Prodi does spade work over south Caucasus

Date: 23/09/04

ROMANO Prodi plants a tree at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial to Armenian victims of an alleged genocide in 1915.

He became the first European Commission president ever to undertake an official tour of the southern Caucasus by visiting Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Arguing that it is wrong to describe the conflicts besetting the region as frozen, he pointed out that people were killed in fighting over Ossetia as recently as August, and that there was also sporadic killing over tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Romano Prodi has become the first European Commission President to undertake an official visit of the Southern Caucasian republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan where regional conflicts are still alive.