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THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL OF THE UNITED STATES
BLACK SEA ENERGY & ECONOMIC FORUM 2010
CONCLUDING CEO ROUNDTABLE AND LUNCHEON
WELCOME/MODERATOR:
FREDERICK KEMPE,
PRESIDENT AND CEO,
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
SPEAKERS:
AHMET CALIK,
CHAIRMAN,
CALIK HOLDING
DINU PATRICIU,
CHAIRMAN,
DP HOLDING SA
LT. GEN. (RET.) BRENT SCOWCROFT,
CHAIRMAN,
INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD, ATLANTIC COUNCIL
KAZIM TURKER,
CHAIRMAN,
TURKERLER GROUP
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2010
Transcript by
Federal News Service
Washington, D.C.
FREDERICK KEMPE: First of all, I am going to make a promise. This is the last panel of the conference. (Applause, laughter.) But I also want to make another promise, which is this is really – welcome to our living room. This is more of a town hall, living room discussion. I am just going to ask one question for each of them. Then frankly, whatever is on your mind, whatever you wanted to ask. If you wanted to make a complaint about the conference – actually, save that until afterwards. But suggestions going forward.
I do want to have you – I did this last night, but I wanted to do it again. I just want you all to thank the extraordinary Atlantic Council staff and our local partners at Meptore and Ogilvy. This has just been a remarkable performance of them. (Applause.)
I also want to thank our sponsors, our co-chairs, but particularly at this lunch, I want to give a particular thanks to Rasi, Mark Tughan (ph) and Setgaz for hosting this wonderful closing lunch. Thank you so much. (Applause.) And also, thank you for being my private advisor on understanding all things Turkish.
So let’s get started. We have co-chairs here. I think you by now know Gen. Scowcroft and probably by now know Harry Sachinis of DEPA, as the CEO of DEPA, and Dinu Patriciu. A lot of the reason the Atlantic Council exists today is Gen. Scowcroft, so it’s a particular honor always to have him with us. He is really the heart, soul of the Atlantic Council mission and existence. And as you know, Dinu is the heart and soul of the Eurasia Center’s and the Black Sea Energy and Economic Forum’s vision and existence. So it is a particular honor to be with the two of you here on this closing panel.
First question and only question from me – unless, of course, all of you don’t chip in – and that is, we have been sitting here. We have had a lot of private conversations. We have had a lot of public conversations. I would like to know from each of you what is the most important or most interesting takeaway you have. We all go away from conferences and we go home and tell our friends, you know, I really learned this or, you know, I met this person or I got this new idea. So Harry, maybe I will start with you and then go to Dinu and then go to Gen. Scowcroft.
HARRY SACHINIS: Thank you. This is an energy and economic forum, so there are two areas that I want to cover very briefly and the things that I learned about these two areas. One is about energy. There is a lot of activity about new things, about gas pipelines, about gas supplies, but so far there has been no action. So I think and I hope that over the next six months, we will see some action because I think the first step will lead to further steps and then we will really be able to realize the Southern Corridor as all of us expect to do.
On the economic side, I think we have to think a little bit farther ahead. And I believe that the key thing when we talk about economic growth, when we talk about integration of the area, we have to think about education. This is a long-term commitment, but I think education fosters innovation. I think innovation together with industry, together with education, that is what is going to foster growth. So those are the two things from panels and presentations that I went to and some that I didn’t go to – but I sent people to make sure that I didn’t miss anything – those are the two key things that I learned.
MR. KEMPE: Thank you, Harry. Dinu?
DINU PATRICIU: I think that this year the forum was more dynamic, more alive because companies started to understand how to cope with the crisis. That is my observation here. Due to this, I think that the forum and the Eurasia Center can start to think about involving themselves in concrete initiatives for next year and to start to promote, for instance, free trade, free zone in the Black Sea, to find very concrete steps which can be taken for the integration of the region. We have to discuss all these in the next days and see how we go from there.
MR. KEMPE: So if I am hearing you correctly, I think what you are saying is that it was very difficult in the midst of the crisis to start thinking about anything other than, how do you deal with the crisis?
MR. PATRICIU: Yes, one year ago.
MR. KEMPE: And now –
MR. PATRICIU: And now we see that companies are more dynamic, more alive, more willing to promote new things.
