[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 48 (Thursday, April 27, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3696-S3698]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
POLITICAL PRISONERS IN AZERBAIJAN
Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, as President Bush prepares for his meeting
with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, I rise to address important
human rights concerns in that country.
Although hundreds of political prisoners have been freed due in part
to pressure brought by the United States, it is believed that as many
as 50 political prisoners remain in Azeri jails. Prior to the November
elections in Azerbaijan, a group of businessmen and government
officials were arrested on charges of planning a coup. Among this
group, there were former Minister of Economic Development Farhad
Aliyev, and his brother, Rafiq Aliyev. Because of his well-known
opposition to Russia's increased influence in Azerbaijan and his pro-
Western stance, in addition to the antimonopoly initiatives he led
prior to his arrest, many fear that Mr. Aliyev's and his colleague's
arrests were politically motivated. They are being held in the pretrial
detention center at the National Security Ministry, which is notorious
for its poor conditions and harsh treatment of prisoners. Human rights
organizations in this country and in Europe have expressed concern
about the violations of the due process rights of the detainees in
connection with this case. Farhad Aliyev is a cardiac patient suffering
from hypertension and hypertrophy. In a recent fact-finding mission,
the International League for Human Rights has verified that Mr. Aliyev
has been denied proper medical care and medicine for his heart
condition. As recently as this week, the International League for Human
Rights has indicated that Mr. Aliyev may have undergone another health
crisis and his lawyers believe he may have suffered a heart attack.
I urge President Bush and this administration to remind President
Aliyev of Azerbaijan's obligations before the international community
and the importance of human rights in Azerbaijan and to request Mr.
Aliyev's immediate release on bail in light of his need for adequate
medical care. The case of Mr. Aliyev may be the litmus test of the
Azeri government's good will and commitment to human rights. I ask
unanimous consent that recent newspaper articles be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Financial Times, Apr. 21, 2006]
After Hu, Who?
Busy times at the White House. This week Hu Jintao has been
George W. Bush's honoured guest. Next in line is Ilham
Aliyev. After Hu, you might say, who? During the Chinese
president's stay every word, smile and suppressed grimace has
been scrutinised, examined and analysed. I am not sure how
much we have learnt about the world's most important
geostrategic relationship. For his part, the president of
Azerbaijan will struggle just to be recognised in the U.S.
capital. Yet, strange though it seems, his visit says more
than does that of Mr. Hu about the direction of U.S. foreign
policy.
Mr. Aliyev has been leader of the Caspian state for nearly
three years. Notionally elected, in reality he inherited the
post from his father, once a member of the Moscow politburo
and still revered for rescuing the former Soviet republic
from post-communist collapse. Even now, heroic images of the
late Haydar Aliyev adorn the streets, offices and cafes of
the capital Baku.
Ilham, though, presents himself as a thoroughly modem
leader. He is fluent in English, takes holidays in the south
of France and waxes lyrical about his country's Euro-Atlantic
destiny. I met him last autumn in the presidential palace in
Baku. Gracious and persuasive, he consciously defied the
stereotypes of the Soviet-style tyrants who continue to rule
in much of this part of the world.
[[Page S3697]]
Beneath the well-cut suits, charming manner and rhetorical
commitment to western values, though, lies the same
determination to hang on to power. His election after the
death of his father in 2003 was rigged. So too, albeit
marginally less blatantly, were polls for the country's
national assembly last autumn. Politics and money are
inextricably intertwined. Azerbaijan, a clan-based society,
stands near the top of every international corruption index.
This is where Mr. Bush comes in. Small as it is, Mr.
Aliyev's fiefdom has strategic significance. Its geography--
the country borders Iran, Russia and Georgia as well as the
Caspian--puts it in the cockpit of the unspoken struggle
between Washington and Moscow for influence in the former
Soviet republics of the Caucasus and central Asia.
Its more immediate military utility has not escaped the
Pentagon. Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. defence secretary, is a
regular visitor to Baku. The air corridor over Azerbaijan is
used for U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Western
diplomats say that the U.S. has also established listening
posts in the south to eavesdrop on Iran. The Pentagon has
been refurbishing at least one former Soviet air base. For
his part, Mr. Aliyev, a secular Muslim, supported the
toppling of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
Then, of course, there is the oil. The deep waters of the
Caspian hold large reserves of oil and gas. Azerbaijan has
begun pumping its share through a new pipeline connecting
the fields to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
The political message is clear--Mr. Aliyev is ready to
snub Russia to serve the west's voracious appetite for
hydrocarbons.
