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The Key To The Caucasus

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  • The Key To The Caucasus

    THE KEY TO THE CAUCASUS
    By Stanley A. Weiss

    International Herald Tribune
    http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/08/opi nion/edweiss.php
    Dec 8 2008
    France

    BAKU, Azerbaijan: 'Welcome to Houston on the Caspian," said Anne
    Derse, the U.S. ambassador to this booming, oil-rich nation, as our
    delegation of American business executives arrived on the final leg
    of a visit to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

    After days of discussion with political, military and business leaders
    across the region - including a talk with President Ilham Aliyev of
    Azerbaijan, whose office overlooks the Caspian Sea, home to perhaps a
    quarter of the world's new oil production - it all seemed obvious. As
    one U.S. diplomat put it, Azerbaijan "is central to all we're trying
    to do in this part of the world."

    Azerbaijan is the indispensable link to reducing European energy
    dependence on Moscow, with the only pipelines exporting Caspian oil
    and gas that bypass Russia altogether, with routes through Georgia
    and Turkey.

    Without Azerbaijan, there will never be what the U.S. energy
    secretary Samuel Bodman calls "a new generation of export routes"
    bypassing Russia. Known as the "southern corridor," it includes plans
    by Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to ship oil and gas by barge across
    the Caspian to Baku, as well as the EU's long-planned Nabucco gas
    pipeline from Turkey to Europe.

    Aliyev stresses that, unlike President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia,
    he will not taunt the Russian bear, continuing instead to walk a
    fine line between East and West. This policy includes allowing his
    military to train with NATO, but not rushing to become a NATO member.

    Aliyev insists that "time is up" for the return of the Azerbaijani
    territory of Nagorno-Karabakh - the Armenian-majority region occupied
    by Armenia, with Russian support, since the war over the area in the
    early 1990s. Still, he seems determined not to give Moscow a pretext
    to intervene, as it did with its invasion of Georgia this summer.

    Azerbaijan - like Turkey, with which it shares deep ethnic and
    linguistic ties - is one the world's most secularized Muslim countries,
    with a strict separation between mosque and state. Moreover, the
    nearly 20 million ethnic Azeris living in neighboring Iran - about a
    quarter of Iran's population - are culturally closer to their brethren
    in Baku than their Persian rulers in Tehran. Azerbaijan also draws
    the ayatollahs' ire as one of the few Muslim nations with diplomatic
    ties with Israel.

    Yet for all its strategic significance - and its support for the
    U.S. war on terrorism, including sending troops to Afghanistan and
    Iraq - Azerbaijan remains the neglected stepchild of U.S. Caucasus
    policy. Despite Saakashvili's miscalculations with Russia, Georgia
    remains the darling of the West, garnering another $1 billion in
    post-war aid from the U.S. atop the nearly $2 billion Washington
    has bestowed over the years. The powerful Armenian-American lobby
    has not only secured some $2 billion for Armenia to date, it has
    succeeded in limiting U.S. aid to Azerbaijan because of the dispute
    over Nagorno-Karabakh.

    To be sure, this country is no democracy; the 46-year-old Aliyev
    learned well from his authoritarian father, who ruled Azerbaijan both
    as a Soviet Republic and after independence. Indeed, not long before
    our delegation arrived, Aliyev claimed re-election with 89 percent
    of the vote.

    But if Azerbaijan is "central" to everything Washington is trying
    to accomplish in the Caucasus, then Azerbaijan should be at the
    forefront of U.S. Caucasus policy. To help Azerbaijan - and the
    region - realize its full economic potential, the incoming Obama
    administration should make a major push to resolve Nagorno-Karabakh,
    which - as one development official here tells me - "is the main
    issue that prevents regional integration."

    A breakthrough is possible. Every member of the so-called Minsk Group
    charged with resolving the conflict - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia,
    several European countries and the U.S. - have powerful incentives
    for compromise.

    Aliyev wants Nagorno-Karabakh back, but understands that Moscow won't
    allow him to take it by force. Landlocked, impoverished Armenia
    desperately wants Azerbaijan and Turkey to end a 16-year economic
    blockade of its borders. Turkey wants to improve relations with
    Armenia. Europe wants to avert another crisis that would complicate
    plans for its Nabucco pipeline. And with new competing diplomatic
    initiatives, Turkey and Russia clearly want to play a leadership role
    in the region.

    This "frozen conflict" will not thaw easily. But through a
    gradual process backed by the major powers, the Caucasus countries
    could finally focus on economic cooperation rather than military
    confrontation. And the trade routes of the old Silk Road could become
    a new energy corridor of the 21st century.

    Stanley A. Weiss is founding chairman of Business Executives for
    National Security, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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