Nato Cancels War Games In Azerbaijan Over Armenia Row

[dikranjohn]

AFP: 9/13/2004

BAKU, Sept 13 (AFP) - NATO's Supreme Command said Monday it had cancelled a high-profile military exercise in Azerbaijan hours before it was due to start after the authorities in Baku refused to let officers from neighbouring Armenia take part.

There has been a public outcry in Azerbaijan over the participation of Armenian servicemen in the war games because many Azeris have bitter memories of a war between the two countries in the early 1990s.

"The (NATO) Supreme Command has decided to cancel the exercises," which had been due to get underway Tuesday, alliance spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Luis Aparicio said in a written statement.

"All (NATO) exercises are agreed and conducted on the principle of inclusiveness for all allies and partners ... We regret that the principle of inclusiveness could not be held to in this case, leading to the cancellation of the exercise."

The announcement came after a wave of protests around Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, at the weekend against Armenian officers taking part in the exercises, dubbed Cooperative Best Effort 2004.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said last week he did not want servicemen from Armenia coming to Baku, and said he was taking "necessary measures" to keep them out.

There has been bitterness between Azerbaijan and Armenia since the two former Soviet republics fought a war over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The conflict left some 35,000 people dead and displaced about one million civilians. It ended with Armenian forces in control of the enclave, which under international law is a part of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are both members of NATO's Partnership for Peace programme, which is seen as a springboard to full membership of the alliance.

[Anonymouse]

These Azeris are really idiots.

[Anonymouse]

Another note...The article claimed that under international law, the territory won by Armenians was part of Azerbaijan. I find that to be very stupid and errogenous. Having legality does not necessarily mean anything. The legalities in this case presuppose that somehow borders and boundaries are fixed and unchanging places with some sort of markers on them. Throughout history borders and boundaries have changed. In terms of the situation, if the majority of the people in that region are Armenian, and want to secede from that given State, it is their moral right to be able to. In another 100 years, we will see international law being totally different from what we have now. After all, who remembers the crappy Atlantic Charter the Allied powers crafted? Who adheres to it now? Phuck all governments anyway.

[xBaron Dants]

Beautiful victory for Armenia. I was mighty pissed when NATO didn't react the first time Azerbaidjan did this, but man oh man did they get it now. Serves them right.

Anon, Kocharian made a great speech in Strasbourg about Azerbaidjan's so-called "territorial integrity", effectively showing that Artsakh had actually never been part of Azerbaidjan.

[dikranjohn]

Analysis: NATO Cancels Planned Maneuvers In Azerbaijan

13 September 2004 -- NATO's Cooperative Best Effort-2004 exercises, scheduled to take place on 14-27 September in Azerbaijan, have been canceled, according to a NATO press release of 13 September.

"We regret that the principle of inclusiveness could not be upheld in this case," the press release stated, without elaborating. But Lieutenant-Colonel Ludger Terbrueggen, who is a spokesman for NATO military command, told RFE/RL's Armenian Service the same day that "the reason...is that Azerbaijan did not grant visas to soldiers and officers of Armenia."

Since January, Baku has sought repeatedly to thwart the planned Armenian presence at this year's Cooperative Best Effort maneuvers. Three Armenian military officers who tried to travel to Baku in early January first from Turkey and then from Georgia to attend a planning conference for the maneuvers were prevented from doing so. In June, members of the radical Karabakh Liberation Organization (QAT) picketed, and then forced their way into, a Baku hotel where two Armenian officers were attending a second planning conference in preparation for the exercises. Five of those QAT activists were arrested and sentenced in late August to between three and five years' imprisonment on charges of hooliganism, violating public order, and obstructing government officials. Those verdicts triggered protests from across the political spectrum, fueling public opposition to the Armenians' anticipated arrival.

In April, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev assured Deputy Commander of the U.S. European Command General Charles Wald that there were no obstacles to the Armenian participation in the September war games. Other visiting U.S. officials also sought to impress on Azerbaijan the importance of allowing the Armenian contingent to attend. But in recent weeks, the Azerbaijani government has made increasingly clear its hostility to the planned Armenian participation. On 27 July, the independent ANS TV quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov as saying that Baku has stipulated that only noncombat personnel -- military journalists, public-relations officials, and military doctors -- would be permitted to attend, and that the number of Armenian participants would be limited to three. (On 4 September, however, Armenian Deputy Defense Minister Major General Artur Aghabekian said seven Armenian officers would take part in the exercises, while the number denied visas by the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tbilisi was given as five.)

