THE WEST IS SERIOUS ABOUT AZERBAIJAN
VARDAN GRIGORYAN

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on May 03, 2008
Armenia

On May 1 touching upon the forthcoming, October 15 presidential
elections in our neighbor country, the US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Ann
Darcy, proposed merely unsolvable issues to Azerbaijani authorities.

In her view their future cooperation with Azerbaijani government and
the civil society will be directed to `holding the first free and fair
elections in the history of that country’. It is quite comprehensible
that the United States is trying to solve quite different issues, by
placing similar inaccessible plank in front of Azerbaijanis
authorities.

To have the preliminary picture of the goals of the United States,
let’s familiarize ourselves with the list of the organizations, which
are going to get 3 million dollars from the US government, for
assisting the process of the elections in Azerbaijan ` examining the
complaints, conducting parallel counting of the votes, organizing
pre-election debates, training the law enforcers, etc. They are ` the
US National Democratic Institute, the Republicans’ International
Institute, International Fund of the Electoral System, the American
Lawyers’ Association, the International Council of Investigation, and
Exchange, which includes the whole `assortment’ of the American
structures skilled in `colored revolutions’.

Meanwhile the Committee dealing with small grants under the US State
Department will start the funding of Azerbaijani non-governmental
organizations and social groups.

Before the publication of the names of this rather outstanding
organizations, the not less famous `Ago’ group was dealing with
Azerbaijan, which in its April 22 report attached great importance to
making amendments in Azerbaijan’s Electoral Code and emphasized the
significance of the adoption of the amended version of the law on `the
Freedom of Rallies’ with the participation of Venice Committee. The
task of ensuring the independence of the national council of the TV and
Radio has also been advanced.

So, it turns out that all the American and European structures that
used to deal with Georgia and Armenia in winter are sending their
`landing forces’ to Azerbaijan.

It’s worth mentioning that Azerbaijan’s governing elite is seriously
concerned about the steps taken by western structures before the
presidential elections in Azerbaijan on October 15, trying to confront
their proposals, reports, and suggestions regarding the organization of
democratic elections. Meanwhile they are trying to create an impression
that allegedly there are no objective or subjective preconditions for
the repetition of the events that took place in Georgia and Armenia.

But it is evident that despite the impression of the stability and
economic development of Azerbaijan created by Ilham Aliev and his
administration, the problems existing in this country are far more
complicated than the ones in Georgia and Armenia. Particularly the
stressed difference in the development of the capital city Baku and the
suburbs, or the dissimilarity of the income of different layers of
society, is greater than in any other country in South Caucasus
deprived of oil and gas resources.

Unlike Armenia there is also an emphasized dissatisfaction towards the
policy of the past years, regarding Karabakh issue, which the
pro-oppositional radical powers will definitely speculate during the
pre-election campaign.

However the profound motives of the US and European organizations are
still not clear. But one thing is evident, that they will over again
pursue their double standard policy here, the USA will try to `liven
up’ the pro-oppositional powers, by giving hopes of victory, on the one
hand, and will `work’ with Ilham Aliev, trying to extort concessions of
geopolitical nature from him, one the other hand.

In our opinion by October 15 the Unites State and all the international
structures acting under its patronage, as well as the EU countries will
do their best to apply the formula `weak authorities ` strong foreign
players’ in Azerbaijan, the same way as they did in Georgia and
Armenia. The thing is, whether or not Azerbaijani pro-oppositional
powers will succeed in using all this in strengthening their positions.

In any case the electoral hullabaloo, in store for Azerbaijan, promises
to turn into a short but indispensable period for the re-establishment
of the internal unity for our people and making Armenia’s foreign
policy more active.’