Contenu du sommaire : Le sud-Caucase

The European Union and the South Caucasus A political turning point It cannot be said that the EU has had an essential role in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union, at least not from a political standpoint, as its action in the economic domain has been far from negligible both in terms of aid and technical assistance, especially in the transport sector, and in commercial exchanges. Yet did not this region, which has had very close links with the European culture throughout its history dating back to very ancient times, deserve better that this de facto exclusion, which lasted until the ‘Roses Revolution'of November 2003 in Georgia ? Evidently the European Union cannot be held solely responsible for this situation. The region is characterised by an accumulation of unresolved conflicts (Upper Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia), by an endemic weakness of the States, which are undermined by omnipresent corruption and, furthermore, by a manifest resistance to regional cooperation. Those willing to get involved may also be discouraged by the on the ground presence of a great many external actors, be they international organizations (NATO, OSCE, UN), financial institutions (IMF, World Bank), major powers with often very different interests, such as the United States and Russia, as well as the two large neighbouring countries of Turkey and Iran. The future alone will tell whether the European Union will succeed in playing an important role in a region in which two of the three countries (Armenia and Georgia) have officially declared themselves as candidates for European membership.

Hydrocarbons in the South Caucasus Intense manoeuvring around the resources of the Caspian Sea Despite the presence of hydrocarbons in just one of the three countries that make up the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan, they nevertheless play a vital role. Almost ten years has passed since the creation, in September 1994, of the AIOC (Azerbaijan International Operating Company) consortium, which brought together the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), and a group of major Western groups directed by British Petroleum (BP), which was charged with managing a concession named the ACG (Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli) for a period of thirty years. In June 1996, it was again BP that found itself at the head of another consortium created to head production operations at the huge gas field at Shah Deniz where it was initially thought that petrol would be found ! But not all of the prospecting operations were successful and certain projects had to be abandoned. Soon after production began at the Chirag oil field in 1997, the AIOC decided to build an 833 kmlong pipeline between Baku and the Georgian port of Soupsa, which bypassed the Russian networks and began to operate in 1999. But the largest project was the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (Turkey) pipeline, which was seen as a victory of Washington over Moscow, given that the latter favoured a different route. However, the reconciliation between Georgia and Russia following the ‘Roses Revolution' in November 2003 could well be sealed by the construction of a Novorossisk-Tbilisi pipeline that would link up with the BTC. However its construction depends on obtaining the agreement of Abkhazia, a separatist region of Georgia, which the proposed pipeline would cross... The gas sector's equivalent to the BTC pipeline, the BTE pipeline (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum, in Turkey), will be 690 km long. In addition, the long-standing project planning to build a gas pipeline between Tabriz, in Iran, and Erevan has been finalised and work is due to begin towards the end of the year 2004.

The Russian minorities in the South Caucasus An endangered Diaspora The arrival of the Russians in the South Caucasus dates back to the beginning of the 19th century, at a time when the current territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were part of the Russian Empire. Through the migration of the Russian people, the Tsarist government aimed to reinforce the security of the new borders and to contribute to the economic development of the region. During the early decades of the Soviet period, there was a massive influx of Russians into the major cities where the fiveyear plans caused a great many construction sites to be embarked upon. This movement began to slow down in the 1970s and ceased definitively within a decade. The large-scale departure of the Russians from the South Caucasus began in 1988. In the year 2000, the region had lost 72 % of its Russian population. This phenomenon is explained by several factors : ethnic conflicts, economic crisis, the rise of nationalism amongst the original peoples, the restrictions on the use of the Russian language, the evacuation of the Russian military bases, the failure to offer dual citizenship, the feeling of exclusion and the impossibility of participating in the economic and political life. At the dawn of the 21st century, the exodus of the Russians slowed down considerably. At present, those who remain tend to group together and to claim certain rights. But if Russia benefits from the return of an educated population, it has lost out from a geopolitical standpoint given that its Diaspora in the South Caucasus is now too scarce to allow it to exert any influence through its people in this strategic region.

