Nagorno-Karabakh = Åland ?
Current Word Affairs
source: Helsingin Sanomat - International Edition
Posted by MKL on Friday, September 30th, 2005 at 7:13 am.
The Finnish President Tarja Halonen started yesterday her regional visits to Caucasus from Armenia and as you can imagine, the press didn’t let her go easily. First on the table was the Armenian genocide, which Halonen passed by answering: “We are building a common future with Armenia”. Fairly vague answer on the question about genocide.
Later on when Halonen spoke to students at the Yerevan State University a question about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh - an ethnically Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan - came up. I don’t really know what she was thinking, but she offered as a solution the model of the autonomous status of Finland’s Åland Islands. A fiery-eyed Armenian student responded to this: “Azerbaijan is not Sweden“.
It’s hard to say what Halonen was thinking, but the analogy doesn’t work to me. The student was absolutely right - Azerbaijan is not Sweden, nor Armenia is Finland. Polish foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote brilliantly about the tension in the region in his book Imperium, which I highly recommend for President Halonen.
[...]
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
source: Helsingin Sanomat - International Edition
Posted by MKL on Friday, September 30th, 2005 at 7:13 am.
The Finnish President Tarja Halonen started yesterday her regional visits to Caucasus from Armenia and as you can imagine, the press didn’t let her go easily. First on the table was the Armenian genocide, which Halonen passed by answering: “We are building a common future with Armenia”. Fairly vague answer on the question about genocide.
Later on when Halonen spoke to students at the Yerevan State University a question about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh - an ethnically Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan - came up. I don’t really know what she was thinking, but she offered as a solution the model of the autonomous status of Finland’s Åland Islands. A fiery-eyed Armenian student responded to this: “Azerbaijan is not Sweden“.
It’s hard to say what Halonen was thinking, but the analogy doesn’t work to me. The student was absolutely right - Azerbaijan is not Sweden, nor Armenia is Finland. Polish foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote brilliantly about the tension in the region in his book Imperium, which I highly recommend for President Halonen.
[...]
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 8:25 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home