A WELCOME NEW STAGE IN AZERBAIJANI-ISRAELI TIES
By Alexander Murinson

AZG Armenian Daily
17/06/2009

International

Israel has actively sought to establish friendly relations with
Azerbaijan and other Muslim states in the post-Soviet space. Relations
between Israel, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan serve as a model for
cooperation between the Jewish state and Muslim nations. As a result
of the meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Israel’s
new Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in Prague on May 6, an agreement
about a state visit by President Shimon Peres to Baku has been reached.

Peres is scheduled to visit Azerbaijan near the end of June as a
part of his tour of the Muslim republics of the CIS. The visit to
Baku will take place "at the highest level and with all honors."

In view of increasing tensions between the Iranian mullahs’ regime,
which seeks to build nuclear weapons and threaten the Gulf region, and
Israel, the invitation for Peres to visit secular Muslim Azerbaijan,
Iran’s northern neighbor, reaffirms the strategic relationship between
the two countries. Diplomatic relations between the countries were
established shortly after Azerbaijan’s independence in 1992. Premier
Binyamin Netanyahu paid a working visit in 1997 on his flight from
China.

This diplomatic breakthrough was achieved by Lieberman, who emigrated
from the former Soviet Republic of Moldova. Since his days as the
minister of strategic affairs (2006-2008), he has pursued a policy
of deepening relations with the newly independent states of Eastern
Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Lieberman paid special attention
to the Republic of Azerbaijan, strategically located on the western
shore of the Caspian Sea. He paid an official visit to Azerbaijan
in August 2007. During their meeting in Prague, Aliyev and Lieberman
discussed the development of Azerbaijani-Israeli relations. Lieberman
mentioned that he intends to visit Baku in the near future.

THE CRITICAL AREA of cooperation between the two countries is energy
security. Currently Azerbaijan supplies 20 percent of Israel’s
oil. Due to the high proportion of petrochemicals in bilateral
trade, the value of imports from Azerbaijan reached $3.5 billion
in 2008. There are also plans to supply Azerbaijani natural gas via
Turkey to Haifa. However, there is renewed interest on both sides in
expanding bilateral cooperation into new areas such as agriculture,
medical research and hi-tech. As part of this effort, a series of
events have been organized with the participation of Ambassador to
Azerbaijan Arthur Lenk, who has represented the Jewish state in Baku
since 2005 and will leave his post in July.

In May 2008, the Israel-Azerbaijani business forum took place in Baku,
with the Israeli side represented by Agriculture Minister Shalom
Simhon. Tel Aviv hosted a forum with representatives of more than 20
companies from Azerbaijan and officials of the Ministry of Economic
Development on May 18. The key part of the forum was the signing of
an agreement on cooperation between the Israel Export Institute and
the Azerbaijan Fund for Export and Investments Encouragement (AzPromo).

This agreement institutionalizes mutual trade and investment. The
International Agricultural Exhibition Agritech 2009 taking place in
Israel will also see the Azerbaijani delegation led by Ilham Guliyev,
deputy minister of agriculture.

In late September 2008, Azerbaijan agreed to buy military hardware
from Israel. On September 26, Haaretz reported that Azerbaijan will
purchase Israeli weapons, including ammunition, mortars and military
radio equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the
first public acknowledgment of the growing strategic relationship
between the two countries, even though the relationship goes back
to the first years of Azerbaijani independence. This political move
demonstrates Azerbaijani commitment to its Western orientation and
independence from Moscow and Teheran.

Israel sought to establish close relations with these countries,
because the developments in this region profoundly affect the
stability of the Middle East due to its territorial proximity and
the size of the predominantly Muslim population of Central Asia and
Azerbaijan. The Caspian region can become a fertile ground for the
spread of Islamic radicalism and nuclear proliferation. These threats
also unite Israel with the elites and secular middle class in these
nations. The natural riches of the region make cooperation with these
nations even more attractive.

The Obama administration would be wise to see Israel under Netanyahu
as an asset and interlocutor in the American strategy toward Eurasia
in general and the South Caucasus in particular. Israel’s influence
among the ex-Soviet republics and the Russian Federation is bound
to increase under Lieberman, who has built a broad network of formal
and informal relations with the elites of these republics during his
tenure as minister of strategic affairs.

News reports about the coming visit of Peres to Azerbaijan have already
caused consternation among the Iranian military. The Azerbaijani media
reported on May 21 that the Iranian Chief of Staff Hasan Firudabadi
made public threats directed at Azerbaijan, saying that a visit by
the Israeli president would be an "incorrect step." He added: "The
Shimon Peres visit does not seem like a friendly step in Azerbaijani
relations with Iran."

The writer is an independent researcher; his book Turkey’s Entente
with Israel and Azerbaijan: State Identity and Security in the Middle
East and Caucasus will be published by Routledge in September 2009.