"A VISION OF THE FUTURE"

Azerbaijan and the USA, as officials from both countries acknowledge, are strategic partners. In recent years they have built lasting mutual relations based on common interests and views. The views of Baku and Washington coincide on many strategic questions - they are working together in implementing energy projects and supporting global security, and they are also working together against the proliferation of mass destruction weapons and terrorism.

At the same time these bilateral relations cannot be said to have fully met their potential. For example, Baku sometimes has doubts about the effectiveness of the US' work as a broker country in a Karabakh settlement and as one of the co-chairs of the Minsk Group of the OSCE. But what aggravates Baku's criticism even more are the anti-Azerbaijani actions and decisions of Congress and the legislative bodies of individual states which, because of the peculiar nature of the state system in the US, are frequently at odds with White House policy.

Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani-American "A Vision of the Future" forum, which was held in Baku from 24 to 29 May, and was attended by representatives from 42 American states - congressmen and presidential advisors -  showed that among the US political elite there is an overriding understanding of the importance of allied relations with Azerbaijan.

The very fact that President Ilham Aliyev attended the opening of the forum underlines the importance to Baku of Azerbaijani-American relations. In his speech the head of state stressed that relations between the two countries have a great, albeit short, history. "From the very outset of our independence we have developed a special cooperation which has ultimately turned into a strategic partnership," Ilham Aliyev said. The president gave a thorough explanation to his American guests, many of whom were visiting Azerbaijan for the first time, about the main areas of the country's development He noted that American companies are some of the leading investors in Azerbaijan. Moreover, in connection with the opening up of new areas, American companies will be invited to study opportunities for cooperation in these spheres. Baku and Washington have traditionally worked together in questions of democracy, regional and global security and implementing energy projects. The strategic Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which links the Caspian Sea with the Mediterranean, was built with the strong support of the American administration. "The opening of this corridor has really altered the energy map of our continent," Aliyev stressed.

The Azerbaijani leader laid particular emphasis on cooperation between the two countries on questions of security and the fight against terrorism. Azerbaijan currently provides 40% of the transit of goods to Afghanistan and this route could be regarded as the most stable, he noted.

Naturally, in front of such an authoritative audience, President Aliyev was unable to mention the problem of Armenia's occupation of one fifth of Azerbaijani territory. In this connection he expressed the hope for an early solution to this problem with the US' active assistance.

American congressmen Richard Lugar and Ted Poe focused attention on the effective cooperation between Baku and Washington in the sphere of energy security and the fight against terrorism. And former US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said that cooperation between the countries is not restricted to energy alone: "We have strategic relations. As a member of the UN Security Council Azerbaijan plays an important role in the fight against terrorism, and drug and weapons smuggling." Congressman Gregory Meeks called for investments in education and the social spheres to be increased. "Azerbaijan is investing in youth, the results of which we shall see in the years to come. Azerbaijan is a country that encourages peace and stability," the American law-maker said. The former head of the US' Transportation Command, General Duncan McNabb, recalled that Azerbaijan, as his country's ally, played a direct part in the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also stressed that Azerbaijan had opened its air space to US transport planes.

The speakers at the separate sessions that followed the opening of the forum were more specific and were not afraid of openly naming particular problems in bilateral relations. The first vice-speaker of the Milli Maclis, Ziyafat Askarov, voiced openly critical remarks about the rather pragmatic - in Baku's view - American policy in the region. He made no secret of his indignation at the indulgence by the international community (by which he clearly meant, first and foremost, the USA) of Armenia's aggression against Azerbaijan. According to Askarov, Armenia is blatantly ignoring the norms of international law and the decisions of the UN and other organizations on Nagornyy Karabakh, and at the same time the Armenian leaders are openly and without any misgivings declaring their personal participation in the Xocali genocide. The first vice-speaker also expressed regret that the partnership with the US and with the West as a whole in this sense is not bringing any tangible results.

American representatives, established analysts with a worldwide reputation, were no less critical of US policy in the South Caucasus. "We must repeal amendment 907 to the Act on support for freedom as we did with the Jackson-Vanik amendment. We must protect Azerbaijan not only from Iran, but also from the Sunni radicals and "al-Qa'eda". We must stand alongside Azerbaijan," said a leading expert of the American Heritage Foundation Ariel Cohen, who complained that the American government has not given due attention to these threats.