The opposition daily "Azadlig" on 10 September quoted Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov as saying that Azerbaijan would not grant visas to the Armenians. And on 10 September, the Azerbaijani parliament adopted an appeal to NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to retract the invitation extended to the Armenian side, citing what it termed Armenia's aggression and policy of ethnic cleansing. The parliamentarians argued that the presence in Baku of Armenian military personnel could aggravate tensions in the region. President Aliyev stated while visiting the Barda region on 11 September, "I do not want the Armenians to come to Azerbaijan."

In an apparent last-ditch effort to persuade Baku to abandon its obstructionist approach, de Hoop Scheffer summoned Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Mammadyarov and his Armenian counterpart Vartan Oskanian to Brussels on 13 September for talks. Oskanian subsequently praised the NATO decision to call off the exercises, adding at the same time that he regrets the "lost opportunity for regional cooperation."

Armenia hosted the NATO Cooperative Best Effort-2003 exercises, in which some 400 troops from 19 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Georgia, and Turkey practiced routine peacekeeping exercises. Azerbaijan declined to participate. In February 2004, a junior Azerbaijani officer attending a NATO-sponsored English language course in Budapest hacked a sleeping Armenian fellow student to death with an axe.

The full impact of Azerbaijan's violation of NATO's "principle of inclusiveness" and of NATO's ensuing decision to cancel the planned exercises is difficult to predict. The move is likely to corroborate many Azerbaijanis' conviction that NATO is guilty of double standards and bias toward Armenia. It may also give rise to a certain coolness between Brussels and Washington, in light of persistent rumors that the United States is considering Azerbaijan as a possible location for a rapid-reaction force. Certainly the prediction by one Western analyst that "Azerbaijan will enter NATO by 2005," which made headlines in the Azerbaijani press in July 2002, now seems somewhat overoptimistic.

[dstyle]

Maybe they're scared the couple of Armenian fighters can take over Baku by themselves lol.

[dikranjohn]

US Backs NATO Cancellation of Exercises in Azerbaijan

David Gollust
State Department
13 Sep 2004, 21:44 UTC

The United States criticized Azerbaijan Monday for excluding Armenia from NATO partnership exercises planned this week in Baku. The Azerbajani action prompted NATO to cancel the maneuvers.
The State Department says it supports NATO's decision to cancel the exercises and says it "deeply regrets" Azerbaijan's decision not to issue visas for Armenian participants.

Armenia was to have been among more than 20 countries, NATO members and aspiring members of the alliance, who were to have taken part in two weeks of exercises in Azerbaijan opening Tuesday under NATO's Partnership for Peace.

Voice Of Amercia
Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said late last week he did not want officers from his country's neighbor and political rival Armenia to come to Baku and said he was taking the "necessary measures" to keep them out.

On Monday, NATO's Supreme Command decided to cancel the long-planned exercise because of the Azerbaijani stance, which a spokesman in Brussels said violated the principle of "inclusiveness" under which all NATO exercises are agreed upon and conducted.

There was a similar statement from a State Department spokesman, who backed the NATO decision and said the United States does not believe the action by Mr. Aliyev is consistent with Azerbaijan's often-stated desire to cooperate and work toward closer partnership with NATO.

The Partnership for Peace was founded by NATO in 1994 as a vehicle for helping the formerly communist countries of central and eastern Europe meet the criteria for joining the alliance.

The exercises planned for Baku, called "Cooperative Best Effort," were to have involved mock peacekeeping-support operations by small military units from 22 countries.

An official here said Azerbaijan boycotted the same partnership exercise last year, which was held in Armenia.

The two countries fought a five-year war in the early 1990's over Nagorno-Karabakh, a largely Armenian-populated region within Azerbaijan.

The conflict ended with Armenian forces in control of the enclave, though it is recognized internationally as being part of Azerbaijan.