Excellencies,
Dear Colleagues and Distinguished Guests,
Mr. Secretary General,
Ladies and Gentlemen

It is honour and pleasure to welcome you in Yerevan on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian Chairmanship-in-Office of BSEC on the occasion of 20th Meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Organization’s Member States.

I deeply hope that this forum will provide us with another opportunity to elaborate on practical steps towards fostering the economic ties among the Member States, enhancing the multilateral economic cooperation within the region, as well as in the international arena, and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of BSEC.

The six-month Chairmanship has been concluded with the accomplishment of the most of tasks and programs set up in the Armenian Calendar of Events last November. Ever since, the Republic of Armenia has been putting particular emphasis on such priority areas of cooperation as transport, energy, relations of BSEC with other international organizations, operational and structural reforms in BSEC and others.

Under the guidance of the Armenian Chairmanship the positive developments took place in the process of taking into effect the Memoranda of Understanding on “Coordinated Development of the Black Sea Ring Highway” and on “Development of the Motorways of the Sea at the BSEC Region”. With this respect, I would like to acknowledge the entry into force of these two important Memoranda which will stimulate further implementation of the 2008 Odessa Joint Declaration on “Cooperation in the Sphere of Transport in the BSEC Region” and other basic documents on cooperation in transport.

The accomplishment of the Memorandum on “Facilitation of Road Transport of Goods in the BSEC Region” remained priority item on the agenda for transport cooperation. With this regard, I would like to call on the Member States, that not yet joined the Agreements on simplification of visa procedures for professional lorry drivers and for the businesspeople nationals of the BSEC Member States, to do so.

The cooperation in developing the regional transportation networks, the implementation of joint projects for improving and expanding the existing infrastructures, as well as other issues of regional cooperation were on the agenda of the Meeting of Ministers of Transport of the BSEC Member States held in Yerevan on March 27 and other forums of the BSEC transport sector. Given the fact of entering into force the mentioned Memoranda, the decisions taken at those forums were instrumental for promotion of stronger transport links in the BSEC region. With this regard, we welcome the “Yerevan Declaration on Prospects of Cooperation in the Field of Transport in the BSEC Region”.

The Armenian Chairmanship in cooperation with the European Union undertook a practical step towards formulating an integrated BSEC regional energy strategy. Under the guidance of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources of Armenia the draft of “Proposals for the Joint BSEC-EU Plan of Action in Energy” was elaborated.

The document which was adopted at the high-level meeting on energy held in Yerevan on March 20, envisages the establishment of the BSEC-EU energy dialogue aimed at achieving a better understanding and cohesion in energy policies of producers, transit countries and consumers of energy in the region.

To elaborate the Action Plan, Armenia as a country-coordinator of the working group on energy also took guidance from the outcomes of the forums on prospects of BSEC-EU cooperation on energy. The “Yerevan Declaration on Energy Cooperation in the BSEC Region” adopted in this March by the Ministers of Energy is the next constructive step on the way of development of the BSEC-EU energy cooperation.
  
The Armenian Chairmanship took efforts to promote sectoral cooperation reinforcing the BSEC project-oriented agenda and decision-making approach. Positive results have been achieved through dynamic cooperation in science and technology including high technologies, small and medium entrepreneurship, emergency assistance and combating organized crime, health and tourism, education and culture, and others.

In close cooperation with and by active support of the BSEC Secretariat and the Member States over 50 events were held either in Armenia or in other countries. There were two sectoral ministerial meetings among them, three meetings of the Committee of Senior Officials, over 20 meetings of the working groups, a large number of conferences, seminars, “round table” discussions, trainings in different areas of cooperation.

The Armenian Chairmanship encouraged cooperation among the BSEC Member States in the priority field of nature protection. With this respect we acknowledge the informal consultations with the European Commission on the perspective of BSEC-EU interaction in the field of environment.

The training exercise on “Implementation of the Rescue Activities at Earthquakes” was organized in Armenia in December last year. The training exercise was followed by the Conference on “The Lessons from the Earthquake in Spitak”  which resulted in fostering the national and international emergency capacity.

A couple of weeks ago a forum entitled “Promoting Regional Cooperation through Information Technologies” was held in Yerevan. The Forum created opportunities for establishing cooperative relations among the BSEC Member States and served as a reliable basis for elaboration and realization of multilateral as well as bilateral programs.

Positive developments are recorded in cooperation in tourism. A forum on “Cooperation of the Associations of Travel and Tourism Agencies of the BSEC Member States” held in Athens in November last year, was aimed at creating a network of cooperation among the travel and tourist agencies in order to reinforce the tourist traffic within the region and to promote this geographical area as a common tourism destination and attract tourists from the third countries.

To these events I would add also the presentation by the BSEC Secretariat of the Project Development Fund and the Hellenic Development Fund organized in Yerevan just a week ago for representatives of financial and banking institutions, as well as the business community.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Armenian Chairmanship-in-Office of BSEC coincided with the new challenge of the contemporary world – a global economic and financial crisis.

Calling upon the international community and international organizations to join efforts in order to mitigate the negative consequences of the crisis, the Chairmanship undertook certain steps to this effect.

The extraordinary meeting of the Working Group on Banking and Finance was held in the BSEC Headquarters in November last year to urgently respond to the full-scale crisis embraced the global financial system and find ways to overcome it by joint efforts.
The regular meeting of the mentioned Working Group was launched in Yerevan a week ago. The participants of the Meeting discussed the financial crisis management and the possibility of creating an appropriate mechanism for enhancing interaction among the Member States.

The ways of withstanding the financial crisis have been also considering with careful attention at the different events took place during the Chairmanship.

Among the other priorities, the Armenian Chairmanship focused on further enhancement of all-round cooperation between BSEC and international organizations to contribute to solution of complexity of social, economic and humanitarian issues.
The Republic of Armenia is one of the co-sponsors of the draft resolution on Cooperation between UN and BSEC which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in November last year under the Armenian Chairmanship of BSEC.

Armenia welcomes recent developments within the “Black Sea Synergy” platform for regional cooperation, the “Eastern Partnership” as one of dimensions of the European Neighbourhood Policy on bilateral and multilateral format where the principle of mutually advantageous partnership should be applied.

Among the priority tasks of the Armenian Chairmanship in sense of demanding the international challenges was further improvement of efficiency, effectiveness and visibility of BSEC. We strived to focus on fostering the necessary practical measures to maintain the reform process of improving the efficiency of BSEC and strengthen its institutional, legal and financial capacity on the basis of productive decisions taken at the meetings of different format and levels.

With this respect, we appreciate the constructive proposals of the Member States on improving the institute of Chairmanship, further procedural reform of the Meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of BSEC, presenting the thematic dimension to the Council’s meetings and others. These proposals have been thoroughly considering with the Secretariat and Related Bodies at the meetings of the Committee of Senior Officials, Working Group on Organizational Matters, “Troika”, Joint Coordination meetings of the BSEC Chairmanship-in-Office, BSEC Related Bodies and BSEC Permanent International Secretariat. They, as well as other issues of our common interest, were discussed during the visits of Ambassador Leonidas Chrisanthopulos to Armenia and my visit to BSEC Secretariat. They were the subject of regular consultations of the Armenian Chairmanship with the Secretariat and the Member States.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The potential of BSEC for promotion of economic cooperation in the region and to provide benefits well beyond the Black Sea shores is growing. And we do hope that along with the efforts of all Member States and our partners this potential will be resulted in tangible outcomes in the nearest future.                                                                                            

Thank you.