Tweet
WAR OF PIPES AND KARABAKH ISSUE: WHAT WILL MORNINGSTAR BRING INTO ENERGY AND GEO POLITICS OF THE REGION
By Naira Hayrumyan
ArmeniaNow
04.05.12 | 11:27
United States President Barack Obama last week named the secretary
of state's special envoy for Eurasian energy Richard Morningstar as
ambassador to Azerbaijan to succeed Matthew Bryza, whose short lived
tour of duty in Baku ended late last year amid opposition from the
Armenian lobby at the Congress. Morningstar's nomination also has to
clear the Congress before he can get the post.
Azerbaijan has already expressed its approval of Morningstar's
nomination, but the Armenian lobby is apparently still looking into
the situation and trying to understand why Obama has nominated such
an influential person to serve as envoy in a small, but oil-rich
South Caucasus country.
Morningstar has had contacts with Azerbaijan before as he visited
Baku on various occasions. Apparently, the United States is intent on
"convincing" Azerbaijan to be friends with the West energy-wise at the
expense of such friendship with Russia or the possible Russo-Iranian
alliance.
Now the Caspian region is seeing a so-called "war of pipes" in which
Russia is trying in every way to prevent the construction of the
Trans-Caspian gas pipeline supposed to join the Nabucco project to
deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan to Europe via
Turkey, bypassing Russia. Moscow is trying to persuade Azerbaijan
to sell its natural gas to the South Stream, an alternative pipeline
that is under construction now to maintain Russia's dominant position
on Europe's natural gas market.
In the West, there is already talk that the Nabucco project is likely
to fail, and the United States, apparently, seeks to revive this and
other projects by appointing an experienced negotiator as ambassador
to Azerbaijan.
So far, Azerbaijan has made no secret of its linking its energy
preferences with the Karabakh issue and that it will enter into
an alliance with those forces that will undertake to put pressure
on Armenia.
In a recent interview with Mediaforum the head of the department on
socio-political issues of the presidential administration of Azerbaijan
Ali Hasanov described Morningstar as an experienced diplomat familiar
with the region, at the same time he noted that Baku expected first
of all "objectivity" from ambassadors of other countries.
"Some of the recent actions by the diplomatic missions of a number
of countries in Azerbaijan have been regrettable. Sometimes diplomats
come under the influence of subjective judgments and present to their
country biased and incomplete information about the host country,"
Hasanov said.
The Azeri official apparently referred to some unflattering opinions
of foreign diplomats about the level of democracy in Azerbaijan and
the unwillingness of the international community to have a solution
to the Karabakh issue that would favor Baku.
Head of the Department of External Relations of the Azerbaijani
presidential administration Novruz Mammadov this week said that
Azerbaijan may reconsider its pro-Western stance and form a "new bloc",
if it gets no broader support from Europe and the U.S., especially
in the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Bloomberg Businessweek
quoted Mammadov as saying that Azerbaijan wants the U.S.
and Europe to put pressure on Armenia "in the issue of the
withdrawal of occupying forces from Azerbaijani districts surrounding
Nagorno-Karabakh."
Former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Bryza, apparently, was supposed
to solve this problem for Azerbaijan, but the Armenian lobby in the
United States managed to get his nomination blocked in the Congress.
He worked in Baku for a year by Obama's appointment bypassing the
Senate's disapproval, but appears to have failed the U.S. energy
problems as he concentrated on the Karabakh problem and
Armenian-Turkish relations.
At the beginning of this year, Bryza gave an interesting interview
to the Turkish Hurriyet newspaper, in which he warned the current U.S.
administration that the "artificial" assertion that there is no
link between the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and
Turkish-Armenian normalization dooms the prospects for resolving
the Karabakh conflict, as, according to the former OSCE Minsk Group
cochairman, it makes reaching a compromise on the Armenian side
impossible. "They [Armenia] are given a huge benefit [opening the
border with Turkey] without making any compromise. So we need to
manage the two processes together at the same time," said Bryza.
Such frankness of the American diplomat may be evidence that, as an
ambassador who served in Azerbaijan for a year, he was doing everything
for the Karabakh problem to stand in the way of Turkish-Armenian
relations. And he did so in defiance of his administration, which has
repeatedly stated that these two issues should not be linked together.
Morningstar, meanwhile, is likely to try to separate from the Karabakh
conflict not only the Turkish-Armenian relations, but also the energy
projects. Azerbaijan remains a key U.S. ally in terms of regional
energy policy, said Morningstar still prior to his nomination.
