Russian paper says Azerbaijan is set to agree to accept US bases

Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow
3 Aug 05

After several years of hesitation, official Baku is nevertheless
inclined to site US military bases on Azerbaijani territory.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta was told by an informed source in Azerbaijani
security structures that several dozen US military instructors are
already working in Azerbaijan, without advertising their presence.
They have identified two facilities for future bases: one on the
Apsheron peninsula, a 30-minute drive from Baku, and the other in
the south of the republic, near the border with Iran.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov’s three-day visit to the
United States, which ends today, has every chance of being epochal in
resolving this tricky issue for Baku. Moreover, strange though it may
seem, President Islom Karimov of Uzbekistan has played an important
role in expediting the US-Azerbaijani accords. By demanding that the
US Qarshi-Xonobod airbase, which the United States has been actively
using since the autumn of 2001 in order to support its antiterrorist
operation in Afghanistan, be removed from Uzbekistan’s territory
within 180 days, Karimov has forced the Pentagon to hastily seek
another springboard and a new, more reliable and predictable ally,
not necessarily in Central Asia, but at least nearby. Everything
points to Azerbaijan becoming that ally.

In the light of this, Islom Karimov has unwittingly given a downright
lavish gift to his Azerbaijani colleague Ilham Aliyev by seriously
strengthening his position in the long-standing bargaining with
the Americans.

As is well known, Washington has long been pushing the idea of
siting a military base in Azerbaijan. There remains a minor detail
– a political decision by President Aliyev to give the green light
for implementation of the idea. An informed source in circles close
to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Nezavisimaya Gazeta on
condition that he remain anonymous that the involvement of minister
Mammadyarov in discussing this issue “could signify that the problem
is switching to the political dimension”. In the source’s opinion,
the situation is that “the political decision required by Washington
is practically ripe, and President Aliyev will eventually agree to
siting a US military contingent in the country.” But not just for
the sake of it, but in exchange for a lessening of US pressure on
Aliyev over very sensitive issues for him concerning the observance of
democratic standards in the upcoming November parliamentary elections.

Admittedly, officially Baku is insisting that Elmar Mammadyarov, who
hastily travelled across the ocean on 1 August after an unscheduled
invitation from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is discussing
in Washington “the widest range of issues, including the present
status of the peace talks on settling the Karabakh conflict, regional
problems, the development of interstate relations, and, finally,
the upcoming parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan.” However, most
local analysts note that the official information about the visit
carefully glosses over the point in the schedule of meetings relating
to Elmar Mammadyarov’s talks with the Pentagon leadership. However,
analysts believe, the main subject of these talks will be not only
general prospects for military cooperation between the two countries,
but also an extremely specific issue – the possibility of transferring
the US airbase from Uzbekistan to Azerbaijan. Evidence in favour of
this theory is the fact that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is
expected to pay another working visit to Baku in the next few days.

However, as before the previous visits to Baku by the Pentagon boss,
Ramiz Malikov, the head of the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry’s press
service, is stating that he “possesses no such information”. Touching
on the prospects of the US military base being transferred from
Uzbekistan to Azerbaijan, the head of the press service again
confined himself to a routine remark: Such decisions, he said,
are made by the country’s political leadership, not the military
department. Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov also
essentially gave the same answer, telling journalists that Washington
“has not yet made any” such proposal to official Baku.

But this is not entirely true. During his “quiet and low-profile”
visit back in April at Baku’s Bina Airport Rumsfeld closely discussed
the subject of an American military presence in Apsheron with his
Azerbaijani counterpart, Safar Abiyev. It was clear even then that
the Pentagon has very specific plans in this regard. Experts from
Stratfor, the American-Israeli centre for strategic forecasts,
claimed at the time that during the initial stage the US military
contingent in Azerbaijan would act as “temporarily stationed mobile
forces”. They even named three local airbases where American fliers
will be stationed – Kurdamir, Nasosnyy, and Qala. The airstrips
there have been modernized in good time to NATO standards and are
now capable of taking all types of aircraft.

According to Stratfor’s forecasters, the US bases in Azerbaijan will
be small, and it is planned to change their contingent “according to
US military needs in the region”. According to the Pentagon’s plans,
the centre’s experts noted, these forces “can be swiftly redeployed
elsewhere to fulfil a task…and will be capable of handling several
strategic missions”.

Uzeir Jafarov, an authoritative independent military expert in Baku,
believes that the question of these mobile forces is now being
studied in detail in the Azerbaijani foreign minister’s talks at
the Pentagon. “Until now the Azerbaijani leadership has managed by
various means to avoid giving a specific answer to this proposal from
Washington. But Tashkent’s anti-American demarche is clearly spurring
both sides to make urgent decisions,” Uzeir Jafarov told Nezavisimaya
Gazeta . In his view, “during the first stage the Americans could
transfer to Baku their Qarshi-Xonobod airbase or part of it in the
form of mobile groups and thereby really make Azerbaijan an important
Pentagon bridgehead in the Afghan campaign”.

The likelihood of this development confirms that Azerbaijan has
long been part of the coalition for the antiterrorist operation in
Afghanistan. Admittedly, today this participation is confined to two
spheres: Azerbaijan has allowed its Qala airfield near Baku to be
used to refuel military aircraft transporting coalition humanitarian
freight to Afghanistan, and then sent a squad of its servicemen to
maintain order in Kabul.