DESPITE POTHOLES, A RELATIVELY SMOOTH ROAD FOR US-AZERBAIJAN MILITARY COOPERATION
Rovshan Ismayilov

EurasiaNet, NY
April 23 2008

Military cooperation between the United States and Azerbaijan
appears to be developing at a strong pace. A recent US delegation,
though, expressed concerns about the country’s sluggish realization
of agreements with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well
as on Baku’s relatively high level of military spending.

At an April 17 press conference in Baku, Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt,
III, a member of the US delegation led by Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense Daniel Fata, confirmed those concerns. "The issue is not
only that the Azerbaijani army meets NATO standards," Gen. Wyatt
said. "It is necessary that [the] military equipment and military
education would also meet [NATO] standards."

Azerbaijan has yet to finalize a military doctrine, one of the
requirements for its NATO Individual Partnership Action Plan, a
cornerstone of the alliance’s cooperation with post-Soviet states.

The American mission, in Baku from April 14-17 for routine military
consultations, also expressed unease with Azerbaijan’s plans to
increase defense spending in 2008 from $1.3 billion to $2 billion. The
total gives the country the largest military budget in the South
Caucasus by a wide margin — a development that has sparked jitters
in Armenia, which sees the buildup as a sign that Azerbaijan may be
pondering an attempt to retake the Nagorno-Karabakh territory by force.

Commenting on the issue, Gen. Wyatt noted that while the budget
increase "probably [is] connected with economic growth and increased
revenues," Azerbaijan "itself should answer whether the country’s
defense area needs $2 billion, while there are other areas like
education, healthcare, and social policy which also need" support.

Baku experts believe the government is using the increased military
spending to put pressure on Armenia over the stalled Karabakh peace
process. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Some aspects of Azerbaijan’s military buildup are attracting
considerable interest from the US military. One such project involves
Zeynalabdin Taghiyev airport — a military facility 40 kilometers to
the north of Baku — that is being modernized as part of Azerbaijan’s
IPAP program. A well-informed Defense Ministry source told EurasiaNet
that the Pentagon has implemented some upgrades there already, and
has now expressed interest in using the airdrome for NATO operations
in Afghanistan. "[P]articularly for re-fueling and the technical
maintenance of aircraft," the source said.

No official comments were released about plans for the Gabala
radar station — proposed by Russia as part of a jointly operated
missile defense system with the United States — though the topic was
discussed. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. American
officials reportedly passed on proposals made by Russian President
Vladimir Putin to US President George W. Bush during their recent
meeting in Sochi.

Cooperation in other strategic locations has made faster progress. As
part of a Caspian Sea surveillance program with the United States,
two radar stations have been set up on the Absheron Peninsula (in the
villages of Gobustan and Turkan), one on the border with Russia (Yalama
village) and one in Azerbaijan’s Neftchala region, near the Iranian
border. A mobile radar system has also been set up by the Pentagon
and NATO in the region of Xizi, roughly 80 kilometers from Baku.

According to the Defense Ministry source, the stations now have full
coverage of Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian Sea, as well as of
radio-electronic signals in southern Russia and northern Iran.

The unsettled legal status of territorial claims to the Caspian Sea
was another topic for discussion, the source added.

Azerbaijani officials, for their part, prefer to stick to the big
picture. "[Azerbaijan’s] cooperation with NATO is at its highest
level," Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told journalists on April
15. "We are already at the second stage of IPAP, which is important
for us in order to implement deeper reforms and build closer ties with
NATO." The second phase of Azerbaijan’s IPAP program began on March 15.

Azerbaijan will receive about $21 million from NATO for reforms
connected with the second stage of IPAP. The US State Department will
allocate $900,000 for short-term military training and courses in US
military academies. Azerbaijan will receive $3 million in US foreign
military assistance in 2009.

Diplomats will join the next round of US-Azerbaijani military talks,
scheduled to take place in Washington, DC, in July.

Despite the development of military ties with the US and NATO,
Baku underlines that it has a go-slow approach to integration
with the alliance. In a March 21 interview with the Russian news
agency Interfax, President Ilham Aliyev stressed that the question
of membership is not on the agenda. "The present standard of our
cooperation with NATO suits us," Aliyev said. "It is hard to tell
what is going to happen later, how international developments are
going to unfold, what processes are going to take place in our region."

But that judgment does not appear to dilute the US commitment to
military support for Azerbaijan. The assistance, said Gen. Wyatt,
will go on. "[T]ransformation," he said, "is a long process."

Editor’s Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance correspondent based
in Baku.