POLITICS
AZERBAIJAN’S STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE INCREASING
Security cooperation, security of gas supplies for Europe and reforms in Azerbaijan will top the agenda in Mr. Aliyev’s meeting with President George W. Bush. He will also meet Vice-President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, defense secretary.
The article says Glen Howard, head of the Jamestown foundation think-tank, says Azerbaijan’s strategic importance is increasing. The US loss of the major K2 airbase in Uzbekistan last July boosted Azerbaijan’s role as an air transit route for supplying Afghanistan.
The Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline running from the Caspian to the Mediterranean and is due to come on stream soon, is testimony to the importance of Azerbaijan.
“There is rising national resource of nationalism in Russia, and the situation in the Middle East is dangerous. That makes the Caspian basin oil reserves continuously more important,” said Scott Horton, a specialist for Central Asia and Caucasus.
An Azeri leader is going to meet US President Bush. It can be considered as demonstration of coming of age for Ilham, the powerful, important, replacement of the great father.
The other US official says the US wants to maximize diversification for European gas markets and sees Azerbaijan as a supplier in the short term. One US-backed plan is the Nabucco project, a private European consortium that aims to bring gas from Azerbaijan and Central Asia into central and Eastern Europe.