Armenian foreign minister also had meetings with his Egyptian colleague and with the representative of Armenian-Egyptian intergovernmental commission Faiza Abul Naga. The partnership between Armenia and Egypt has old traditions, but the same cannot be said about the League of Arab States which was established only a few years ago. On January 19, Armenian-Arabic relations gained a new quality. Thanks to the signed memorandum Armenia obtains the status of a country, specially invited to the League of Arab States. This will open extensive perspectives for mutually beneficial economic and cultural cooperation.
The steady interest of Yerevan to the Arab League is very natural. Armenia strives to stir up cooperation with all the influential international organizations. The high level of influence of the Arab League is proved by the fact that among its members there are more than 20 countries with huge political, economic and military potential. The population of the League’s member countries reaches 25 million. The ability of Arabic world to speak on important international issues from a united front gives a lot of influence to the League of Arab States.
It is the League of Arab States that determines the policy to which 22 capitals adhere.
For Armenia the opportunity of getting nearer to the Arabic world is conditioned first of all by the presence of certain difficulties in the relations with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) which often speaks out from openly anti-Armenian positions. Taking the opportunity of the vote in OIC, official Baku sometimes manages to persuade its partners in OIC to support UN initiatives against Yerevan. Things were just like that during the last voting in UN concerning putting on the agenda of General Assembly the question of the situation in the security zone around Nagorno Karabakh. 95 percents of the countries supporting the Azerbaijanian project were members of OIC. However, it is pleasant to realize that several Arab countries having influence in the Islamic world nevertheless refused to support Azerbaijan. This is the result of Armenia’s successful diplomacy in Arabic direction.
Recently, an encouraging tendency is observed in OIC. Disagreements concerning the purposefulness of absolute support to Azerbaijan in international structures have emerged between OIC member countries. This is the consequence of the struggle for the influence in the Islamic world. As the largest and the most influential Muslim countries, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia compete for the influence in the Islamic world. This is not convenient for Arabs who have enough grounds to make claims for a special role in the Islamic world. Armenia can benefit from this contradiction, since the three from the mentioned countries are marked for their pro-Azerbaijanian policy and have hostility towards Armenia.
Strengthening relations with Arabic countries, Iran and the Muslim countries of CIS, Yerevan can achieve prohibition of openly anti-Armenian initiatives in OIC. Besides, the dialogue with the League of Arab States will help the organization’s member countries to form an objective idea about the nature of Karabakh conflict. It will also help to work out a unified approach to our region, to Armenian-Azerbaijanian confrontation and the problem of genocide. At the same time Yerevan continues to develop cooperation with separate Arabic countries. Successful lines of cooperation are already established with Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar. There is a huge potential of developing ties with Iraq and Palestine.
In Azerbaijan they are extremely worried about the development of connections between Armenia and Arab states. In the beginning of December President Ilham Aliev, being very sad to learn that not all the Islamic countries supported Azerbaijan in UN, went on a tour to the Arab states. Visiting the headquarters of OIC in Qatar, the Baku leader appealed to the leadership of the organization to exert influence on the countries that hadn’t supported Azerbaijan in UN. The spiritual leader of Azerbaijan also visited the East with the same aim.
Azerbaijan’s top Muslim cleric, sheikh-ul-islam Allakhshukur Pashazade had official meetings with the Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, king of Jordan Abdullah II, the presidents of Maldivian republic and Sierra Leone, vice president of Philippines, ministers of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Oman and Kuwait. All the meetings had only one aim – to persuade them not to cooperate with Armenia.
Both the political and the spiritual leaders of Azerbaijan were well aware that the League of Arab States is going to grant Armenia a status of a specially invited country. It would be strange if they didn’t try to intervene since in Baku they realize that the involvement of Armenia in the structures of the League will allow Yerevan to actively influence on the processes in the Islamic world. The memorandum signed on Wednesday in Cairo indicated to the fact that the efforts of Azerbaijan turned to be useless again.
