From: “Alexanian, Moorad” <[email protected]>
Subject: Why White House woos Azerbaijan
from the April 28, 2006 edition –
html
Why White House woos Azerbaijan
President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to Washington Friday comes as the
country’s oil and geography make it increasingly important.
By Brendan Hoffman | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – In the boxing ring of international diplomacy and
influence, Azerbaijan punches above its weight.
Coming at the White House’s invitation, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham
Aliyev will meet Friday with top administration officials – including
President Bush – in his first official visit to the US since taking
office in a widely criticized election in October 2003
The visit, analysts say, is part of a broader effort by the Bush
administration to gain support in a key region in the face of a
growing confrontation with Iran, particularly from Muslim countries.
But Azerbaijan’s history of corruption and its poor human rights
record have raised eyebrows about strengthening ties with the Central
Asian country, and many point to oil as another driving factor in the
relationship.
The visit is “a little anomalous,” admits Cory Welt, deputy director
of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, though he adds that there are “a number of
reasons why Azerbaijan is of particular interest to the US now.”
The predominantely Shiite Muslim country of 8 million shares a
380-mile border with Iran, with whom it retains close economic and
cultural links, though it maintains its political distance. That
geographical position makes Azerbaijan a natural ally for the US, said
Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov on a recent visit to
Washington.
“The US is improving its relations with all countries on Iran’s
periphery,” explains Ariel Cohen, senior research fellow at the
Heritage Foundation. “In case economic sanctions or other measures are
to be taken on the Iran issue, we should have a better relationship
with Azerbaijan than the other side.”
Dr. Welt adds that soured relations with Uzbekistan, home to a key US
military base, impelled the US to develop other potential military
allies in the region.
But many experts point to a different key factor: oil. A major oil
pipeline stretching 1,000 miles from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku
through Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean was
recently completed and the first tanker ship will be filled this
summer. A natural-gas pipeline is being constructed parallel to the
so-called BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) oil pipeline, designed to deliver
upward of a million barrels of oil a day.
Azerbaijan’s location may become even more pivotal if a plan to extend
the pipeline eastward to provide an outlet for gas and oil from
Kazakhstan, currently under negotiation, bears fruit. Vice President
Cheney will travel to Kazakhstan to meet President Nazarbayev in early
May.
With oil prices at record highs, Azerbaijan’s state oil company will
soon see an unprecedented influx of cash. The government has
established a special fund to manage the extra oil revenue, and
President Aliyev has indicated that the money will be used for
military budget and citizen benefits such as improving living
conditions for internally displaced persons.
Up to a million Azeris fled their homes in the autonomous
Nagorno-Karabakh territory during fighting in the early 1990s with
Armenian soldiers, who remain there. More than 100,000 still live in
refugee camps while tensions simmer under a cease-fire agreement.
While some experts have expressed concern that the conflict could boil
over and draw in other countries, more international attention has
been focused on Azerbaijan’s poor governance.
The US vocally criticized its elections last fall, one in a string of
polls held since gaining independence from the Soviets in 1991 that
have not met international standards.
According to Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog
group, Azerbaijan is one of the most corrupt countries in the
world. And human rights groups like Amnesty International have
criticized forceful responses to political protests and politically
motivated arrests. This week, Human Rights Watch called on President
Bush to push for concrete improvements to Azerbaijan’s human rights
record.
But if the US is to leverage the two countries’ growing closeness to
promote change in Azerbaijan, it will have to be “much more upfront
and harsher with [Aliyev],” says Charles King, a professor of foreign
service and government at Georgetown University in Washington.
| Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science
Monitor. All rights reserved.