Tag: Azerbaijan and USA

  • Azeri Paper Attacks Sassounian for Saying that Azerbaijan Wastes billions on Lobbying

    Azeri Paper Attacks Sassounian for Saying that Azerbaijan Wastes billions on Lobbying

    Last week, I was asked by Alpha News TV to comment on the U.S. Senate’s decision, by a unanimous vote of 100 to 0, to suspend for two years Pres. Joe Biden’s authority to waive Section 907 of the United States Freedom Support Act which prohibits providing assistance to Azerbaijan. Should the House of Representatives also approve this bill, it would then go to the President for his signature which would make it a law. Since 1992, all U.S. presidents, including Pres. Biden in the last two years, have waived Section 907, thus providing tens of millions of dollars of aid to Azerbaijan.

    The Senate’s decision angered Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry which described it as a blow to Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and cancelled its participation in the planned Washington talks between the foreign ministers of the two countries on Nov. 20.

    During my interview with Alpha News, I stated that not a single U.S. Senator objected to the anti-Azerbaijan bill, despite Azerbaijan hiring multiple large lobbying firms to defend its interests in Washington. This means that Azerbaijan has wasted tens of millions of dollars in the last two decades paying for these useless lobbying firms. I would like to add that the person directly responsible for overseeing the work of these lobbying firms is Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Washington, Khazar Ibrahim. Therefore, any government that becomes aware of the waste of such large amounts of money would immediately fire its Ambassador. If Pres. Aliyev does not dismiss Amb. Ibrahim, then he himself would be just as responsible for the waste of millions of dollars on worthless lobbying firms which have not been able to convince a single Senator out of 100 to vote in favor of Azerbaijan’s interests.

    Within days of my interview with Alpha News, Azerbaijan’s first English language newspaper, AzerNews, published a lengthy article titled, “Bribing congressmen, Armenian lobby poses threat to future of Yerevan,” attacking me personally for saying that Azerbaijan has wasted millions of dollars on lobbying. This is what shameless people do when they accuse others of doing things they are guilty of.

    The whole world knows about Azerbaijan’s notorious Caviar Diplomacy and Azerbaijani Laundromat, bribing politicians throughout Europe with billions of dollars to cast votes in favor of Azerbaijan in order to whitewash Azerbaijan’s severe human rights violations and its fraudulent presidential elections.

    Shamelessly, AzerNews falsely states that “Armenia’s lobby organizations abroad, pour millions or perhaps billions into the pockets of congressmen, of course, baseless and biased opinions against Azerbaijan will be voiced from the West.”

    There are several grave errors in the above sentence. First of all, the Armenian government has not hired a single U.S. lobbying firm simply because it does not have the huge amount of petrodollars that Azerbaijan has which it wastes on lobbying firms in Washington, instead of taking care of its poor people at home. Secondly, Armenian-American organizations do not have millions, let alone billions of dollars to “pour into the pockets of congressmen.” Armenian-Americans do not need to bribe anyone. When your cause is just, you do not need to pay bribes to convince anyone of the truth. Only when you commit massive crimes, as Azerbaijan and Turkey repeatedly do, you need to spend millions and billions of dollars to cover up your crimes.

    AzerNews went on to incriminate Azerbaijan, saying that Baku “is not only interested in participating in this auction of finding partnerships that Armenia is lavishly doing now.” Even though the sentence is not grammatically correct, the Azeri writer seems to admit that Azerbaijan is eager to bribe foreign officials. This is a useless statement since Azerbaijan has been bribing foreign officials for years.

    Azerbaijan should be the last country in the world to cast aspersions on Armenia or any other country, since Baku is led by a dictator who jails journalists and human rights activists, and his soldiers commit the ugliest war crimes, such as rapes and beheadings. Azerbaijan invaded Artsakh and committed genocide against its Armenian population. Furthermore, Ramil Safarov, an Azeri soldier, during a NATO-sponsored training seminar in Hungary, chopped the head of a sleeping Armenian soldier with an axe. After Pres. Aliyev bribed the Hungarian government to release him from prison, he pardoned him and recognized him as a national hero.

    I commend AzerNews for tracking all the way from Baku my interview in Glendale, California, and writing a baseless and false response. The writer of the article, Elnur Enveroglu, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of AzerNews, went to great lengths to find not only my TV interview, but also to translate it from Armenian into English.

  • Azeri-U.S. Military Drills Cancelled Amid Row

    Azeri-U.S. Military Drills Cancelled Amid Row

    Azerbaijan -- President Ilham Aliyev chairs cabinet meeting on first quarter 2010 socio-economic results, Baku, 14Apr2010Azerbaijan — President Ilham Aliyev chairs cabinet meeting on first quarter 2010 socio-economic results, Baku, 14Apr2010

    19.04.2010
    (Reuters) – Planned joint military exercises by Azerbaijan and the United States were cancelled on Monday against a backdrop of strained ties between Washington and the oil-producing former Soviet republic.

    The announcement by Azerbaijan followed its sharp criticism of Washington’s role in its festering conflict with Armenia over the breakaway mountain region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

    Diplomats say the criticism reflects Azeri anger over U.S. support for a deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan’s close Muslim ally Turkey to mend ties and reopen their border. Azerbaijan, a supplier oil and gas to the West, fears the deal will weaken its hand in talks over the rebel territory.

    Azerbaijan did not specify who cancelled the exercises planned for May, or why, but the U.S. embassy said it suggested “that the question be posed to the government of Azerbaijan”.

    An Azeri Defense Ministry spokesman told Reuters: “The exercises are cancelled, but the reason is not known.”

    In an interview with Reuters on Friday, a senior aide to Azeri President Ilham Aliyev accused the United States of siding with Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and warned that Baku could “reconsider” its relations with Washington.

    The United States is co-mediator with Russia and France in talks over the rebel region, where ethnic Armenians backed by Armenia threw off Azeri rule in the early 1990s in a war that killed 30,000 people. A peace deal has never been signed. Turkey closed its frontier with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan during the war, and Azerbaijan says it should stay closed until ethnic Armenian forces pull back.

    Despite misgivings over human rights under Aliyev, the United States has traditionally had good relations with Azerbaijan, which hosts oil majors including BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron.

    Stung by the Azeri backlash, Turkey now says it will only ratify the deal with Armenia if Yerevan makes concessions on Nagorno-Karabakh. Diplomats say the issue is weighing on negotiations between Turkey and Azerbaijan on gas supplies and transit, complicating plans for the U.S. and European-backed Nabucco pipeline.