TOPICAL. THE USA HAS SUSPENDED DEMOCRACY DIALOGUE WITH AZERBAIJAN

Yeni Musavat
Nov 17 2009
Azerbaijan

Tension between Washington and Baku has peaked. Everything has been
marred in the relations of the two countries and is taking a turn
for the worse

A new piece of information has been added to reports about the gradual
deterioration of political relations between the USA and Azerbaijan.

It became known that the annual talks on democracy and human rights
between the USA and Azerbaijan have been suspended. These talks have
been envisaged by the agreement on strategic partnership between the
United States and Azerbaijan and were one of the priority directions
in the mutual relations. According to reports, Tina S. Kaidanow,
Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian
Affairs, and Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights
and Labor Michael Posner arrived in Tbilisi yesterday.

Georgian mass media outlets report that the visit is being paid
for the conduct of the traditional democracy talks between the two
countries. The high-ranking US diplomats are to meet Georgian state
and government representatives to discuss joint efforts for the
strengthening of democracy in the country. The US embassy in Baku
has told Yeni Musavat newspaper that Posner and Kaidanow are not
expected to visit Baku after Tbilisi. The head of the public relations
department of the embassy, Terry Davidson, said that no delegation
is expected in Baku soon for the conduct of talks on democracy and
human rights.

US suspends democracy dialogue with Azerbaijan

We should say that there was an intensive dialogue over the issue
in question between Washington and Baku before. The latest official
American-Azerbaijani democracy dialogue was held in June last year. At
that time, the talks were led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
for European and Eurasian Affairs David Kramer. The US-Azerbaijan
security dialogue was kicked off in December 2006. The talks were
held both in Washington and in Baku and were around specific issues,
including elections, media and freedom of speech, the right to free
assembly and others. Similar talks are conducted between the USA,
Georgia and Armenia.

So far six similar talks have been held between the USA and
Azerbaijan. However, as obvious, such dialogue will not be conducted
between Washington and Baku this year. Under the mutual strategic
partnership agreement, along with democracy and human rights issues,
the sides also hold security and energy dialogues every year. The
annual security talks between the USA and Azerbaijan has been held
recently and was held in Washington by a delegation led by Deputy
Foreign Minister Araz Azimov. After the talks devoted to mainly to
then presidential election in June last year, Deputy State Secretary
David Kramer paid another visit to Baku in November. At that time, the
main topic of the talks was an unexpected decision of the government
to take foreign radio stations off the air immediately after the polls.

At that time, a representative of the outgoing Republican
administration warned Baku over the matter, saying that the issue of
the closure of exactly radio stations would be on the table of then
president-elect Barack Obama as soon as he took the office. Therefore,
if Baku did not want the deterioration of the relations with Washington
and incoming Democratic administration, it should restore the broadcast
of foreign radio stations on FM frequencies. However, the authorities
brushed away the recommendation and the relations began to take a turn
for the worse. True, this year in the spring, Foreign Minister Elmar
Mammadyarov was invited to Washington and the issues of democracy
and human rights in Azerbaijan were raised at talks he had there.

No US ambassador in Azerbaijan yet

However, the visit was connected with the Armenian-Turkish
rapprochement and the conflict of the Nagornyy Karabakh. The
deterioration of the relations has reached a level that the USA is not
appointing a new ambassador to Azerbaijan and it seems that at least
will not name one within several months to come. The discontent over
non-appointment of the ambassador was also raised by Deputy Foreign
Minister Araz Azimov while on a visit in Washington. He also confirmed
that the relations between the two countries were not good, that is
to say, Azerbaijan does not see the wished partnership relations from
the USA. For official Baku such a partnership with the USA envisage
non-interference in democracy and human rights issues, elections
and similar issues in Azerbaijan. However, such a partnership model
does not fit for the USA. The United States would like at least to
formally demonstrate that democracy and human rights issues are one
of the priorities in its relations with Baku.

However, Baku’s stable refusal from recommendations to this end has
led to a point that Washington is reviewing relations and suspends
democracy-related talks. At the same time, it stops activities of
political institutions engaged in this sphere. That is to say although
the relations with Azerbaijan have not been severed completely, they
are lagging behind significantly and cannot anymore be described as
strategic partnership. One of the fundamental achievements succeeded
by Azerbaijan in its foreign policy for many years was close relations
with the world’s superpower. Nevertheless, everything has been marred
and is going from bad to worse…