Turkish, Russian Presidents on Caucasus Security
Russia and Turkey are willing to strengthen security in the Caucasus and cooperate on “supplementary” security measures for the region, the Turkish and Russian Presidents said after meeting in Moscow on February 13.
“Our countries are naturally interested to strengthen security in the Caucasus region and to have a proper security in the Black Sea [region]. In this, we are fully in solidarity on number of issues, which can strengthen this security,” Dmitry Medvedev said at a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul.
“The August crisis, last year, showed how important coordination between all countries of the region is when such threat emerges; and it also showed, that we can deal with such problems ourselves, without the involvement of outside powers,” he added.
A joint declaration signed by the two presidents reads: “Recognizing that the stability and security of the Eurasian region is directly linked to the stability in the South Caucasus, the parties [Turkey and Russia] agree that effective measures are needed to be taken for resolving the frozen conflicts, which represent potential destabilizing element for the South Caucasus. In this context, the parties consider the Turkish-proposed initiative of creating the Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform as constructive and supplementary to the already existing international mechanisms, which is capable to remove lack of confidence between the parties involved in the frozen conflicts.”
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