Report

Thank you, Mr. Secretary General, ministers, ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen.

I have the pleasure report on a panel on Europe's unsolved conflicts, and the pleasure is limited only by the complexity of this task. But I can say that we really had a good debate and I think that if we had a panel on Europe's unsolved mysteries it would not be more fascinating.

And of that debate I can only give you a very fragmentary and very imperfect account. Minister Rotfeld of Poland was the first panellist and he reflected on the sources of today's- of modern conflict and of sources of our problems in dealing with these conflicts, and he identified two.

One is the irrationality inherent in human nature, another is the failure of the international community to find the conceptual framework and therefore also a political framework for addressing the domestic sources of modern conflicts and the domestic sources in his view are at the roots of most issues, most conflicts that we are dealing with.

So, the practical policy need is for developing such a concept of how the international community can help solve domestic- to bring domestic peace as a precondition of international peace.

And in this context he made two remarks. He said that two factors are important.

First, that in trying to fix states there is no single solution, no perfect model applicable to each and every state.

Second, that the role of great power is crucial, of great powers and their relationship to international institutions. He opined that so far, great powers have used international institutions as they serve their interest. The trick is how to persuade the great powers to put their resources at the service of international institutions. How to persuade them to let international institutions to use them in solutions in solving international conflicts.

In terms of practical recommendations of suggestions, Mr. Rotfeld made an interesting proposal: That we should, as the Euro-Atlantic community, consider establishing a Euro-Atlantic research centre or peaceful resolution centre, or conflict resolution centre which I understand would be closely tied to NATO, to the EAPC and which would be the intellectual, conceptual centre looking for not necessarily academic answers to conflicts, but for pragmatic, very practical pragmatic answers to the conflicts themselves, but also to the question of how the international community, how NATO and the EAPC can contribute to today's settlement.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Mr. Tarasyuk, was next and he identified key common features of all the unfrozen or frozen conflicts, the unsolved conflicts that we are dealing with.

One is that they all originate- their origins are all in the past imperial policies of the Soviet Union.

Second, they are all characterized by the military presence of foreign troops.

Third, that most of them are characterized by the presence of corrupt regimes who are obstacles to solutions.

And fourth, they have a common character- fourth, common characteristics--they cannot be solved by the involved parties themselves. Therefore, international involvement by international institutions is crucial.

In this context he stressed the role of GUUAM and its willingness and ability of these organisations to contribute to democratization, to stability and eventually to integration of the wider Black Sea region into Europe.

He also had a number of practical proposals. He believed that both NATO and the EAPC could and should be involved in the search for solutions and solve conflicts and he named a few proposals for your consideration, including creating an EAPC ad hoc group for unsolved conflicts, launching a partnership action plan on unsolved conflicts, continuing informal debate on this issue at one of a future apex(?), perhaps in Ukraine, perhaps creating posts of NATO/EAPC liaison officers in states which face problems of unsolved conflicts, and eventually by launching NATO's dialogue with GUUAM as one of the organisations which is already contributing to stability and security in the region.

Mr. Sergei Karaganov the Chairman of the Council for Foreign Defence Policy was the next speaker, and he said that to a large degree the problem of unsolved conflicts is the problem of unrecognized states but he stressed that this is not a new problem. This is a problem known to the international community for many decades, and we should not a priori deny these states or these separatist enclaves the right to statehood.

He said that there are many ways to solve the conflicts. Either by reunification, by dialogue, by force, by the will of the people, or by recognition of these states and he believed that no single solution applies, that we should be flexible and creative in addressing these issues one by one and perhaps in some cases these enclaves, separatist enclaves should be recognized as states.

He stressed the positive role of Russia in freezing these conflicts for he said unfreezing these conflicts may actually be dangerous. And Russia, as he said in his words, has been the best peacekeeper in the world being able to freeze these conflicts and prevent bloodshed.

Russia has nothing against involvement of international institutions in the solution of these problems, but the key question is what do they have to contribute and whether they are ready to indeed bring such substantive contributions.

