Participation of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia in the panel discussion at the “Manama dialogue”

On December 7, deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Vahan Kostanyan participated in a panel discussion at international forum “Manama Dialogue”.

The quotes from the opening speech as well as from the answers to the questions are presented below.

''Excellences, dear colleagues, let me first of all express words of gratitude to the Kingdom of Bahrain for the great hospitality extended to all the delegates and let me also congratulate the IISS for the 20th anniversary of this very important event.

Although it's more concentrated on the issues which are more related to this region, this gathering is also important for the delegates from our region, for example for Armenia, for the South Caucasus region. At the beginning when we were starting to prepare for this year's Manama dialogue and we were trying to go through the topics of this year's gathering, the name of the session was concentrated on political responses to conflicts. But coming closer to the date of the event it became “Political and military responses to conflicts”, which clearly shows that the rules based order that we had previously is not working and the world is failing to give only political solutions to the conflicts.

But coming from the region which suffered from the armed conflict just recently, a couple of years ago, the message I would like to bring from Armenia is that military solutions are not sustainable, and all the parties should seek political solutions. This is the belief that the government of Armenia has and is trying to realize in our region. Here it’s not easy and it takes political courage to do this, but given the circumstances that we are living in, it is of the utmost importance to stick to political solutions.

Let me bring another layer to this discussion: we should add an economic layer here. We believe this is one of the keys to how we can reach peace not only in our region, but also worldwide as well. But if I try to share experience that we have in our region, you know that Armenia’s borders are closed and we do not have diplomatic relations with two of its neighbours, mainly Azerbaijan and Türkiye, and the government of Armenia believes that creating additional interconnectivities and interdependencies can cement stability in our region. Thus, the government of Armenia came with the initiative which is called “Crossroads of Peace” which aims to connect North and South, East and West, and I do believe that this is also particularly interesting topic for the GCC countries as Armenia intens to connect the Black Sea with the GCC and the Gulf and to create wider regional connectivities, which means for us also wider regional interdependencies and wider regional peace and stability.

And values play a very important role in establishing new rules-based order. And let me bring the armenian example: just this year, a couple of months ago Armenia, which being supporter of two state solution, recognised the independence of Palestine, a decision which was based on values, because as a country that suffered from the use of force just recently, we had our compatriots who suffered from starvation, were forcibly displaced we can not stand aside to look what is happening to Palestine. Unfortunately, there is not much that we can do diplomatically for the people of Palestine, but one of the few steps that was in our arsenal was simply to recognise the independence of the state and we did it. At the same time, we were very concerned with the situation in Lebanon. Again, there was not much that we could do during these years for Lebanon, but Armenia was a part of UNIFIL and we continue to be on the ground.

Today Armenia is very concerned with the situation in Aleppo. Since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in the 2010s maybe Armenia was one of the few countries who continued to have diplomatic presence in Syria and particularly in Aleppo.

To some up, dear colleagues, I would like to reiterate we should come to diplomacy and we should try to think and to build sustainable solutions, thank you’’.

From the answers of the questions

“This decision to recognize the State of Palestine, made by the Government of Armenia, was not against Israel. It is also both for the Palestinian people, but also Israeli people. Because we see the only possible way for these two peoples living in peace and stability is the “two state solution”.

(...)

On the question of AI in the military, I'm not an expert here, but from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs point of view, we do see a clear need for regulation of AI, especially when it comes to human rights on the battlefield. And here we joined the United States initiative to regulate the sphere.

(...)

And coming to the last but not least question about our region. I'm not here to maybe present the policies of Iran, Russia or Türkiye. I can present our policy. And our policy is very simple. It can have two dimensions. First, it's our relations with our neighbors, four neighbors that we have: Georgia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Türkiye. And we do believe that we need to have at least neighborly relations with four of them. And the second dimension of our foreign policy priorities is diversification of our foreign policy. As we saw with our traditional contacts and partners, we're not always helpful. But also in general, the objective which is put nowadays for our foreign policy is a bit different. And to define it in a short way, it will be to protect our sovereignty, our territorial integrity, inviolability of our borders, but also democracy. And now we are trying to develop our foreign relations with our partners, bearing in mind this perspective.

When it comes to relations with Türkiye, you know that we are sincerely interested to normalize relations with Türkiye. And we believe that the normalization of relations with Ankara can positively affect the normalization processes between Armenian and Azerbaijan as well. But also bearing in mind that Armenia is getting closer with our Western partners, here probably I should come back with a question to a distinguished colleague. Where does Türkiye see its foreign policy? Both in the region, but also with the European Union and with the West. It is clear that Armenia wants to get closer with the European Union, the people of Armenia have European aspirations. And with the opening of the border, Türkiye, which is also a member of the Customs Union, can become a bridge between Armenia and the EU".