By Vestnik Kavkaza
“The current rapid development pace will enable Azerbaijan to become a developed country in the near future. These are goals for 2020-2025. They may seem unreal, but considering Azerbaijani achievements and successes, we can say that we will reach the goal. We will reach it due to our pace and resolute desire,” the vice speaker of the parliament of Azerbaijan, Bakhar Muradova, told Trend.
According to Muradova, if there was no the Karabakh problem and Azerbaijan didn’t allocate huge sums to the defense sphere, but would spend it for improvement of living standards, development of the state, the healthcare system, science, and education, the set goals would be achieved quicker. Today Azerbaijan is turning into an investor-country. The investment agreement on Shah Deniz-2 was signed; and the projects which seemed unreal are turning into reality today, the vice speaker said. Muradova thinks that the last year predetermined the priorities of the country for the next 5 years – Azerbaijan should be included into the list of developed countries.
One of the important foreign political directions of Azerbaijan is the Middle East. Vitaly Naumkin, director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, told Vestnik Kavkaza that “the interaction between Azerbaijan and the Middle East, in principle, is mainly economic. If we talk about the Middle East as a whole, there is uneasy relationship between Azerbaijan and Iran, on the one hand, and between Azerbaijan and the forces that support jihadist groups on the other hand. We know that Azerbaijan as a whole constrains and holds under very strict control those Shiite groups which, in its view, are sponsored by Iran.”
According to Naumkin, “in Azerbaijan, there is some concern about the threats that come from Iran, and, apparently, Azerbaijan's cooperation with Israel is related to this. But it is also due to the confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan that exists, the unresolved Karabakh conflict.”
He is sure that “one of the objectives of Azerbaijani policy is, of course, to prevent a loosening of the internal order under the influence of those events, seething and turbulent, which are currently taking place in the Middle East. We can conclude that Azerbaijan has managed to avoid this. The country remains calm, and stability is preserved. I think, due to high rates of development and that the state's economic successes, including using oil revenues, that this is the trend that seems to be predominant.”