Discussion was opened by Mr. Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, and he argued that the Black Sea regoin now is the new frontier of democracy and integration. Most of the conflicts are in this region, in the wider Black Sea region. Therefore solution of these problems should be a natural follow-up and follow-on to the processes of EU and NATO enlargement and should be seen as a part of the grand design of European integration.

This integration requires the active involvement of NATO and active involvement of EU and coordination of their actions. Most importantly, according to him, it requires that these actions be based on western interests, not on Russia's concerns or Russia's interest, as he believed Russia so far has been a part of the problem rather than part of the solution to all conflicts that we are dealing with.

He believed that any solution must be based on the principal of democratic peace. Solutions cannot be reached with authoritarian regimes. Democratization of these regimes is a necessary condition of finding lasting solutions to conflicts that we are dealing with.

Another problem, another factor is the demilitarization of these conflicts and the international presence there including future peacekeeping pressure.

Mr. Georgi Baramidze, Minister for- State Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration but also Deputy Prime Minister of Georgia, said that not everything is that bleak and bad in the regions.

He stressed positive developments in Moldova and positive Ukrainian involvement in Moldova. He welcomed the recent talks between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Warsaw. But he tended to agree with Mr. Socor that Russia has not been playing a constructive role in any of the conflicts in hand, especially in the Caucasus and he argued that Russia is questioning the territorial integrity of states including Georgia while territorial integrity is the indispensable principle--at least in view of Georgia for solving all these conflicts.

He believed that Georgia is committed to peaceful solution of all conflicts on its territory based on the President Saakashvili's plan from Strasbourg. He also argued for much more active engagement of NATO and partnership and the EAPC in these issues- in the conflicts.

Mr. Dan Fried, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs was the- of the United of States of course, was the last predestined(?) he was to speak, but he was also one of those that we asked to intervene.

And he argued that there are two new emerging strategic frameworks in which we have to address the issues at hand. One is the emergence of the Black Sea as the new frontier of democracy and reform and the potentially new frontier- new framework for European integration.

Second is the political acceleration of domestic developments in the Black Sea region but also in Central Asia.

Now he said that this political acceleration may actually lead to the unfreezing of some of the conflicts, but this unfreezing doesn't necessarily have to be bad, because these unfreezings may lead actually to solution of these conflicts by reform and by democratization as we have seen already in a number of countries in this region.

Therefore, Mr. Fried believed that the time has come to act, to move ahead, and international organisations should definitely be involved and move ahead. And he stressed that the US government wants to be a part of this movement and is prepared to take its role in taking the agenda forward.

Ladies and gentlemen, a fascinating discussion followed which I don't have time now probably to recapitulate to you. But I think that the free concepts which most participants would agree, first is democracy/reform as the means towards long term solution. Second, is institutional cooperation and coordination as the method and third, integration as the carrot, as the headline goal towards which all parties involved should be working on.

The fourth buzzword during this discussion was Russia and that was an important line(?) of discussion and what the participants did not agree was on the past, present and future role of Russia in solving the conflicts that we have been dealing with.

Mr. Valionis stressed that democracy and democratic states, only those which can generate secure environment for European security. He reminded us that the Western Balkans is an unfinished business yet, but the success that we have already noted there, the key to this success is the progress of integration and the prospect of integration and these same prospects can work elsewhere, can work for Moldova, can work for the Soviet(?) Caucasus.

Especially in Moldova, Ukraine's role would be crucial, Russia's role will be crucial. In the Caucasus, the role of democratic reform will be absolutely essential and NATO has a role to play and NATO has perhaps a bigger role to play than so far.

And so do regional organisations including GUUAM which bring their contribution to the common efforts to solve the problems.

Since I have the floor I think I also have to reflect on this summary by the Minister of Norway, Jan Petersen, who said that, integration: yes; democracy: yes; international involvement: yes--but eventually we will not be able to do anything and these things will not help if there will be no political will of parties involved to solve their problems.

Thank you very much.