By Naira Hayrumyan
ArmeniaNow
04.05.12 | 11:27
United States President Barack Obama last week named the secretary
of state's special envoy for Eurasian energy Richard Morningstar as
ambassador to Azerbaijan to succeed Matthew Bryza, whose short lived
tour of duty in Baku ended late last year amid opposition from the
Armenian lobby at the Congress. Morningstar's nomination also has to
clear the Congress before he can get the post.
Azerbaijan has already expressed its approval of Morningstar's
nomination, but the Armenian lobby is apparently still looking into
the situation and trying to understand why Obama has nominated such
an influential person to serve as envoy in a small, but oil-rich
South Caucasus country.
Morningstar has had contacts with Azerbaijan before as he visited
Baku on various occasions. Apparently, the United States is intent on
"convincing" Azerbaijan to be friends with the West energy-wise at the
expense of such friendship with Russia or the possible Russo-Iranian
alliance.
Now the Caspian region is seeing a so-called "war of pipes" in which
Russia is trying in every way to prevent the construction of the
Trans-Caspian gas pipeline supposed to join the Nabucco project to
deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan to Europe via
Turkey, bypassing Russia. Moscow is trying to persuade Azerbaijan
to sell its natural gas to the South Stream, an alternative pipeline
that is under construction now to maintain Russia's dominant position
on Europe's natural gas market.
In the West, there is already talk that the Nabucco project is likely
to fail, and the United States, apparently, seeks to revive this and
other projects by appointing an experienced negotiator as ambassador
to Azerbaijan.
So far, Azerbaijan has made no secret of its linking its energy
preferences with the Karabakh issue and that it will enter into
an alliance with those forces that will undertake to put pressure
on Armenia.
In a recent interview with Mediaforum the head of the department on
socio-political issues of the presidential administration of Azerbaijan
Ali Hasanov described Morningstar as an experienced diplomat familiar
with the region, at the same time he noted that Baku expected first
of all "objectivity" from ambassadors of other countries.
"Some of the recent actions by the diplomatic missions of a number
of countries in Azerbaijan have been regrettable. Sometimes diplomats
come under the influence of subjective judgments and present to their
country biased and incomplete information about the host country,"
Hasanov said.
The Azeri official apparently referred to some unflattering opinions
of foreign diplomats about the level of democracy in Azerbaijan and
the unwillingness of the international community to have a solution
to the Karabakh issue that would favor Baku.
Head of the Department of External Relations of the Azerbaijani
presidential administration Novruz Mammadov this week said that
Azerbaijan may reconsider its pro-Western stance and form a "new bloc",
if it gets no broader support from Europe and the U.S., especially
in the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Bloomberg Businessweek
quoted Mammadov as saying that Azerbaijan wants the U.S.
and Europe to put pressure on Armenia "in the issue of the
withdrawal of occupying forces from Azerbaijani districts surrounding
Nagorno-Karabakh."
Former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Bryza, apparently, was supposed
to solve this problem for Azerbaijan, but the Armenian lobby in the
United States managed to get his nomination blocked in the Congress.
He worked in Baku for a year by Obama's appointment bypassing the
Senate's disapproval, but appears to have failed the U.S. energy
problems as he concentrated on the Karabakh problem and
Armenian-Turkish relations.
At the beginning of this year, Bryza gave an interesting interview
to the Turkish Hurriyet newspaper, in which he warned the current U.S.
administration that the "artificial" assertion that there is no
link between the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and
Turkish-Armenian normalization dooms the prospects for resolving
the Karabakh conflict, as, according to the former OSCE Minsk Group
cochairman, it makes reaching a compromise on the Armenian side
impossible. "They [Armenia] are given a huge benefit [opening the
border with Turkey] without making any compromise. So we need to
manage the two processes together at the same time," said Bryza.
Such frankness of the American diplomat may be evidence that, as an
ambassador who served in Azerbaijan for a year, he was doing everything
for the Karabakh problem to stand in the way of Turkish-Armenian
relations. And he did so in defiance of his administration, which has
repeatedly stated that these two issues should not be linked together.
Morningstar, meanwhile, is likely to try to separate from the Karabakh
conflict not only the Turkish-Armenian relations, but also the energy
projects. Azerbaijan remains a key U.S. ally in terms of regional
energy policy, said Morningstar still prior to his nomination.