MR. KEMPE: And I’ll go back to our first CEO panel, where we were actually talking about how the Atlantic Council might actually want to put together a white paper of how to bring this region more together as a region, which – in many ways, it doesn’t exist – whether through tax policy, getting rid of tariff barriers, different things like that.
And actually it is important to bring this up because this was never conceived as an annual conference. It was conceived as an ongoing initiative, the flagship of which would be an annual forum. And so the whole idea of this is that the Patriciu Eurasia Center run by Ross Wilson in Washington would then pick up these issues and turn them into serious work, so that’s absolutely where we want to go. Gen. Scowcroft?
LT. GEN. (RET.) BRENT SCOWCROFT: Well, I agree with my colleagues. I would like to say just a couple of impressions. The first, to me, was the enthusiastic participation of the Turkish government in our activities. We had not only the prime minister, but ministers, and that, I think, gave an enthusiasm to the whole conference which I found very reassuring.
Second was the optimism of all the participants. This was an enthusiastic conference and I think that is good. One of the things that I think we ought to look at as we go down, though, we were all swept up with what the possibilities are. But let’s just suppose, for example, that the Russians decide that these activities are a threat to their, shall we say, monopoly control over energy to Europe and start to make trouble. Let’s suppose that, for example, there is a conflict in Iran. What does that do to this whole thing?
Let’s suppose that despite our best efforts, Iraq goes very badly. What does that do to this whole project and the growing unity of effort? Those are things we ought to look at as we’re looking at how we can move forward.
MR. KEMPE: I think that is right. We need to crack the tough nuts. In one of my conversations – we all have wonderful conversations. Some of you may want to relate some. One of my wonderful conversations yesterday was talking to an oil person who had assessed Poland’s shale gas potential. And then he said, when Russia understands how this could shift geopolitics in its region, we don’t yet know how they will respond.
And it was sort of left open and without any answer, but it’s an interesting thing because according to him, Poland has the capability to produce 10 to 20 percent of the natural gas output that Russia currently produces. If Romania has 10 percent, if, you know, a couple of others do, suddenly you have perhaps 25, 30 percent of Western Europe’s gas needs being supplied by this new source over time. It is going to take some time. But these are the sorts of fascinating questions we want to deal with.
Does anyone want to comment on any of this before I turn to the audience? No? Comments, questions? And by the way, being the impertinent person I am, we do have Ambassador Morningstar here, too. If you want to pose questions to him as a fourth member of the panel, he has expressed a willingness to say no comment on occasion. (Chuckles.) But thank you so much. It is great to have you back with us again. Please, comments, suggestions, questions?
Q: I just want to say that there is one very odd thing about this conference. Ministers and senior officials hang around. Time and again, you get to a conference and the minister comes in and he goes out. That is it. It was very good that they did hang around because it meant that for working journalists – I’m still one – that meant you get access. So that was very good.
What you still have problems with, which everybody does, is getting straight answers. It is very easy to get straight answers on problems concerning third parties. You want to ask about Russia, you will get very emphatic views. Not so easy if you ask Turkish officials about Iran, not so easy if you ask about regional supply pipeline projects. People are far more cagey, far more still, dare one say this, partisan for individual projects.
So I suppose my only comment about this is to say that this has been for me certainly extraordinarily useful. But I still have an enormous amount of the doubts that I have. But I learned one thing that really struck me. It was something that came from what Harry Sachinis said about education. Just a casual reference that said that you very correctly had a number of rectors and leading officials from academic institutions. But one of them said he was thinking of setting up an engineering school for energy and got zero interest because the demand was not there.
In thinking about energy politics, when we sometimes forget the practicalities of energy development and of training another generation and more to the point, infusing another generation of people about energy. It’s not your brief. I just wonder if it’s something, though, that you might take on board at some point in the future.
MR. KEMPE: As an educator yourself, Dinu, and as a person who is established and launched university business programs, do you want to address that?
MR. PATRICIU: Of course, I think also that education is our future. But also, I can tell you that in this region, it is very hard to establish new institutions for education. It is very hard for the private initiative to get through. And I have my personal experiences in this field. And that’s due to legislation, to inertia, to the way in which people traditionally see education, but I am optimistic on my own.
MR. SACHINIS: I would like to make a comment on the other thing that John mentioned. That is about not getting straight answers from ministers and others. So I have two views about that. One is either you are not getting straight answers or they don’t know the answer. And actually I think it may be the latter because they are not the only ones who decide on what the answer is. It is a much more complex system. They don’t have the absolute knowledge on what the end result is going to be.
