Azerbaijan-USA: Last plea…

Yevgeni Krishtalev. Exclusively to VK

After 20 years since its accession to the UN, Azerbaijan became the first country in the former Soviet area to head the Security Council of the organization and got a unique possibility to draw the attention of the international community to conflict zones, including the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. At the beginning of the country’s chairmanship, President Ilham Aliyev made a working visit to the USA. On May 4th he chaired the Security Council session in New York that was devoted to the struggle against terrorism. The participants approved the chairman’s statement on improvement of international cooperation in the sphere of terrorism prevention.

“International peace and security demand close international cooperation between states, it concerns a more coordinated systematic approach by the United Nations,” Ilham Aliyev emphasized. According to him, unsettled conflicts between states, international military occupation, and aggressive separatism encourage development of terrorist activity. “The international community should simplify settlement of conflicts based on recognized norms and principles of international law related to territorial integrity, as well as helping countries to restore sovereignty over their territory,” Aliyev said.

In correlation with the terrorism topic, the Azerbaijani president touched on the Karabakh conflict, the Khodzhly tragedy, which led to the deaths of 600 people in 1992, and terrorist attacks in the Baku metro in 1994.

It is expected that the Azerbaijani leader will speak in several political science centers of America and present views and approaches of Azerbaijan not only towards the UN agenda, but also towards problems of the South Caucasus.

Experts believe that the UN SC rostrum gives several advantages to Azerbaijan, but Baku cannot directly bring settlement of the Karabakh conflict up for discussion. Success on the diplomatic front could be achieved only due to hard work in the corridors of the UN, in private meetings and contacts with diplomat-members of the organization. In this context the authority of the chairing country of the SC will positively influence and increase the chances for making its position not only understandable, but right for others. Baku hopes that the high status of the UN and non-permanent member of the Security Council will help to change the biased approach of many countries to the Karabakh problem, and some of them, including the USA, will have their views changed on it. This is very important in the present status quo.

The personal mediation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev didn’t yield any serious results, but could prevent the growing tension turning into a military conflict. Baku, while welcoming and approving Moscow's activity, is not satisfied with Washington’s passive attitude in the sphere of pressure on Armenia.

The former US ambassador to Azerbaijan and ex-chairman of the US in the OSCE Minsk Group, Mathew Bryza, spoke about the reasonableness of Baku’s disappointment. He heavily criticized the American administration and stressed that no peacemaking agreement should be expected in the Karabakh conflict until the USA government deals with the issue at the top level. Moreover, he thinks that the administration’s efforts to ignore Azerbaijan’s opinion within the process of bringing Turkey and Armenia closer were wrong and improvident. “Normalization between Turkey and Armenia is nice, if it is achievable. But it is not achievable, plus it negatively influences the Nagorno-Karabakh peacemaking process.”

Ahead of the visit to the USA by Ilham Alieyv the head of the foreign contacts department under the presidential administration, Novruz Mamedov, stated in an interview to Bloomberg Businessweek that Azerbaijan might reconsider its pro-Western position and join “a new bloc” if it doesn’t get wider support, especially in the Nagorno-Karabakh problem. Azerbaijan wants Europe and the USA to pressure Armenia on the issue of withdrawing its occupying troops from Azerbaijani regions, Mamedov said. He stated that Azerbaijan had received an offer to join another political union. “At the moment we haven’t accepted the offer. But if the situation continues to be the same, we will accept it in 5-10 years,” Mamedov said. “We expect support from the West in the Nagorno-Karabakh problem.”

Of course, Mamedov’s statement cannot be considered as a complete withdrawal from the policy of balance between major power vectors in the region. It seems to be a last plea to the US to consider changes in the situation and encourage real action.