VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY’S VISIT TO BAKU RAISES SPECULATIONS
By Alman Mir – Ismail

Eurasia Daily Monitor
Sept 9 2008
DC

On September 3, US Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Baku as part
of his tour to the region of the former Soviet Union. The visit was the
first such high-ranking visit by a US official and drew much attention
because of the recent events in Georgia and the escalation of the
US-Russian rivalry in the South Caucasus. In the wake of the visit,
one line of questioning occupied the minds of local and international
observers: Why did Cheney come, and did he get what he wanted? In
this respect, interesting facts emerged about the trip.

Foremost, it should be noted that Cheney chose Azerbaijan and not
Georgia as his main base for the trip, staying in Baku overnight and
spending more time on meetings in Baku than in Tbilisi. This comes
as a surprise because it was the Georgian-Russian conflict which was
cited as the main reason for his trip to the region. Perhaps Cheney
wanted to convey the importance of Azerbaijan to US national interests.

While in Baku, Cheney met with the US embassy staff, foreign oil
companies, and President Ilham Aliyev to discuss the situation in the
region. Cheney and Aliyev discussed bilateral relations, as well as
the recent events in Georgia.

Russian media rushed to speculate that Cheney received a cold shoulder
in Baku. Moscow-based Kommersant newspaper even stated that Cheney was
so upset about the results of his talks in Baku that he even refused to
attend the gala-dinner organized in his honor. Both the US embassy and
the newspaper itself later denied this speculation. However, the level
of warmness shown towards Cheney in Baku does raise certain questions.

Cheney was met at the airport not by President Aliyev or Prime Minister
Artur Rasizadeh, as is usually the case, but by Deputy Prime Minister
Yagub Eyyubov. The dispatch of a lower level official indicates that
the Azerbaijani political leadership wanted to show the Kremlin that
it is not overly excited about the visit of the American official,
and that Baku does not intend to take sides in the US-Russian rivalry
in the Caucasus.

Indeed, Baku, unlike Tbilisi, prefers to stay away from antagonizing
Moscow or taking sharp foreign policy decisions towards NATO and the
US. Instead, President Aliyev prefers to maintain cordial relations
with Moscow and develop the spirit of partnership with Russia while
slowly integrating into the Euro-Atlantic space and exporting energy
resources to the European markets. In Baku, it is believed that
ostracizing Russia and overlooking Russian interests in the region will
only destabilize the situation, as the events in Georgia demonstrated.

President Aliyev was quite aware that Cheney’s visit was under the
careful watch of Moscow. It is not a surprise that President of the
Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev called President Aliyev immediately
after Cheney’s visit to discuss the situation in the region. That
is why President Aliyev was especially careful in his remarks with
the US official not to side with Washington in any hot issues facing
the region.

Local media reported that energy and security issues were the
main items on the discussion list between President Aliyev and Vice
President Cheney. Both have known each other for more than a decade and
have already built a solid partnership. President Aliyev highlighted
the large role that the US plays in regional energy projects and
security arrangements. But at the same time, President Aliyev used the
moment to discuss bilateral US-Azerbaijan relations. On this issue,
Azerbaijan has some reasons to be unhappy.

During the March 2008 voting of UN General Assembly Resolution 10693,
the resolution supporting the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan,
the United States voted against the text of the resolution. This
truly became a heart-breaker in Baku, and officials in the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs promised to keep it in mind, while considering
relations with the US. For more than 17 years, the United States has
promised to respect Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, but at the
same time continues funding the Nagorno-Karabakh regime, maintains
section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, and refuses to pressure
Armenia to liberate occupied territories of Azerbaijan. In Baku,
this is seen as an act of double standards.

Moreover, the slow and weak response to the Georgian crisis
demonstrated to Azerbaijan that the US does not have any practical
means to protect the South Caucasus states from Russian aggression. As
Hikmet Hajizadeh, a member of the opposition Musavat party’s Supreme
Council, told an Azeri newspaper, "Today, [the] US has no concrete
capacity to protect Azerbaijan from Russia" (Day.az, September 3).

Keeping these factors in mind, why should then the Azerbaijani
leadership display a "welcome sign" to the US leadership? After all,
despite years of Azerbaijan’s assistance to the US in the energy
and security matters, Washington has still yet to deliver anything
practical to Azerbaijan. As political analyst Rasim Musabeyov notes,
"Words alone are not enough. Real actions of Washington must be
impressive too" (Day.az, September 3).