Armenia fears renewal of Cold War

RUSSIA: The "biggest fear" for a country such as Armenia would be a return to Cold War tensions between Russia and the US, the…

RUSSIA: The "biggest fear" for a country such as Armenia would be a return to Cold War tensions between Russia and the US, the country's foreign minister, Vartan Oskanian, has said, just ahead of his visit to Ireland today.

This is the first to Ireland by a senior figure from the landlocked country.

"We're geographically and geopolitically in a very difficult region," Mr Oskanian says. "For us, Ireland is an important EU country, and in the 15 years since Armenia's independence there has never been a visit by us, or an Irish visit to Armenia."

Little known in Ireland, Armenia claims to be the first country in the world to have adopted Christianity. In the last century it suffered from a genocide at the hand of the Turks, followed by Stalinist purges under Soviet rule, before finally gaining independence in 1991 and plunging into a destructive war with neighbouring Azerbaijan.

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Apart from their similar population sizes, both Ireland and Armenia have large diasporas abroad, Mr Oskanian says. Armenia hopes to emulate Ireland's economic development and learn from its peace process.

He points to the broad parallels between Northern Ireland and his own country's frozen conflict with neighbouring Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, where the majority of the population is Armenian.

More than a million people were displaced during the war between the two countries in the early 1990s.

Despite corruption, Armenia has seen double-digit economic growth for the past seven years, although, as Mr Oskanian concedes, this has been slow to trickle down through society. Rural poverty is still a big problem and average wealth is one-eighth of the Irish level.

Apart from the deep tensions with Azerbaijan, Armenia also has borders with Turkey, Georgia and Iran. The frontier with Turkey is sealed, Georgia's dispute with Russia has made exports to the latter difficult and tensions between the West and Iran could soon lead to problems on the southern border, too.

So far, Armenia has, unlike Georgia, managed to retain good relations with Moscow while opening up towards the EU. A few months ago, the country joined the union's near neighbourhood policy, although Mr Oskanian avoids offering any long-term declaration of interest in EU membership.