LT. GEN. SCOWCROFT: I would just say that one of the reasons that I mentioned the Turkish officials is that they did hang around and they were accessible. I agree. You know, they either don’t know the answers or don’t want to speak about them. And in one sense, one of the examples you used – this is a Black Sea conference. The last time I checked, Russia was a Black Sea country. They chose not to attend. Now, you know, that has all kinds of portents both for the comments of the people in the region and for all of us.
MR. KEMPE: And because I have heard this comment in the crowd, we traveled to Moscow. We met with business leaders. We met with the Russian ambassador. I can’t tell you how far we went out of our way to create a platform because we understand that the only successful Black Sea initiative has to involve Russia. And the Atlantic Council hit the reset button, but nobody was there. And any of you can put that on the record who would like to because we are so open to this initiative. We have been talking about Sevastopol or Odessa. There is no reason why we can’t do the Black Sea conference in Russia in one of the near-term years.
Some have also asked me where we are going next. We don’t know just yet. There will be a conference forum. We see this as a stakeholder forum, so we want people to continue to come year after year. We have got two or three possibilities we are looking at. We hope to come back to Istanbul every other year because this is such a central place as we have heard this year, but we also want to keep moving around the region on the off years. So that is the plan for now.
In terms of Turkish government involvement, that will be key to where we go next because I think that really was crucial. You can’t have a public-private initiative without the public part actively engaged. And I also publicly want to thank the Turkish government. We came here many months ago. We sat down and Prime Minister Erdogan’s office committed support. The foreign ministry committed support and the energy minister in particular, Minister Yildiz and his really quite remarkable staff committed support.
But not only did they commit it, they delivered. We worked closely together with them and having Minister Yildiz as such an active participant in this conference really made a difference. And I think we also then gained by Deputy Prime Minister Babacan’s contributions. And then last night, Finance Minister Simsek, I think, impressed us all. So I think that really did change the nature of this conference.
Questions, other comments? Suggestions for improvements? Yes, please.
Q: Fred, I think, you know, again, this was an excellent conference compared to the real – an advancement from our launch last year in Bucharest at this time. The thing we talked about to make this sustainable is business participation of key issues.
And I just wanted to make the suggestion that we stay in touch with each other going forth between now and the next event because we talked about in the panels numerous very important issues that I think at the end of those panels were quite well-synthesized in terms of whether it is pipeline politics, whether it is Turkey’s and the Mediterranean’s response to the Deepwater Horizon blowout, safety, environmental rules, whatever it may be.
If there are topics that people have that they think the Atlantic Council through this forum could address, the time is to start now putting that together and formulating these ideas and getting a working group to put these in place, so that by the time we have the next event next year, we have got a very well-developed product to vet and help develop what is just good old, the ABCs of public policy development that is initiated and refined by the leading business stakeholders in this region.
MR. KEMPE: Thank you. Please.
Q: Thank you. Chelan Dean, Osprey (ph) – all that’s been written on the initiative for preparedness – I just wanted to thank the Atlantic Council for inviting me and others, of course. I think it’s an excellent opportunity where industry and government talk to each other, which is a must. I just want a recommendation for the future. In the region here where we are talking about the environmental problem and the need to obey the law or implement the law and having a structure in place.
There’s a lot of underfunded government organizations, intergovernmental organizations, which are fundamental for a regional corporation. One of them I was thinking about the Black Sea Commission, which is supposed to implement the Bucharest Convention, which was signed in ’92. Very limited progress has been done.
I would like to see them here because they need to feel the support. They also need to keep the politician honest because they have made several commitments under those conventions. And by looking at the funding for the Black Sea Commission, for example, which represents $65,000 per country per year – it is a poor demonstration of commitment, in my opinion. So if we can help them to achieve what they are supposed to do, I think we have also good dialogue between the government institutions and the industry and we can support each other to achieve a common goal. Thank you.
MR. KEMPE: Thank you for that. The only thing I would say about that is one of the reasons why we’re so excited about this initiative is we see ourselves as an aggregator. And so any organization, any body that is working on the Black Sea – in fact, one of the first stops we made before planning this was just down the Bosporus a bit – (inaudible) – BSEC. And we got BSEC engaged right from the beginning. We told them what we really want is your advice about how we can be helpful and supportive also of the work that you are doing.
We had a very good meeting with them. And that’s what we hope to do, really, is whatever organization wants to partner with us, be part of this. It is an open door. So we feel ourselves uncompetitive with any other initiatives.
