Armenian paper speculates on reasons for Azeri president’s visit to USA

Haykakan Zhamanak website, Yerevan
2 Apr 06

Excerpt from report by Armenian newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak website on
2 April headlined “Aliyev to visit Washington”

The Armenian state agencies, the presidential administration, and,
especially the Foreign Ministry were in a state of paralysis
yesterday.

It became apparent that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will pay an
official visit to the USA late April. He has received an invitation
from the White House and will meet US President Gorge Bush. The
Armenian president’s press secretary, Viktor Sogomonyan, yesterday
reported that Armenian President Robert Kocharyan has never received
such an invitation from the White House. So far it has not been
forthcoming.

[Passage omitted: recap od Azerbaijani media reports about the foreign
minister Elmar Mammadyarov’s meeting with US State Secretary
Condoleezza Rice]

The Azerbaijani president received an official invitation from the US
president unlike the Armenian president, who in his eight years of
tenure, has never been honoured by the US president. This is a sign of
serious problems. However, it is strange that Aliyev received the
invitation, especially as talks on the settlement of the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict appear to be deadlocked. But the USA wishes to solve
the Karabakh conflict in 2006. The Armenian authorities, especially
the Foreign Ministry, had no information about this visit up until the
yesterday, which is indicative of the seriousness of the visit. The
Armenian authorities have found out about this at the same time as
ordinary people.

Had Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan not returned from
Washington a week ago, we would have thought that this was a result of
the inefficiency of the Armenian diplomatic corps. But unfortunately,
this happened during Oskanyan’s visit to the USA and not a single US
official had told the Armenian foreign minister about the scheduled
meeting between the US and Azerbaijani presidents.

Of course, had it not been for the Nagornyy Karabakh problem and a
threat of another war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, we would have
never raised such a question. However, there is the problem of
Karabakh and the international community wants it to be resolved in
2006. The negotiations in Rambouillet have failed. The Americans have
directly degraded Armenia by their attitude to Oskanyan.

It turns out that the US State Department had invited an Armenian
delegation to Washington only for the signing of an agreement [with
the US Millennium Challenge Corporation] on allocating 235m
dollars. After that he was sent back home. During his visit, the
Armenian foreign minister also had a chance to meet the US co-chairmen
of the OSCE Minsk Group, Steven Mann, to discuss the Nagornyy Karabakh
conflict. The Azerbaijani foreign minister was offered the same chance
to meet Mann. Prior to this meeting, Oskanyan believed that the
meeting between Mammadyarov and Mann will determine the future of the
Nagornyy Karabakh peace process.

But the main goal of Mammadyarov’s visit was to prepare a visit by the
Azerbaijani president to Washington. It must be remembered that, this
is the first official visit of the Azerbaijani president to the
USA. As for Kocharyan, he only visited Washington once back in 2001
for the Key West talks.

According to US and Azerbaijani sources, Aliyev and Bush will discuss
the Karabakh settlement and anti-Iranian programmes drawn up by the
USA. Thus Armenian citizens are interested in whether the USA will put
pressure on Armenia regarding the settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh
conflict.