generally to the strengthened role of the USA
and NATO in our region. In fact the Iranian foreign minister is warning
that "security and peace in the Caucasus region are an integral
part of the national interests
of Iran". This means that Iran regards the threats hanging over
that security as contravening its national interests. This development
raises at least two questions: 1. Will Iran be able to interfere in
the scenario of speedy regulation of regional
conflicts which the USA will try to fulfil in the near future in order
to speed up Georgia's and Azerbaijan's entry into NATO?
2. Will Iran revise its current balanced policy towards Armenia and
Azerbaijan in the event of open support for Azerbaijan from Turkey?
We believe that Iran's collective position concerning these problems
will depend on the further development of US-Iran as well as Iran-Turkey
and Russia-Iran relations. If everything is clear in the first case,
where the USA accuses Iran of every possible and impossible sin, Iran's
relations with Turkey are complicated and ambiguous in the extreme.
Their bilateral relations moved a little closer during the Iraqi war,
but Turkey avoided a further deepening of relations with Iran, fearing
possible counteractions by the USA.
It is thus evident that in the context of potential developments
in the Transcaucasus, the interests of the USA and Turkey will move
closer, and the gulf between Iran's and Turkey's interests will deepen
still more. The likelihood of Iran interfering in events in the Transcaucasus
will greatly depend on Russia's position towards it, and certainly
on the
nature of Iran-Russia relations.
The reason is obvious: Although Iran has suggested that it mediate in the matter of the Karabakh issue settlement, it can not challenge the USA-France-Russia formula, set up within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group as long as that format retains its role and significance. But if Russia opposes the "lightning settlement" of the USA, and France - Iran's main partner in Europe - retains its balanced position, the Iran factor in the Karabakh issue settlement will become more important.
Thus, in the speedy settlement of the regional conflicts in the Transcaucasus,
the intensification and effectiveness of the fulfilment of the USA's
intentions will ultimately depend on how Russia behaves in our region
after the Balkan, Afghan and
Middle East and Iraqi compromises.
It seems that the agreements reached recently within the framework
of the CIS Collective Security Treaty leave no room for doubting Russia's
determination.
Moreover, while the disagreements continue between, on the one hand,
the USA, and on the other hand, Russia and some European countries,
the USA will be forced to unilaterally pursue its programme of "lightning
regulation" of the Transcaucasus conflicts, relying on its own
capacities. This means that the USA will focus all its efforts on
the participants to the conflict, Armenia and Azerbaijan, forgetting
that the Transcaucasus is like a hard nut which is impossible to crack
until all the participants of the game have united their efforts.
Today Iran is trying to intensify its efforts in order to become a
fully-fledged participant in the process of weighing up the mutual
interests of the USA, European Union and Russia. Iran understands
only too well that only in this format is it possible to bring about
a speedy change in the matter of settling the Transcaucasus regional
conflicts. And this formula of balancing mutual interests in the Transcaucasus
will make it impossible to use NATO against Iran.