Q: One of the things I noticed was that there was no one from Armenia at this event.
MR. KEMPE: There was.
Q: Are they? I failed to meet them. (Laughter.) Sorry. (Applause.) Never mind. (Laughter.)
MR. KEMPE: Would Armenia like to speak at this point? I think that was a setup. (Laughter.)
(The following question is delivered via translator.)
Q: Can I speak in Russian? I think I can because we have simultaneous translation here. It is. Yeah, it is.
MR. KEMPE: (Inaudible.) Thank you.
(The following question is delivered via translator.)
Q: My name is Simonyan. I am the deputy minister of energy and natural resources of Armenia. First of all, I would like to thank the organizers for the kind invitation to participate in this conference. This is for the first time that we participate in such conference. It was very interesting for us to know the opinion of such huge experts and organizers.
We treat ourselves as the full-fledged members of the regional cooperation, although yet we still are a bit apart from the global regional project. And this is not because of our fault. But we express here a readiness to be always reliable, predictable partners in the regional cooperation. And which specificity do we have in the energy sector? That we represent a country which has for more than 30 years experience of the operation by the atomic station. So that is why we are a unique country.
And together with this, we have certain spare capacities of the generation, which could be also useful as a regional basis for the energy supply, especially taking into account that we have already started the realization of the program by the construction of the new, modern nuclear station with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts. And we are ready to use all our generating capacities as a reliable partner to provide for the needs of the region.
We are observing the development in this region with a huge interest and with regard of the new nuclear station. Actually, this is a very interesting program for us. This program has been open to the investors. And we are ready to work with all investors in this project.
Using this opportunity, I would like to thank our partners from the United States of America, from the European community – and we do not have our Russian colleagues here with us and other countries, which are very actively cooperating and helping us in the realization of this program. Unfortunately, yet we have gained a success in the bilateral cooperation and first of all, cooperation in the sphere of energy with Georgia, Iran and Russia.
And once again, I would like to say that we have some certain capacities. I mean, the transmission lines and generation capacity, so that is why I invite you to be more actively working with us within this regional project. Once again, thank you very much for the invitation and for the interesting discussions. Thank you.
MR. KEMPE: Thank you. (Applause.) And thank you for the proof positive that Armenia is here. (Laughter.) I must also say we do a lot of work at the Atlantic Council on issues in this region that aren’t just energy related.
We have done a very interesting young leaders exchange and I think a couple of them may even be still here. A couple from this – I guess not anymore. But between Turkey and the United States – young professionals – this is now being expanded into a Turkey-United States-Israel young professionals exchange and will be expanded to a Turkey-United States-Armenia young leaders exchange. And so we are doing also a lot of work on successor generation issues here as well.
Other questions, comments? Ambassador Burt? No?
Q: I am speechless, Fred. (Laughter.)
LT. GEN. SCOWCROFT: For the first time. (Laughter.)
MR. KEMPE: We’re going to put that into a board report. (Chuckles.) Please.
Q: Thanks very much. In a strong conference, the highlight for me last night was Gen. Scowcroft and Dr. Brzezinski opining on the full range of issues. So I have a question here for Gen. Scowcroft to drill down a little deeper, and if any of the other panelists want to go to it also. If I understood your comments correctly, General, you were leaning favorably towards the U.S.-Russia reset. And my question – my questions are – what have been – what has the U.S. gotten out of the reset? And if you had been in the White House in January 2009, what would you have done in terms of Russia policy?
MR. KEMPE: Excellent question. Let me also just say one thing before Gen. Scowcroft answers. The transcript – you know, after Dr. Brzezinski and Gen. Scowcroft cleanse it – I am joking. But the transcript of last night’s excellent conversation will be on our website, acus.org. I am not sure if it is up yet. But a lot of people were asking about that, so we will have that.
LT. GEN. SCOWCROFT: I find that a frightening prospect. That is a very good question. I guess I would say that the results are only beginning to come in. And how much they will come in, I am not sure. But I think the New START treaty is a step because there had been no progress made at all, really.
And, you know, this is not an earth-shaking treaty, but what this new treaty does is preserve all of the counting rules, all of the paraphernalia of arms control that had been built up by negotiations with Russians over the last 50 years or so. And it all ended in December of 2009. This brought it up. So that is a start. And I believe there is a greater – there is a bit of a thaw in the relationship.
