Zerkalo, Azerbaijan
Jan 7 2012
The American policy is controlled by Armenians
The political expert maintains, and threatens Washington that “Baku
will not toe the US line”
by U. Axundova
[translated from Russian]
The head of the Centre for the Political Innovations and Technologies,
Mubariz Ahmadoglu, gave a news conference and devoted it to the
results of December events in the region and in the world. In 2011,
Azerbaijan achieved great political and economic successes, and
Azerbaijan’s election as a non-permanent member of the UN Security
Council became a new event for the Asian region countries and the most
significant political event for Azerbaijan in 2011, he believes.
“Last year the country also gained impressive victories in economy.
The gold and currency reserves of the country reached 40bn dollars,
the state budget exceeded 20bn dollars, and Azerbaijan’s military
budget exceeds the state budget of Armenia by 1.2 times. The national
economy constitutes 83 per cent of the regional economy,” said
Ahmadoglu. Among the successes of the state last year, the political
scientist underlined the development of information and communications
technologies. “In 2011, an important decision was taken to launch two
satellites of Azerbaijan. The quality of the Internet improved in the
country, its cost went down,” Ahmadoglu said.
Speaking about the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, Ahmadoglu said that the
political resources for the resolution of the Nagornyy Karabakh
conflict exhausted. “Despite the fact that great efforts were
attached, the meeting of the presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia and
Russia in Kazan did not produce significant results. And because of
the fact that the organizers of the meeting made changes to the agreed
text of the document, it was not signed,” political expert said.
In his view, the collapse of the OSCE Minsk Group’s mediation has
already begun. And theses that “the status quo must be immediately
changed,” “the change of the status quo is dangerous for the region”
have become just a slogan. The political scientist added that the
attempts to arrange a meeting and dialogue between the Azerbaijani and
Armenian communities of Nagornyy Karabakh remained fruitless.
According to him, it was because the Armenians are not agreeing to
this dialogue, and generally they do not accept the division of
communities of Nagornyy Karabakh into Armenian and Azerbaijani ones.
“The public opinion in Armenia on the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict is
more and more inclined towards the direction of the surrender, there
matures a subconscious feeling in society that they failed to
‘privatize’ Nagornyy Karabakh,” says Ahmadoglu.
The political analyst believes that the US policy in the region is
completely controlled by Armenians. He confirmed this with a
paradoxical conclusion in connection with obvious unwillingness of the
US Congress to approve Matthew Bryza as the US ambassador to
Azerbaijan.
“Bryza is one of the two or three most qualified American specialists
on the CIS [the Commonwealth of Independent States] and the South
Caucasus issues. Nevertheless, the Armenian lobby in the US Congress
does not give him the opportunity to work at the post of the US
ambassador in Azerbaijan. Without permission of the American
Armenians, the US State Department cannot name a US ambassador to
Armenia either. There is information about imminent appointments of
leaders from among American Armenians to high offices in the White
House and the US Congress,” said the analyst. Official Baku sees the
role of Armenians in American politics and therefore, does not toe the
US line in its Caspian policy.
“America wanted us to put the resolution of the Karabakh conflict on
back burner and deal seriously with the division of the Caspian Sea,
and they created there problems for themselves. Washington also wanted
to clash Azerbaijan with Russia. But the US did nothing to help
Georgia when the country conflicted with Russia. Naturally, Baku
understood it, saw the role of Armenians in the developments and did
not go to a confrontation with its northern neighbour with whom we
have no fundamental disagreements,” added Ahmadoglu. On these notes,
the political expert wrapped up his traditional press conference,
which as usual, is rich in extravagant conclusions.
[translated from Russian]