[A-List] Regional destabilization is job #1 - The South Caucasus

["Leigh Meyers" <the.buffalo.in.the.midst@xxxxxxxxx>]

Wodrow Wilson would be sooooo proud!

Another theater for US-Iran fallout: the South Caucasus

Armenia, an ally of both countries, shows how tensions between the two
could upset the region's diplomatic balancing act.

By Nicole Itano | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

YEREVAN, ARMENIA

In late March, as the United Nations Security Council debated whether
to increase sanctions against Iran over that country's refusal to halt
its nuclear program, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his
Armenian counterpart met near the border of the two countries to
inaugurate a new pipeline bringing Iranian natural gas to fuel
Armenian cities.

Lighting a symbolic flame, Armenian President Robert Kocharian called
the ceremony "evidence of our friendship." But it's a relationship
some of Armenia's other friends â particularly the US â wish weren't
quite so cozy.

As tensions between Iran and the West approach a boiling point,
Armenia is finding it increasingly difficult to negotiate the often
conflicting alliances in its complicated neighborhood. Its precarious
position illustrates the potentially destabilizing consequences of a
Western standoff with Iran on not only the Middle East, but the South
Caucasus as well.

More than 15 years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the fragile
region remains politically volatile. A number of unresolved conflicts
â over the breakaway regions of Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South
Ossetia â still poison relations between neighbors.

Those local tensions have been amplified by new global focus on the
region that has placed the countries at a nexus of competing
interests. Russia, the US, the European Union, Turkey, and Iran all
claim important economic or political stakes in the region.

Armenia faces a choice: Iran or the US?

Keeping good relations with Iran is vital for Armenia, a small,
landlocked country. Its main borders â with Turkey and Azerbaijan â
are closed, and the country is still in a state of cold war with
neighboring Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, an unrecognized
ethnically Armenian state that is still legally part of Muslim
Azerbaijan.

But the US is Armenia's main donor and the only one which currently
funds humanitarian assistance in Karabakh. Over the next five years,
Armenia is also slated to receive $235 million in aid through
President Bush's flagship international development program, the new
Millennium Challenge Account.

Armenia's outgoing foreign minister, Vartan Oskanian, says Armenia's
allies understand its difficult position. But he also acknowledges
that, as tensions rise, there is increasing pressure to choose a side.

In Full: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0521/p07s02-woeu.html