So why wouldn't Mr. Bush welcome such a stalwart ally at
the White House? The answer is that Mr. Aliyev has
consistently brushed aside calls from Washington to edge his
country closer to freedom and democracy--and the U.S.
president has put the spread of political pluralism front and
centre of his foreign policy.
For Azerbaijan, last autumn's elections were set by
Washington as something of a test. A few month's earlier,
Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, had added
substance to Mr. Bush's democratic impulses. The days of
appeasing autocratic leaders in oil-rich Muslim states, Ms.
Rice declared in a much-trumpeted speech in Cairo, were over.
The stability this had brought was a cruel illusion.
America's security lay in the promotion of freedom and
democracy.
There would be incentives as well as penalties. In Mr.
Aliyev's case, I was told by a senior U.S. official, this
would include the prestige bestowed by the invitation to the
White House he had sought from the outset of his presidency.
The bargain seemed straightforward: the assembly elections
would be relatively free and Mr. Aliyev would get his photo
opportunity on the White House lawn. As it turned out the
poll was anything but fair but Mr. Aliyev, described this
week by the White House as a ``valued partner'', still gets
his trip to Washington.
Wait, I hear those weary foreign policy practitioners sigh,
the road to democracy in this part of the world was never
going to travel in a straight line. The geometry was always
going variable, as was the pace. There are far worse than Mr.
Aliyev and, in any event, Mr. Bush intends to tell him
straight that he expects more of him in future. Consistency,
the argument continues, can rarely be more than an aspiration
in foreign policy. It would be a mistake to make the pursuit
of the perfect the enemy of the possible.
Half-true. The most ardent American neo-conservatives or
European liberal internationalists do not expect Saudi
Arabia, for example, to abandon autocracy for democracy by
the day after tomorrow. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak might be
prodded harder and the democratic forces in Lebanon given
greater support, but transformation will take time.
The argument, though, does not work in the same way for
Azerbaijan. If Mr. Bush's words are to mean anything at all,
they must be shown to have substance precisely in places like
this. Of course, the country has strategic significance. It
goes without saying that the west wants its oil. But
America's failures in the Middle East during the second half
of the last century were based on just such so-called
realism.
Now, if it wants to preserve any credibility, Washington
must be seen to act where it can. And, in truth, Azerbaijan
is one of the easiest cases. Its relationship with the west
is grounded in mutual dependency. For all that Mr. Aliyev
might threaten to turn towards Moscow, he has no desire to
embrace Russia. He wants the west's approval and investment
in Caspian oil. He is susceptible, in other words, to
pressure.
Instead he can expect the White House red carpet and a few
gentle admonitions about trying to make the country's next
elections a little bit fairer than the last. So who, to
borrow a phrase, cares? The answer is all those people and
groups in Azerbaijan and well beyond who had hoped that the
U.S. president was serious in his commitment to the advance
of freedom and democracy. The winners are autocrats
everywhere. Oh, and, I suppose, the Teflon-like Mr. Rumsfeld.
____
[From the New York Times, Apr. 23, 2006]
Azerbaijan Leader, Under Fire, Hopes U.S. Visit Improves Image
(By C.J. Chivers)
Next week, after years of waiting for an unequivocal nod of
Western approval, President Ilham H. Aliyev of Azerbaijan
will fly to Washington to be received at the White House, a
visit his administration hopes will lift his stature.
Being a guest of President Bush has been billed in Mr.
Aliyev's circle as a chance for the 44-year-old president--
dogged by allegations of corruption, election rigging and
repression of opposition figures--to gain more international
legitimacy.
``We have long waited for this visit,'' said Ali Gasanov, a
senior presidential adviser. ``Now it has been scheduled, and
we hope that we will be able to discuss global issues.''
For President Bush, who has made democracy promotion a
prominent theme of his foreign policy, Mr. Aliyev's visit
could prove tricky.
Mr. Aliyev's invitation arrived during a period of
increasing diplomatic difficulties between the United States
and both Russia and Iran, countries that border Azerbaijan.
But while Azerbaijan's strategic location could hardly be
better and its relations with the United States have mostly
been warm, no leader in the region more fully embodies the
conflicting American objectives in the former Soviet Union
than its president.
Mr. Aliyev is a secular Muslim politician who is steering
oil and gas to Western markets and who has given political
and military support to the Iraq war. But his administration
has never held a clean election and has used riot police to
crush antigovernment demonstrations.
The invitation, made last week, has raised eyebrows in the
former Soviet world, where Mr. Bush's calls for
democratization have increased tensions between opposition
movements and the entrenched autocrats.
