PASADENA STAR NEWS NEWSPAPER PUBLISHES ARTICLE ON AZERBAIJAN
The article says when Armenia established its independence in the aftermath of the Soviet
break-up, the U.S. undertook massive financial aid and assistance worth 1.77 billion to
that nation. Armenia became the second largest per capita recipient of U.S. aid in the world.
The article tells Armenia has received $225 million in cumulative U.S. foreign assistance for democratization from 1992 to 2006. These figures do not include millions in additional democratization aid budgeted for 2008. Did American hopes and expectations bear fruit?
As all the elections in Armenia have shown, most vividly last month`s presidential elections and its violent aftermath, U.S. efforts have failed and money was all but wasted: at least eight people killed, over a hundred wounded, tanks and army patrolling the streets of the capital, full-scale government censorship of all communications for at least 20 days, and main opposition contender under house arrest.
Armenia is also militarily occupying 20 percent of neighboring Azerbaijan, displacing over 1 mln ethnic Azeris in the process, placing an even harder moral and financial burden on its population to sustain and support its military machine.
Compare this with Azerbaijan, a victim of occupation and ethnic cleansing by Armenia, yet has received only $746 million in cumulative budgeted foreign assistance from the U.S. (from
1992 to 2008), of which only about $75million were for democratization.
The newspaper stresses that larger Azerbaijan, a strategic US ally, has received four times
less aid than a smaller but more aggressive Armenia.
It says we should not be rewarding a corrupt and militaristic regime, which is not only occupying its neighbors` lands, conducts ethnic cleansing and engages in crimes against humanity (e.g., Khojaly Massacre), but also violently kills its own citizens during its elections and conducts markedly worse elections than its neighbors.
It`s grand time we ask Kocharyan and his regime the age-old question -
Where`s the money?!
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