ISN, Switzerland
Sept 15 2004

Azerbaijan far from NATO after exercise cancelation 15.09.2004

Certainly, the prediction by one Western analyst that “Azerbaijan
will enter NATO by 2005”, which made headlines in the Azeri press in
July 2002, now seems overly optimistic.

By Liz Fuller for RFE/RL

NATO’s Cooperative Best Effort-2004 exercises, scheduled to take place
in Azerbaijan on 14-27 September, have been canceled, according to
a NATO press release of 13 September. “We regret that the principle
of inclusiveness could not be upheld in this case,” the press release
stated, without elaborating. But Lieutenant-Colonel Ludger Terbrueggen,
who is a spokesman for NATO military command, told RFE/RL’s Armenian
Service the same day that “the reason…is that Azerbaijan did not
grant visas to soldiers and officers of Armenia.” Since January, Baku
has sought repeatedly to thwart the planned Armenian presence at this
year’s Cooperative Best Effort maneuvers. Three Armenian military
officers who tried to travel to Baku in early January first from
Turkey and then from Georgia to attend a planning conference for the
maneuvers were prevented from doing so. In June, members of the radical
Karabakh Liberation Organization (QAT) picketed, and then forced their
way into, a Baku hotel where two Armenian officers were attending
a second planning conference in preparation for the exercises. Five
of those QAT activists were arrested and sentenced in late August to
between three and five years’ imprisonment on charges of hooliganism,
violating public order, and obstructing government officials. Those
verdicts triggered protests from across the political spectrum,
fueling public opposition to the Armenians’ anticipated arrival.

Lost opportunity

In April, Azeri President Ilham Aliev assured Deputy Commander of the
US European Command General Charles Wald that there were no obstacles
to the Armenian participation in the September war games. Other
visiting US officials also sought to impress on Azerbaijan the
importance of allowing the Armenian contingent to attend. But in recent
weeks, the Azeri government has made increasingly clear its hostility
to the planned Armenian participation. On 27 July, the independent
ANS TV quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov as saying that Baku
has stipulated that only non-combat personnel – military journalists,
public-relations officials, and military doctors – would be permitted
to attend, and that the number of Armenian participants would be
limited to three. On 4 September, however, Armenian Deputy Defense
Minister Major General Artur Aghabekian said seven Armenian officers
would take part in the exercises, while the number denied visas by the
Azerbaijani Embassy in Tbilisi was given as five. The opposition daily
Azadlig on 10 September quoted Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov as
saying that Azerbaijan would not grant visas to the Armenians. And on
10 September, the Azeri parliament adopted an appeal to NATO Secretary
General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to retract the invitation extended to the
Armenian side, citing what it termed Armenia’s aggression and policy
of ethnic cleansing. The parliamentarians argued that the presence
in Baku of Armenian military personnel could aggravate tensions in
the region. President Aliev stated while visiting the Barda region
on 11 September, “I do not want the Armenians to come to Azerbaijan”.

NATO’s double standards?

In an apparent last-ditch effort to persuade Baku to abandon its
obstructionist approach, de Hoop Scheffer met with Azeri Foreign
Minister Mammadyarov and his Armenian counterpart Vartan Oskanian in
Brussels on 13 September for talks. Oskanian subsequently praised the
NATO decision to call off the exercises, adding at the same time that
he regrets the “lost opportunity for regional cooperation”. Armenia
hosted the NATO Cooperative Best Effort-2003 exercises, in which
some 400 troops from 19 countries, including the US, Britain,
Russia, Georgia, and Turkey practiced routine peacekeeping
exercises. Azerbaijan declined to participate. In February 2004,
a junior Azeri officer attending a NATO-sponsored English language
course in Budapest hacked a sleeping Armenian fellow student to
death with an axe. The full impact of Azerbaijan’s violation of
NATO’s “principle of inclusiveness” and of NATO’s ensuing decision
to cancel the planned exercises is difficult to predict. The move
is likely to corroborate many Azeris’ conviction that NATO is guilty
of double standards and bias towards Armenia. It may also give rise
to a certain coolness between Brussels and Washington, in light of
persistent rumors that the US is considering Azerbaijan as a possible
location for a rapid-reaction force. Certainly, the prediction by one
Western analyst that “Azerbaijan will enter NATO by 2005”, which made
headlines in the Azeri press in July 2002, now seems overly optimistic.