Opposition leaders have long said the United States'
desires to diversify Western energy sources and to encourage
democratic growth have collided in Azerbaijan. By inviting
Mr. Aliyev to the White House, they say, Mr. Bush has made a
choice: oil and location now trump other concerns.
Ali Kerimli, leader of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan,
noted that when Mr. Aliyev was elected in 2003 in a vote
deemed neither free nor fair, the White House withheld an
invitation, awaiting improvement by Azerbaijan in promoting
civil society and recognizing human rights.
``It is difficult for Azerbaijan's democratic forces to
understand what changed,'' said Mr. Kerimli, who was beaten
by the police as were several thousand demonstrators during a
crackdown on a protest over fraudulent parliamentary
elections last fall. The demonstration had been peaceful
until the police rushed in with clubs.
``I think the White House must explain what has happened
when three years ago Aliyev was not wanted for a reception in
the White House, and now he falsifies another election and is
received,'' Mr. Kerimli said.
American officials insist nothing has changed, and say Mr.
Aliyev has been invited for what they call a ``working
visit,'' during which he will be urged to liberalize his
government and its economy, which is tightly controlled by
state officials and clans.
``If we are going to elevate our relationship with
Azerbaijan to something that is qualitatively different, then
there has to be progress on democratic and market reforms,''
a senior State Department official said. ``I am sure we will
talk in these clear and blunt terms.''
The United States' relationship with Azerbaijan rests on
three principal issues: access to energy resources,
international security cooperation, and democratic and
economic change.
On the first two issues, the United States has made clear
it is satisfied. Mr. Aliyev has supported new pipelines to
pump Caspian hydrocarbons away from Russia and Iran to
Western customers, and provided troops to United States-led
military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Azerbaijan also grants overflight rights to the American
military and is cooperating with a Pentagon-sponsored
modernization of a former Soviet airfield that could be used
by American military planes.
Mr. Aliyev often welcomes foreign delegations to Baku, the
capital, describing in smooth English his efforts to push his
nation toward Western models of democracy and free markets.
But Azerbaijan has remained undemocratic. No election under
Mr. Aliyev or his late father, Heydar Aliyev, has been judged
free or fair by the main international observers. Instead,
fraud and abuse of state resources for chosen candidates have
been widespread.
Ilham Aliyev's government maintains a distinctly Soviet-era
state television network and has elevated Heydar Aliyev to
the status of a minor personality cult figure.
Moreover, Azerbaijan's government is often described as one
of the world's most corrupt. A criminal case now in federal
court in New York against three international speculators
describes enormous shakedowns and bribes in the late 1990's
at Socar, Azerbaijan's state oil company. Mr. Aliyev was a
Socar vice president at the time.
Last year the Azerbaijani government showed signs of
paranoia, arresting several people shortly before the
parliamentary election and accusing them of plotting an armed
coup.
Public evidence for the charges has been scarce, and a
lawyer for two of the men held in solitary confinement for
months since--Farhad Aliyev, the former minister of
economics, and his brother Rafiq--has urged
[[Page S3698]]
Congress to raise issues of their treatment when Mr. Aliyev
comes to Washington. (The president is not related to the
accused men.)
American officials say that Azerbaijan has been
liberalizing slowly, and evolving into a more responsible
state. But given Mr. Aliyev's uneven record and the
allegations against him, his visit has raised fresh questions
about the degree to which American standards are malleable.
``Russian public opinion, when it looks at the United
States policy in Azerbaijan, cannot ignore the fact that the
United States has a desire not in favor of democracy but in
favor of profits and geopolitical domination,'' said Sergei
Markov, director of the Institute for Political Studies here
and a Kremlin adviser.
Mr. Markov and others have noted that the West has
penalized Belarus for police crackdowns after tainted
elections last month.
``This is one of the reasons that Russian public opinion is
very suspicious of United States policies in the former
Soviet political sphere, and its propaganda about
democracy,'' Mr. Markov said.
``Ilham Aliyev will be in the White House not because he
promotes democracy,'' Mr. Markov said. ``He will be in the
White House because he controls oil.''
In Armenia, Mr. Aliyev's invitation has also generated
interest.
Armenia fought Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a wedge of
territory within Azerbaijan's boundaries that each country
claims. The conflict has been frozen for several years, but
Mr. Aliyev's recent statements have often been bellicose.
``The visit at this time should not be viewed as
appreciation of their democratic or other policies,'' Vartan
Oskanian, Armenia's foreign minister, said via e-mail.