But the Russians – let me say frankly – had a chip on their shoulder as a result of events since the end of the Cold War. As I say, I think it was unjustified or certainly unintentional. But it was true. And I think this reaching out could help the thaw and to get the Russians to engage substantively in the kinds of issues that we have been discussing here and where the Russians would have been a valuable participant in all these discussions because they have a view that I’m sure is somewhat different from the consensus that we have had here.
So we haven’t seen much from it. But I think the reset really was a sort of U.S. corny way of saying let’s clean away all of the atmospheric debris and start over again.
MR. KEMPE: Thank you. Other questions, comments? Anyone want to follow up on that? Please, yes.
Q: Well, Fred and Gen. Scowcroft, I am interested in the Atlantic Council in its early days and when you look back at the first decades of its formation if you can trace any effect or actions that came from the Atlantic Council in addition to the dialogue that was formed. And then secondly, newer members, your involvement, what you might hope would be some of the outcome from your involvement with Atlantic Council.
And I think about your four areas that you talk about of security, economy, energy and economics and how interesting it is that it is multidisciplinary. Energy is a great driver for connecting all of those points together. And I don’t know if in the history of Atlantic Council originally were those four subject areas? Or was it originally more about security and its evolution to having those four areas now? Is there an intent for interdisciplinary and interagency, intergovernmental? And, of course, you know that my interest in all of this is thriving communities and how energy can be utilized in infrastructure today in a new way than you wouldn’t have seen in the 1950s and ’60s.
MR. KEMPE: Thank you, Laura, for that question. I will deal briefly at the end after these other comments on where we are going now. But perhaps Gen. Scowcroft could talk a little bit about what difference the Atlantic Council has made in the past.
LT. GEN. SCOWCROFT: This is more history than you really want to know. The Atlantic Council started as an adjunct of NATO. And every NATO member had an Atlantic Council. So during the Cold War, it was sort of a cheering section for NATO, NATO cooperation, NATO getting together. Then when the Cold War ended, the Atlantic Council of the United States –and many of the other councils never amounted to anything – started to decline. People turned to other things.
Well, a number of us thought that the Atlantic community and what it represented was a valuable part of American foreign policy and outreach, and it needed to be redynamized to reflect a new world in which the Atlantic community, broadly speaking, could play a dynamic role as a community. And so that is the change – from an organization devoted to support NATO and NATO’s goals to the broader sense of the Atlantic community as an idea.
MR. KEMPE: Maybe for the two of you, what you would like it to be doing now. What might be of interest for you going forward? Harry?
MR. SACHINIS: Actually, even just to say why we are here because the Atlantic community, as you described it, is very important for things that are going to be happening in the region. So what we see here – and it was evident the last two or three days, for example – was an acceleration of the dialogue. I mean, you can go from country to country and visit. But here in three days, you met so many people. You would go out of conference rooms and you would have hidden discussions.
And I know there were deals that were crafted and done here in the space of the conference. So for me, that is something very valuable and I think it was valuable for all of the participants.
MR. PATRICIU: To replicate the Atlantic spirit in different regions of the world like ours. It has proven to be useful, and the proof is that we are here.
MR. KEMPE: One note on history and then one note on the future. We have unearthed literally hundreds of boxes of archival material at Stanford University for reasons we haven’t quite figured out. On the history of the Atlantic Council, it is our 50th anniversary next year. And Gen. Scowcroft is absolutely accurate of how it started. But where he has been a little bit more modest is it is people like Gen. Scowcroft who have been behind the Atlantic Council from the beginning.
It has always been the great and good of Washington who had a global view with the Atlantic at the core of their vision. And so you see names like Dean Acheson and Christian Herter in the founding of the Atlantic Council and in the early years. It was actually born as three Atlantic clubs in the late ’40s. But then Dean Rusk was tired of dealing with them all in the Kennedy administration. So in 1961, he said come together because I really don’t want to deal with all three of you. And so that was the coming together of it.
In terms of where we are going, what the board is all settled on is a strategy that – and it is really funny because we thought we were all being so clever with the new mission, which was renewing the Atlantic community for global challenges. And the idea behind that was, in a world where the power shift and economic shift is from East to West, to get anything done in the world as the West, or to preserve our notions of common values, rule of law, that sort of thing, we just have to work more closely together than we did when we were much larger and when we were predominant. So that is one side.
