THE WASHINGTON CENTRE FOR AZERBAIJAN STUDIES HAS BEEN SET UP AS AN INDEPENDENT, BIPARTISAN ORGANIZATION

"Noravank" Foundation

06 May 2010

The centre has been founded by young Azerbaijani and international
scholars to serve as a platform for policy evaluation and independent
thinking and to contribute to the strategic debate on Azerbaijan,
the Caucasus and Caspian.

The new centre held a lunch presentation on ‘Geopolitics of Caspian
Energy: Perspectives and Challenges’ at the Elliott School of
International Affairs on 27 April. The event was moderated by Henry
Hale, director for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George
Washington University, and featured Edward Chow, senior fellow at
the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Before the discussion started, Efgan Niftiyev from the Washington
Centre for Azerbaijani Studies outlined the organization’s mission.

Discussion at the event centred on emerging trends in oil and gas
production in the Caspian region, focusing on the role of Azerbaijan
as an energy producer and transit country. Recalling trips to the
region in the early 1990s, Edward Chow said Azerbaijan had been
able to rapidly develop energy contracts with foreign companies and
turn them into serious projects. He said the government had anchored
the balance between the interests of private companies and national
interests to provide for sustainable investment in Azerbaijan. ‘The
achievements that have been made in the past 17-18 years are not
to be underestimated,’ Chow said. He said it was hard to imagine
sustainability without a solution to frozen conflicts in the region.

Touching upon Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, Edward Chow said
that without a clear path to a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict there was no imminent prospect of the Turkish-Armenian
border being opened. The Turkish-Armenian issue is a negative factor
in Turkish-Azerbaijani energy projects, he said.

Talking about the recent nuclear security summit in Washington, Edward
Chow described as a ‘missed opportunity for the US’ the failure to
invite Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to the summit. He said that
senior officials from the Obama administration should make more visits
to Azerbaijan.