Azerbaijan: US Ties Strained

Discontent in Azerbaijan over the United States’ role in seeking a settlement of the Nagorny Karabakh issue highlights the delicate path that Baku must tread in its foreign relations.

A top Azerbaijan official recently strongly criticised Washington’s role in peace negotiations over Karabakh, saying negotiators were biased by the influence of the “Armenian lobby”.

The criticism is just the latest sign of deteriorating relations between the two countries, which have been working closely on energy projects and other issues.

Ali Hasanov, head of the presidential administration’s social-political department, told the Interfax news agency that the US’s work in the Minsk Group of countries aimed at helping to settle the Karabakh conflict was unsatisfactory.

“We are dissatisfied with the actions of the United States in the framework of the Minsk Group, and we state this openly,” Hasanov said.

He said Washington seemed indifferent to resolving the questions around Karabakh – which is ruled as a self-proclaimed independent state by Armenians but internationally considered part of Azerbaijan – despite Baku’s insistence on the urgency of the issue.

“Sadly in this question, some circles in the United States under the influence of the Armenian lobby lose their neutrality and openly support Armenia,” he said.

The US said it is committed to the Minsk process, while its embassy in Baku declined to comment on Hasanov’s allegations. “The US embassy is not ready to comment on specific anti-American statements of officials in Azerbaijan, but the United States as before regards Azerbaijan as a strategic partner,” it said in a statement.

The statement is one of several that show the strained relations between the two countries this year. On March 1, the State Department released its International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, which some Azerbaijan media outlets – because of a translation error – thought said a third of all students in Azerbaijan were addicts. Although the report in fact said a third of addicts were students, officials were outraged, and students protested outside the US embassy.

Just four days later, the House of Representatives voted to recognise the World War One massacres of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide – something denied by Baku. On the same day, the Washington Post published an investigation into 75 million US dollars worth of Dubai property owned by people with the same names as President Ilham Aliev’s children.

The newspaper presented circumstantial evidence that they were the same people and said officials in Baku would not confirm or deny that they were Aliev’s offspring.

The story was immediately translated into Azeri by the US-funded Radio Liberty and posted on the internet, which infuriated local politicians across the spectrum.

“Perhaps when the question came to appoint a new leadership for Radio Liberty the hand of the Armenian lobby had a role,” said Araz Alizade, co-chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Party.

According to Rauf Mirqadirov, a political commentator from Zerkalo newspaper, bilateral relations had been souring for months before the various scandals, and the decline could be dated back to the five-day war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008.

“The United States had a Georgian project in the region, connected to democratisation and the creation of a military-political launch pad, and an Azerbaijan project connected to energy security. But the August war showed that the West and the United States don’t give any guarantees for the security of the region,” he said.

“This, plus Baku’s unfulfilled expectations that America would help resolve the Karabakh problem, and other questions, made Azerbaijan part from the United States, and once more focus on relations with Russia.”

Rasim Musabaev, an independent political analyst, said however that it was wrong to declare Azerbaijan’s ties with the US ruined.

“Yes, Azerbaijan has not received the expected support from the United States in the resolution of the Karabakh conflict. But Baku has always fulfilled American interests in cooperation in energy security and the coalition against terror, and in other questions. It remains a fact that the United States sees Azerbaijan as a strategic partner,” he said.

Alizade said that Azerbaijan was obliged to follow policies friendly towards Russia.

“First of all, Russia is a key figure in solving the Karabakh conflict, and second more than two million Azeris are working in Russia, and there are many rich Azeri oligarchs in that country,” he said.

He said that Azerbaijan would try to balance the two countries in its external policies.

“For example, Azerbaijan is refusing to offer its territory to the United States for an attack on Iran. Our energy resources are not only sold to the West, but also to Russia, nor do we conceal our desire to sell energy to Iran as well. Of course, the United States does not like all of this,” he said.

He said that even the Washington Post article about the holdings in Dubai did not worry the government.

Hasanov of the presidential administration told APA news agency that there was no law against members of the president’s family holding property or running a business. He said one of Aliev’s daughters is the daughter-in-law of Aras Agalarov, a rich Russian businessman of Azeri origin.

Officially, Baku is hopeful that relations will improve. At the start of April, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said that US-Azerbaijan ties had been getting better for two decades, and that a new ambassador would come soon. This was a message repeated in the embassy.

“The delays in naming a new US ambassador in Azerbaijan are connected only to internal processes,” a US embassy spokesman said.

“Studying the personal affairs of the candidates for ambassador takes a long time, and besides, the embassy is not restricted just to the ambassador. At the moment, more than 80 Americans work in the embassy.”

Idrak Abbasov is a journalist with Ayna-Zerkalo newspaper and a member of IWPR’s Cross-Caucasus Journalism Network.
Shahin Rzaev is IWPR’s country director in Azerbaijan.