____
[From the Washington Post, Apr. 24, 2006]
Retreat From the Freedom Agenda
(By Jackson Diehl)
President Bush's retreat from the ambitious goals of his
second term will proceed one small but fateful step further
this Friday. That's when, after more than two years of
stalling, the president will deliver a warm White House
welcome to Ilham Aliyev, the autocratic and corrupt but
friendly ruler of one of the world's emerging energy powers,
Azerbaijan.
Here's why this is a tipping point: At the heart of Bush's
democracy doctrine was the principle that the United States
would abandon its Cold War-era practice of propping up
dictators--especially in the Muslim world--in exchange for
easy access to their energy resources and military
cooperation. That bargain, we now know, played a major role
in the emergence of al-Qaeda and other extremist anti-Western
movements.
To his credit, the reelected Bush made a genuine stab at a
different strategy last year in Azerbaijan and another Muslim
country, Kazakhstan. Both resemble Iran or Iraq half a
century ago. They are rapidly modernizing, politically
unsettled, and about to become very, very rich from oil and
gas.
With both Aliyev and Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev
planning elections last fall, Bush dispatched letters and
senior envoys with a message: Hold an honest vote and you can
``elevate our countries'' relations to a new strategic
level.'' The implicit converse was that, should they fail to
deliver, there would be no special partnership--no military
deals, no aid, no presidential visits to Washington.
Both Aliyev and Nazarbayev made token efforts to please
Bush. But both dismally failed to demonstrate that they were
willing to liberalize their countries rather than using oil
wealth to consolidate dictatorship. The State Department said
of Aliyev's parliamentary elections, ``there were major
irregularities and fraud.'' Nazarbayev's election was worse.
Since then, two of Nazarbayev's opponents have died or been
murdered in suspicious circumstances. Three of Aliyev's foes
are being tried this month on treason charges, and his
biggest rival has been jailed.
Aliyev is nevertheless getting everything he might have
hoped for from Bush. Aid is being boosted, the Pentagon is
drawing up plans for extensive military cooperation--and
there is the White House visit, which the 44-year-old Azeri
president has craved ever since he took over from his dad
three years ago. If Nazarbayev chooses, he will be next. He
has been offered not just a Washington tour but a reciprocal
visit by Bush to Kazakhstan.
Why the retreat on the democracy principle? Azeri observers
speculate that Bush may want Aliyev's help with Iran, which
is its neighbor and contains a large Azeri ethnic minority.
But administration officials tell me a more pressing reason
is a rapidly intensifying campaign by Russia to restore its
dominion over former Soviet republics such as Azerbaijan and
Kazakhstan--and to drive the United States out of the region.
Though nominally Bush's ally in the war on terrorism,
Russian President Vladimir Putin has cynically exploited
Bush's effort to promote democracy in Eurasia. His diplomats
and media aggressively portray Washington's support for free
media, civil society groups and elections as a cover for CIA-
sponsored coups. Autocrats who stage crackdowns, such as
Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, are quickly embraced by Moscow,
which counsels them to break off ties with the U.S. military.
State-controlled Russian energy companies are meanwhile
seeking to corner oil and gas supplies and gain control over
pipelines, electricity grids and refineries throughout
Eurasia. If they succeed, Russia can throttle the region's
weak governments and ensure its long-term control over energy
supplies to Central and Western Europe.
In late February Putin arrived in Azerbaijan at the head of
a large delegation and proceeded to buy everything Aliyev
would sell, including a commitment to export more oil through
Russia. Earlier this month he welcomed Nazarbayev to Moscow,
and scored an even bigger success. Not only did the Kazakh
leader endorse Putin's plan for a Moscow-dominated ``common
economic space,'' but he also signed a deal that will double
Kazakhstan's oil exports through Russia. Despite heavy U.S.
lobbying, Nazarbayev has yet to firmly commit to sending oil
through a rival Western pipeline, which begins in Azerbaijan
and ends in the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Putin's aggressive tactics forced the hand of the
administration, which had been holding back its White House
invitations in the hope of leveraging more steps toward
liberalization. ``We don't want to see Azerbaijan closed off
by the Russians, because that will close off the energy
alternative to Russia for Europe,'' one official said. He
added: ``If Azerbaijan falls under Russian influence there
will be no democracy agenda there at all.''
In short, the race for energy and an increasingly bare-
knuckled contest with Moscow for influence over its producers
have caused the downgrading of the democracy strategy. It
might be argued that the sacrifice is necessary, given the
large economic and security stakes. But, then, that was the
logic that prevailed once before. According to Bush, history
proved it wrong.
____________________