Author: Goga Akhalkatsi

Azerbaijan is an important partner for the EU in the Caucasus, Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of the European Council Simon Mordue wrote on his X page, Trend reports. Simon Mordue wrote that he discussed EU-Azerbaijan relations with Assistant of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Head of Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev. “Stressed that Azerbaijan is an important partner for the EU in the Caucasus. The EU will continue to support the Armenia-Azerbaijan normalisation process to advance a peaceful and prosperous South Caucasus,” he noted. Source : Trend az

Brussel, Frankfurt (16/11 – 23) A levying of embargoes and export bans, the imposition of sanctions, erection of fearsome “license” (= restriction) protocol: there’s nothing new about this back-and-forth in world trade, in the eternal jousting for advantage among markets and nations. The clever Chinese imagined they had the world tea market all locked up until an earnest Scottish botanist carrying the telling name of “Robert Fortune” snuck into the Middle Kingdom to observe their agriculture, steal tea plants, and pick up tricks of tea processing. The Chinese global tea monopoly was busted wide open. The fortunate Mr. Fortune was…

Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, currently on an official visit to London, has held a meeting with Head of the United Kingdom-Armenia Friendship Group Tim Loughton and members of the group. A number of issues pertaining to Armenian-British relations were discussed during the meeting, the foreign ministry said in a statement. The interlocutors recorded the dynamics of deepening the bilateral political dialogue and in that context noted the importance of the Armenia-Great Britain strategic dialogue launched yesterday as an important manifestation of support for democracy in Armenia. Issues related to the security situation in the South Caucasus were on the…

The collapse of the separatist regime in the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan in September completed the de-occupation process of the country’s occupied territories. This has effectively brought an end to the decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the mentioned region. The mutual recognition each other’s territorial integrity by the two countries, and in particular, Armenia’s recognition of Garabagh as part of Azerbaijan, has laid a strong foundation for a more stable and peaceful future between the two nations. The statement by the Armenian parliamentary speaker Alen Simonyan on November 28 concerning Armenia’s recognition of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity including the…

Copenhagen (13/11 – 37.5) When Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as Sri Lanka’s president in July after a popular uprising ousted his predecessor, the South Asian island nation was engulfed in its worst economic meltdown in 75 years. Since then, President Wickremesinghe has managed to a keep a lid on mass protests, improve supplies of essentials and on Monday, secured a nearly $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that opens the door to restructuring about $58 billion of debt and receive funding from other lenders. He has done that despite a deeply unpopular government, his own party commanding just one…

In a dramatic development, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan issued a surprise joint statement on 7 December, outlining a prisoner exchange and mutual confidence-building measures, while committing to continue negotiations on normalizing relations and reaching a long-elusive peace treaty. The joint statement by the offices of the Armenian Prime Minister and Azerbaijani President opens the path to a full-fledged peace treaty, as European and American diplomats have indicated. Most notably, “for humanitarian reasons” and as a “gesture of goodwill,” Azerbaijan agreed to release 32 Armenian military personnel, while Armenia will free two Azerbaijanis. This will be the first mass prisoner-of-war exchange…

The South Caucasus entered global geopolitics after the end of the Cold War. The newly independent states of the region found themselves in uncharted waters of regional competition, rivalry and co-existence. The conflicts in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia added additional layers of complexity to regional geopolitics. However, by the late 1990s, the more or less stable regional security order emerged: the Turkey-Azerbaijan-Georgia partnership, supported by the United States, and the Russia-Armenia strategic alliance, supported by Iran. These transformations occurred within the unipolar world order, marked by U.S. hegemony and the expansion of the liberal international order, or as…

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili, who is on a visit to Brussels, on Tuesday said the country had shown it was “ready” and “deserved” NATO membership. In his remarks over the country’s aspirations to join the alliance, Papuashvili noted “the Georgian people, who made sacrifices for international security, should hear clear answers from NATO”. The chief Georgian legislator also stressed the Georgian Government had done “a lot” to bring its institutions and systems in line with NATO standards. We have shown that we don’t want to be just a consumer of the security system, but we want to be a…

Frankfurt (18/12 – 14) That there are remarkable advantages in being ignored is not generally recognized. Central Asian countries, historically under the thumb of Moscow, all through the 70+ years of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were more or less cut off from the outside world. There was little trade or other exchange. The USSR was in fact a grab-bag of ethnicities, religions and languages, controlled with an iron fist by Stalin and afterwards with unbroken dominance through subsequent regimes. Under Soviet management, Central Asia had stayed poor and ignored; it had not developed any hydrocarbon resources to lure…

Activities of the Georgian Ministry of Health, as well as reforms implemented and ongoing at the body were discussed on Thursday in a meeting between the Georgian Health Minister Zurab Azarashvili and Robin Dunnigan, the United States Ambassador to Georgia. The meeting focused on the prevention of infectious diseases in the country, their detection and further improvement of the quality of their management, the Ministry said. Azarashvili thanked Dunnigan and the American Government for their support to Georgia on the path to EU integration and for their contribution to the development of the country’s healthcare system. The Georgian official also…