AZERBAIJANI FM: ISSUE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE TO ARMENIA AND
AZERBAIJAN EXCLUSIVELY POLITICAL

YEREVAN, JULY 28. ARMINFO. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar
Mamedyarov expressed his dissatisfaction with various issues to the
U.S. authorities in the course of his visit to the USA. The minister
made this statement in his exclusive interview to the Azerbaiuani
newspaper Zerkalo.

His dissatisfaction was connected with withdrawal of Baku from the
program Millennium Challenges, in spite of the fact that Azerbaijan is
considered the strategic partner of the USA in the region, as well as
with the military assistance size to Azerbaijan and Armenia. He said
that despite the fact that the US Administration requested $8 mln for
Azerbaijan and $2 for Armenia, the Congress voted at the level of the
Committee for equalization of the military assistance. As a result,
the two states received by $5 mln each. Mamedyarov said that he had
touched upon the issue of the assistance to Karabakh, stating that the
Azerbaijani party must be informed how these funds are used, in order
to allow the use of these funds on settlement of the “occupied
territories” of Azerbaijan, first of all.

At the same time, commenting on the statement of the US Ambassador to
Azerbaijan that the size of the assistance is not important and that
one should not focus on it, Elmar Mamedyarov said that the words of
the Ambassador are partially true. “Because our cooperation in the
sphere of security is rather wide, including on several programs. For
example, talking to Colin Powel, I said that not the sum of the
assistance is in question, the more so as one cannot form an army on
$8 mln,” the minister said. He added that the issue of military
assistance is exclusively political. If Azerbaijan is partner of the
USA on the coalition and it sends its soldiers both to Iraq and Kosovo
unlike Armenia, their equalization means a possible political
assessment of the issue, the minister said.