ALL EXCEPT TURKEY WILL COOPERATE
Support A1+!Public ecological organizations of Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran, concerned about dehydration problem of Qour-Araqs basin are going to form a joint centre. In all probability, a new four-party forum will start working in spring and it will involve three public organizations from each of the above-mentioned countries.
At present statutes are being worked out for the new structure. The last letter including offers and remarks on the document was by Armenian party on February 14 to Georgia where the forum must be registered and act. The location of the place was decided taking into consideration normal relations of Georgia with other neighbors. Though the program suggests also Turkey's participation, but the latter hasn't expressed a wish yet to join the new organization.
Today the most serious problem for Qour –Araqs basin is pollution. Industrial and common waste bring the countries using the basin to ecological disaster. On financing of USAID and Global Ecological Fund, programs concerning Qour-Araqs basin have started since 2004, but the idea of creating amalgamated eco-centre came up in November 2005 at the seminar passing in Gudauri, Georgia.
At the beginning of December the project of forum's statutes were sent to the Armenian public organizations, which are, to put it mildly, not fond of the draft. The thing is that there were some items in the project sent, that simply out of organizations’ warrant. Armenian eco-organizations also didn’t like the fact that equality of rights of the parties is not secured in the document. «We didn't want the forum to be a bureaucratic, complicated structure. This is just a regional cooperation», member of “Ecological vitality” public organization Sousanna Hakopyan notes. She hopes, that the cooperation will really be a success and will bring to positive results for Qour-Araqs. «Perhaps the forum will help not to repeat the existing programs and will become a precondition for cooperation on governmental level», she said.
