The 20th Anniversary Summit of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) will be hosted by Istanbul, Turkey on June 26, 2012.
The Summit will be co-chaired by the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Turkey, the two consecutive Chairmanships-in-Office of BSEC in 2012, and will mark the 20th anniversary of the launching of BSEC at the Istanbul Summit in 1992.
Armenia will be represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Ashot Hovakimian and two senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, although President Serzh Sargsyan was invited.
On June 25, 1992, the Heads of State and Government of eleven countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine signed in Istanbul the Summit Declaration and the Bosphorus Statement giving birth to the BSEC.
The priorities of BSEC as indicated in its Charter formulate the cooperation areas as trade and economic development, banking and finance, communications, energy, transport, agriculture and agricultural industry, health and pharmaceutics, environment protection, tourism, science and technology, the exchange of statistic data and economic information, small and middle business, education, institutional renewal and good governance.
Nevertheless, with economic collaboration being the key priority of the organization, Azerbaijan has repeatedly tried to use it as a platform to push its political complaints, thus frustrating adoption of summit declarations, as it happened in Albania in 2008 and in Hungary in 2011, when Baku insisted on including provisions on territorial integrity and conflict zones.
As a diplomatic source close to the matter told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter, the situation is likely to repeat this year as well – Azerbaijan shows no intention to break off the nasty habit of transforming any economic or cultural event into a battlefield to promote its goals.
Judging from the above-mentioned, adoption of the resulting declaration of the 2012 summit is in doubt again.
Turkey will officially assume the Chairmanship-in-Office as of July 1, 2012. “During our Chairmanship, we are willing to maintain and enhance project oriented and result-based approach in several areas of cooperation,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
So, there is a slightest hope that Ankara, unwilling to start its chairmanship with a failure, will try to exert some pressure on Azerbaijan to make it remove its amendments from the text of the declaration.
