Armenian agency chides Azeri leader for going back on promises

Mediamax news agency, Yerevan
20 Sep 04

The most important event of the last week was undoubtedly NATO’s
decision to cancel the Cooperative Best Effort 2004 exercises
scheduled to be held in Azerbaijan on 14-26 September.

[Passage omitted: agency predicted this course of events]

If we trace Baku’s steps taken in January and September, it becomes
obvious that the Azerbaijani leadership acted in accord with the same
tactics – to make as much contradictory statements as possible, to
drag out time, to make promises to NATO and not to keep them. And this
testifies to an obvious lack of political will with Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev who twice in the course of the year let
marginal and extremist forces to push himself around. If in this way
the Azerbaijani leader was trying to show his “closeness with the
people” he achieved the contrary effect – from now on both inside the
country and outside it he will be perceived as a leader who can be
influenced and manipulated to achieve the necessary result. Thus,
holding quite a doubtful victory in a short-term perspective, Ilham
Aliyev has lost in a long-term perspective.

[Passage omitted: chronology of events]

The inability to keep promises played a mean trick with Ilham
Aliyev. He hoped till last that NATO would resign itself to the fact
that Azerbaijan would not let the Armenian military to take part in
the exercises. Either because of the absence of political experience
or because of some other reasons, the Azerbaijani president did not
understand that one could not openly lie to NATO and US generals. The
cancellation of the exercises at the very last moment when 200
military had already arrived in Baku became a real disgrace for
Azerbaijan. And the point is not in Azerbaijan’s “defeat” or Armenia’s
“victory” – NATO took a decisive step to defend its reputation and
credibility in the first place. The Alliance could not reconcile
itself to the fact that for the first time in the 10 years’ history of
the PfP’s [Partnership for Peace] existence one of the partner-states
had twice violated the rules of the game.

[Passage omitted: background information]

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s statement in relation to the
cancellation of the exercises once more demonstrated the weakness of
Baku’s arguments: “While 20 per cent of Azerbaijani territories are
still under Armenian occupation and there are over 1m refugees and
displaced persons, the Armenian leadership pursues harsher and more
unconstructive policy. Given these conditions, the participation of
Armenian servicemen in the military exercises on the territory of the
country would be impossible for Azerbaijan,” the statement read.

First, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was pleased with the
dialogue between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers, which
has been going on for several months already and on the basis of which
he held talks with his Armenian counterpart Robert Kocharyan in Astana
on 15 September. So, what “harsh and unconstructive position” is the
talk about?

Second, the Azerbaijani leadership knew perfectly well that the
Armenian side was going to send its military to take part in the
Cooperative Best Effort 2004 exercises, and Azerbaijan should have
refused to host the war games if it considered as unacceptable their
presence on its territory. Third, what can be said about the visit to
Baku in 2001 by Armenian officers who took part in the planning
conference of computer training under the PfP?

Everything is quite clear – in 2001 Azerbaijan was headed not by Ilham
Aliyev but by [Ilham’s father and the late President] Heydar Aliyev
who could perfectly well define political priorities. The sooner his
son learns this, the better it will be both for Azerbaijan and the
region as a whole. But if Ilham Aliyev and his entourage are going to
continue the policy of not keeping their promises and rejecting
international commitments, this will not bode well.