Nezavisimaya Gazeta website, Russia
April 20 2010

Baku Has Seriously Threatened Washington

Report by Yuriy Roks

They are calling the United States’ position on the Nagorno-Karabakh
problem "unfriendly"

The disagreement between the strategic partners — the United States
and Azerbaijan — has proved to be more serious than it seemed. On
Monday, Ahmet Davutoglu, head of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, left for a visit to Baku. According to certain data, he
carried a message from US secretary of state Hillary Clinton to
president Ilkham Aliyev. So far, Baku is not softening the
anti-American rhetoric that has been heard over the past week, aroused
by the United States’ position on the Nagorno-Karabakh problem.

Following the series of Azerbaijani political-establishment
representatives with appeals to Washington to reconsider its role in
the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Ali Gasanov, the
president’s adviser and head of the public-political department of the
president’s staff, appeared on the scene.

According to him, the United States’ pro-Armenian position will be
turned around by a reconsideration of Baku’s policy with respect to
Washington. These appeals, of course, cannot be made without the
knowledge and approval of Ilkham Aliyev, head of the Azerbaijan state,
who incidentally, last week also made critical remarks addressed to
the White House.

Azerbaijan has got tired of the unsettled nature of the Karabakh
problem. It has been surfeited with the West’s promises and assurances
of its devotion to the principle of the country’s territorial
wholeness. Baku has had its fill of the series of endless meetings,
negotiations, and the "watered-down" documents drawn up by mediators
in such a way that each of the conflicting sides interprets them in
its own way, and in the end, abstains from signing.

NG has already expressed doubts that the conflicts in the post-Soviet
space will succeed in being settled on the basis of two equal-rights
and equally applied principles, as the mediators from the OSCE Minsk
Group (MG), in particular, are trying to do in the Karabakh case:
territorial wholeness and the right of a nation to self-determination.
To exaggerate somewhat, the attempts to use both principles at the
same time are leading to making the Azerbaijani side, in the
conciliatory texts based on them, be inclined to accept the
"territorial wholeness" prescribed in them, and the Armenian side —
"the right to self-determination." The two concepts scatter, like the
shells of the same name, in different directions, dooming the next
round of negotiations to failure.

This is not the first time that Azerbaijan has expressed its
dissatisfaction with the mediative mission of the MG OSCE. It has been
the object of sharp criticism, first from Ziyafet Askerov,
vice-speaker of the parliament, then from Araz Azimov, deputy minister
of foreign affairs, and finally, Ali Gasanov — this time it was
Washington, in the opinion of experts, no longer so much because of
the stagnation of the settlement process, as because Ilkham Aliyev was
not invited to the recent international anti-nuclear conference in the
United States. In spite of the fact that all the regional leaders were
taking part in the event. The situation was not even saved by the
unprecedented intervention of Turkey, whose high-ranking
representative (according to certain data, it was Ahmet Davutoglu —
NG) tried to recommend that the host side send an urgent invitation to
Aliyev, but ran up against a stern rebuke.

"The United States is not implementing a policy with respect to
Azerbaijan, the way it does with respect to a strategic partner, and
we can therefore reconsider our policy with respect to the United
States…," Ali Gasanov stated to the Reuters Agency. "We feel that
the Americans should not think only of a way to help Armenia overcome
the economic crisis… but of the way in which Washington, a mediator
in the negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh, should contribute to the
settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict." Aliyev’s adviser was not
about to define more precisely of what the metamorphosis might
consist, but only hinted: "Baku is involved in a number of joint
projects with Washington, including major multinational energy
projects."

Baku is particularly irritated by the attempts made by the United
States to differentiate Yerevan’s problems with its neighbors as
Armenian-Azerbaijani and Armenian-Turkish ones. This is expressed in
Washington’s demands that Ankara ratify the protocols on normalizing
Armenian-Turkish relations, regardless of the state of the Karabakh
problem. "The striving of the United States to reconcile Turkey and
Armenia and to consider the Nagorno-Karabakh question separately is a
mistake," Araz Azimov, now deputy head of the MID [Ministry of Foreign
Affairs], stated to Reuters.

It is possible that Baku’s criticism and demands would not have been
so categorical without Turkey’s support. Ankara, "depressed" by the
acutely painful reaction of its closest regional ally to the dialog
begun with Yerevan, given the unsolved problem of its territorial
wholeness, has in the past few days been acting with a glance over its
shoulder at Baku, rendering it every possible support in the
international arena. This is, perhaps, not Ankara’s recognition of the
blunder in the Armenian direction as much as its reaction to
Azerbaijan’s readiness for a serious independent game, solely in its
own interests, which was, in particular, expressed in the agreements
concluded with Iran and Russia on the sale of gas. Turkey also has its
eye on Azerbaijani gas, as do other possible participants in the
Nabucco gas project, which still remains on paper.

Moreover, Baku, in criticizing the United States over the Karabakh
problem, has made a show of consenting to Tehran’s help in settling
the problem. Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran’s minister of Foreign Affairs,
in an interview with the television company ANS, informed them that
the Azerbaijani side had agreed to accept the mediation services of
official Tehran, in short — by-passing the Armenian side. "We in our
country can organize a meeting of the heads of the MIDs of the three
countries and discuss the situation," Mottaki said.

A Baku analyst, commenting on the state of American-Azerbaijani
relations on condition of anonymity, expressed his certainty that the
coolness is of a temporary nature. "The authorities simply do not dare
take any specific actions against the United States. The sharp
criticism addressed to Washington is called upon more to show the
extent of the injury than to have a follow-up," the collocutor told
NG. As for Iran’s participation in the settlement of the Karabakh
problem, according to the analyst, under the conditions of the actual
inaction of the United States and other mediators, Azerbaijan has
nothing left but to accept any help that may prove to be efficient, so
Iran’s getting active in the region cannot be ruled out — seemingly,
Washington has nothing at all to do with this.

[translated from Russian]