WESTERN EXPERTS CONSIDER TIME HAS COME TO SOLVE CONFLICTS IN SOUTH CAUCASUS

Western experts have come out with a conceptual material, concerning settlement of conflicts in the territory, which has become close to the European Union. As reported by Zerkalo Baku newspaper, Ronald Asmus, Senior Researcher of the German Marshall Fund in the US, and Bruce Jackson, President of the Project of Transitive Democracies, state in their article, published by the Policy Review, that 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall time has come to solve conflicts – starting with the Transnistrian and ending with the Karabakh one, and these issues should become “top priority of our diplomacy towards Moscow.” After the decision to extend the EU neighborhood strategy towards Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, expected on June 12, all countries to the north and east of the Black Sea – including Russia, Ukraine and Moldova – will find themselves in closer relations with the European Union. “Four ‘frozen’ conflicts (Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh) are available in the region. It is absolutely evident, that these fervent splinters of the Soviet Empire serve as a zone convenient for arms and drug smuggling and trafficking, in a word they have become centers of international organized crime and of course terrorism,” the researchers note. They indicate the US and Europe, working by means of the OSCE and the UN, should make joint efforts to solve the ‘frozen’ conflicts.