The other side is that we have to take on global issues together, whether it is energy security issues of the sort that we face in this region or whether it is Iranian nuclear proliferation issues or whether it is integrating China – that if the U.S. and Europe worked better together, it doesn’t solve the problems of the world, but it is the precondition for solving most of them. So that’s really the idea behind the Atlantic Council.
Now, we all thought we were so clever as we came out with this new, brave global vision for the Atlantic Council. But going back through the boxes, it looks like Dean Acheson was already way ahead of us on that as well because he thought NATO had to have a global mission way back then.
I see one more small question and then I think I am going to – let me take two more here. Great. You get two because you are a journalist.
Q: It is actually because – (in Russian).
MR. KEMPE: Ambassador Morningstar, because we didn’t think anybody would have any interest in quoting us, we didn’t set the ground rules. (Chuckles.) So set the ground rules as you would like to.
AMB. RICHARD MORNINGSTAR: Well, no, that is okay. This is something that has just come up this week. I’ve just learned about it – prior to your comment, I might add – but it is something that is very important and very necessary for companies that would be investing in Ukraine. I don’t know why or how it happened and we have to see why, whether this was something that is intentional, something that is inadvertent, who is behind it.
I know from the many meetings I have had with Ukrainian government officials in the past five or six months that they are extremely interested in getting Western technology and finance for new projects, with respect to both unconventional and conventional resources within Ukraine, because I think they recognize that that’s the way that they will finally become energy secure and independent. It’s something that should have happened a long time ago.
Reports that I am getting from companies have been relatively optimistic that some progress is being made. The officials that I have talked to seem to recognize that cleaning up their investment climate is critical to getting investment from these companies. There is the potential to have stabilization. I am not sure exactly how the law is worded. But, you know, there could be stabilization provisions within the individual contracts themselves. I don’t know. But we need to look into it because this will be critical for companies to invest. They need to have the certainty that when they make an agreement that those provisions will – that the agreements that they make will stay in effect.
Maybe that is too long an answer. But it is important. We will look into it. And we can’t yet judge how serious the problem is until we discuss it with the Ukrainians.
MR. KEMPE: Thank you, Ambassador. Dinu, Harry? Yes? I see one question here. That is the last question unless I see anyone else burning with a question, we can take two. No? Great. We will take this as the last question.
Q: Thank you. This is Jorst Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group. Will you allow me to make a self-serving recommendation – self being not my personal self, but my organization?
MR. KEMPE: Yes, you can come next year.
Q: Well, that is what I want to come to. What I noticed in this excellent forum is that it brings together business leaders, policy makers, journalists and only in one case, sort of the people who bring the political analysis. That was myself, in the case of Iraq. But I didn’t see it for any of the other countries in the larger region.
And I would think that, you know, this was a very good conference but it was not perfect. I would say it is because that particular dimension was missing, the political context-setting, the analysis of what is going on in these countries that tells us something about, you know, how the energy can be developed in the region, what are the challenges?
Now, of course, we are often seen as doomsayers because, you know, I talk about civil war in Iraq. You know, that is not very good for business, at least not for the kind of business we ought to be encouraging. But I think it is a necessary dimension. My organization is on the ground in the Caucasus, in Central Asia, in Russia, throughout the region – in the Middle East, of course, Iran, very importantly. So there are others as well. But the political analysis, I think, would be a critical component as part of your overall package that you present as this moving circus moves forward. Thank you.
MR. KEMPE: I think that is a good comment. It is certainly not by design. I think we do have a great deal of political analysis. You know, anyone sitting last night listening to Dr. Brzezinski and Gen. Scowcroft. But I think in terms of country political risk analysis of the sort that you are saying, you are absolutely right. And maybe we can actually talk and figure out a way that we can work this more systematically in.
What we found was there were a lot of thumb-sucking conferences about the Black Sea that were taking place. And so we started by wanting to deal with the real issue, which was energy; then, the second year, we have changed it from – we changed our energy center into a Eurasia center. In other words, we are going to deal with all the issues of Eurasia. So that is certainly the intention of the center. But we want to stay – we still want energy and economy to lead, but as you’ve said, you can’t divorce that from political risk. And so I think that is a good point and I think we can work that in more.
If there are no other questions, no other comments, after we’re done here, you can join us next door in the international lounge for a farewell dessert reception, where you can stand and have a coffee and some dessert if you want. But other than that, I declare the second annual Black Sea Energy and Economic Forum closed. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
(END)