12:05,

On January 21, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev met with Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan in Davos.

According to official reports distributed by the press services of both countries, Pakistan supports Azerbaijan's "fair position" on the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, and in return, Baku supports Pakistan on  the issue of Kashmir. However, this support is more formal: open support for Pakistan may spoil relations with India. This is the reason Azerbaijan by all means avoids participating in the resolution on the Kashmir problem, opting for a neutral position aptly voiced by the official representative of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs: "Azerbaijan supports the settlement of the issue of Jammu and Kashmir in accordance with the norms and principles of international law and the requirements of the relevant UN Security Council resolutions."

Pakistan's support for Azerbaijan's interests in turn appears to be full of pure journalistic hype – Pakistan has its own concerns: the conflict with India, decreased regional significance for the United States in the wake of the rapprochement with China, low living standards of the majority of the population, unemployment, lack of serious reserves of natural resources, and the huge external debt, which reached 90 billion dollars last year. Therefore, getting a rich client epitomized in Baku is a matter of principle for Islamabad.

The Azerbaijani ruling circles hope that by deepening relations with Pakistan Azerbaijan will be able to maintain its military superiority over Armenia. However, it is pointless to talk about the Pakistani military presence in the Caucasus, as it will be extremely negatively perceived by Russia, Turkey and Iran. In its turn, Pakistan is ready to do anything, as long as Azerbaijan does not change its mind about buying JF-17 "Thunder" fighters. Yet no final agreement regarding the purchase of the JF-17s was reached. This is quite understandable, because "Thunder" has many shortcomings acknowledged by experts. They are trying to eliminate them in the third generation of the aircraft (Block III), hence the issue of purchasing of Pakistani fighters is more of an advertising nature.

It becomes clear that official Baku does not trust Islamabad and, under the guise of feigned assurances of interest in Pakistani military equipment, Baku will most likely try to purchase Russian weapons.