On September 7-11 the third round table, the last one in "The Role of Media in Overcoming Regional Conflicts and Eliminating the Enemy Image" series, was held. The meeting was organized by Yerevan Press Club with the participation of "Yeni Nesil" Journalists Union of Azerbaijan and Association of Diplomacy Correspondents of Turkey under a homonymous project implemented by YPC and “Yeni Nesil” and supported by the Open Society Institute Network Media Program. As it has already been reported, the first two meetings of representatives of media, journalistic associations of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey took place in late June in Baku, Istanbul and Ankara (see details in YPC Weekly Newsletter, June 23-29, 2001).
In order to give a most comprehensive picture of the social and political attitudes on such urgent issues as bi- and trilateral relations of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey to the participants of the round table, the presentations from Armenian party were made by people who are involved in the process of normalization of relations with the neighboring countries and who introduced it from different standpoints. These were Souren Zolyan (Secretary of Parliamentary Commission on Artsakh in years 1990-1995, currently the Rector of Yerevan State Linguistic University); David Hovhannissian (member of Commission of Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation); Ashot Galoyan (Deputy to the RA National Assembly, member of Armenian Delegation in PACE). The regional issues that are of major public significance were also viewed from the angle of European and global integration, commonalties and controversies between the public attitudes, the aims of political elites and the requirements introduced by the globalization process. The representatives of the “fourth estate” of the three countries spoke about how media covered cooperation concepts and public attitudes towards them.
The main peculiarity of Yerevan round table was the attempt to start on a new level of relations, moving from the natural stage of cautious acquaintance to that of establishing specific forms of cooperation among the journalists of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey and beginning of a dialogue among different professional sectors and the politicians of the three countries. It was with this objective in mind that the participants developed a draft cooperation protocol, the signing and publicizing of which is scheduled to take place in a month. At the end of the meeting at the Journalists Union of Armenia a press-conference was held, where the representatives of the three partner organizations – YPC, “Yeni Nesil" and Association of Diplomacy Correspondents – confirmed their willingness to jointly assist the solution of problems and the relief of the tension in the societies of the three countries.