Georgia and its Caucasian neighbours A marriage of convenience Since its independence, Georgia has favoured its links with the Western world and allowed its relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan to fall into the background. Characteristically, there is no Caucasus department in the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Caucasian region, which was very open during the period of USSR rule, is now extremely isolated. In particular there is very little communication between the Northern and the Southern regions of the Caucasus and cooperation is considerably hindered by conflict. Georgia is confronted with the problem of its two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and can only support the position of Azerbaijan with regard to the inviolability of the borders in its conflict with Armenia concerning Upper Karabakh. Another problem stems from the presence of large geographically concentrated Azerian and Armenian minority groups, which have given rise to Georgian fears of a revival of separatist feeling and have provided the means of exerting pressure on the two countries concerned. For many years the relations between Georgia and Russia have been poisoned by two conflicts, the problem of Abkhazia, in which the Georgian authorities accuse the Russians of supporting the Abkhazian separatists, and the conflict with Chechnya, where the Russian authorities suspect the Georgians of laxity towards the Chechen rebels. Georgia is faced with a paradoxical situation. While it hoped to escape from its geographical difficulties by increasing its ties with the Western world, it is the international community that is currently encouraging it to develop its links with its neighbours, given that the South Caucasus is now considered, particularly by the European Union, as a regional entity. However, it is the relations between Georgia and Azerbaijan that prevail, be it in terms of extracting petrol from the Caspian Sea or the participation in the organisation of regional security represented by the GUAM alliance, while Armenia finds itself excluded.

CEEC Heads of State Constitutional powers and political weight After the collapse of the communist regimes, the principal actors in the transition of post-communist Europe had the choice between the classic ‘parliamentary' model and the ‘semi presidential' model. In the climate of reciprocal uncertainty and mistrust that characterised the era, it is not surprising that the majority of countries chose the second option, which enabled them to ‘neutralise' the various powers so that no major political party could completely dominate another. This legal ‘instrumentalisation' is enabled by a characteristic distribution of power within the executive designed to encourage institutional logic and political practices. The results of a study conducted upon a representative sample of six countries show that the political weight of Presidents elected through direct universal suffrage is henceforth a reality on the political scene. They have and do not hesitate to use incontestable powers and therefore cannot be likened to their counterparts in classic parliamentary regimes. By their jurisprudence, the constitutional bodies have largely specified and strengthened the presidential prerogatives, which are further consolidated by the tight rein on certain information services or the presidency over authorities such as the national Security Council. However, this ‘democratising engineering' can only with great difficulty lead to a ‘presidentialisation' of political life, since the combination of diverse institutional regulations is impossible. This is the clearest illustration of the initial political ambiguity of the transition and the mistrust of Presidents who must not under any circumstances resemble substitutes for the General Secretaries of the Communist Party.

The Russian language A pivotal aspect in the relations between Russia and its near abroad Contrary to popular belief, the USSR did not by any means try to spread the Russian language but rather its policy was one of large diversity in terms of the approach to the national languages of the republics. Therefore the independent States born of the disintegration of the USSR found themselves faced with a complex and often contradictory heritage. If, just before the collapse of the USSR, 82 % of Soviet citizens, of whom 62 % were non-Russians, spoke Russian, the degree of knowledge of the language varied greatly according to the republics. The new independent States evidently set themselves the objective of promoting their national language to replace Russian, which caused a certain number of Russians to emigrate. However this movement did not occur on a massive scale, except in the regions of conflict (South Caucasus, Tajikistan). It was not until V. Putin came to power that the Russian government decided to adopt a policy of support for the Russian language and culture in the neighbouring regions. It also had to face up to the pressure applied by the authorities of certain republics in the Russian Federation, such as Tatarstan, to develop the role of their own languages. The Russian authorities chose to concentrate on the principal vectors of the language that are education, the media, and the Internet. The situation in terms of the Russian language differs greatly according to exrepublics, going from a total absence of official status, as is the case in Azerbaijan, to that of an official language as in Belarus.

Montenegro An unfinished democratisation and debates about the identity The evolution of Montenegro, the smallest of the republics of the former Federation of Yugoslavia and the only one to have continued to side with Serbia, with which it forms a vaguely federal State (the SerbiaandMontenegro Union), is not very different from that of the other ex-republics where the conquest of national independence took the form of a vigorous rejection of Serbian hegemony combined with an equally fierce affirmation of their specific identity. The defence of a Montenegro national identity, which is of a highly uncertain nature but whose renaissance has become the key issue of one of the principal political forces of the opposition, the Liberal Alliance of Montenegro, is of little interest to a population made up of diverse communitarian components who live, all things considered, on good terms with each other. Coupled with the still pending issue of independence, which is closely linked to the equally uncertain question of the building of the nation, defending this identity nevertheless dominates the political debate, permitting all the parties, regardless of their ideologies, to defer the necessary economic and social reforms and to disregard a democratisation process that has stopped in mid-flow.