[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.

                          ____________________