For her part, another acknowledged expert on the South Caucasus, a staff member of America's Georgetown University Brenda Shaffer, expressed her anger that the US Congress annually continues to allocate funds to support the separatist regime of Nagornyy Karabakh to the detriment of the interests of its strategic ally Azerbaijan. "I ask you to be more resolute on this question," she said, addressing the American congressmen. Other speakers - past and present politicians and representatives of leading "think tanks" - spoke in the same vein.

Of course, the need to gather together legislators from all the states of the USA began to take shape some time ago. It is much easier to stuff a congressman who has never been to Azerbaijan and doesn't know the local scene with disinformation and try to persuade him to sign some anti-Azerbaijani act of legislation, never mind a proclamation. It is no secret that it is the congressmen of individual states, and US Congress itself, who are the direct target of the Armenian lobby who are trying to drag draft bills they like through the American parliament. Their main objective is to strike at the interests of Azerbaijan and Turkey. It will be recalled that it was at the beginning of the 1990s, when Azerbaijan was under an information blockade, that the notorious amendment 907, which clouded Azerbaijani-American relations for a long time, was adopted under the influence of this lobby. This amendment has not been fully abolished today and, in the opinion of some analysts, is being used by the Americans as a lever of influence on Azerbaijan. And no matter how much individual representatives of the American side, among whom there are also officials of the White House and the State Department, talk about the need for the swiftest complete abolition of this decision, the discriminatory amendment continues to hang like the sword of Damocles over American-Azerbaijani relations.

The Armenians continue to put pressure on Azerbaijan by means of a number of American parliamentarians who are greedy for a hand-out from the Armenian lobby. Today intensified efforts are being made to get recognition by individual American states for the so-called "Armenian pogroms in Baku, Sumqayit, Ganca (Kirovabad) and other towns". And quite recently the municipal council of Fresco, California, even adopted a resolution about the recognition of the "independence of Nagornyy Karabakh" and urged the US authorities to follow their example. Azerbaijan's consular-general in Los Angeles Nasimi Agayev said in an interview with R+ that he was not inclined to dramatize the situation (as if to say, what can you expect from the leadership of a city that became one of the first places of the mass emigration of the Armenians, and in which there are about 40,000 of them) and he expressed the conviction that this poor example of a single city would not catch on in other cities, never mind states. Be that as it may, this is an unfortunate precedent and Azerbaijan must make efforts to ensure that similar things are not repeated elsewhere in the States.

And, as we can see, official Baku has been treating this problem seriously. In other words, Azerbaijan has chosen the correct path of working with America's decision-makers, the results of which have already been seen. Virtually immediately after the forum the senior legislative body in the American state of Arizona adopted a resolution supporting strategic cooperation between Azerbaijan and the USA. In the document the senators recognize Nagornyy Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory, stressing that Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and sovereignty are recognized by the United States. This is by no means the first American state to adopt such a resolution, but it is important that it will definitely not be the last, judging by reactions coming from the Baku forum.

There are grounds for assuming that America has finally begun to recognize the importance of Nagornyy Karabakh in general and Azerbaijan in particular. Otherwise there would have been no point in several dozen American legislators, governors and other past and present political figures travelling to distant Baku. Azerbaijani-American cooperation is actually based on mutual interests. And the US' interest in Azerbaijan is based on a number of important factors. And we are not talking only about energy that is traditional for bilateral relations. In this context we may consider revealing the words of the founder and head of the Stratford Centre for Global Research George Friedman that in the near future Azerbaijan will be US' closest ally. "The European countries that see themselves as US allies are in a deep crisis and the positions of the countries of this continent do not categorically coincide despite the fact that the majority of the European states are members of NATO, and therefore America needs an ally like Azerbaijan which is showing steady economic development," the analyst explained.

Azerbaijan's location in a region that is fairly important to the USA from the geo-political point of view - Russia to the north and Iran to the south - also enhances interest towards cooperation with it. Many of the American participants in the forum made no secret of the fact that America takes into account the important role that Baku can play in settling the "Iranian question", bearing in mind not only the fact of Azerbaijan's proximity to Iran, but also the 30-million Azerbaijani population living in that country. Special attention is being paid to Azerbaijan in all of the scenarios now being devised by the strategists in the White House. It was not without reason that in one of his conversations with journalists the US ambassador to Azerbaijan Richard Morningstar described the Iranian question as one of the main components of the Azerbaijani-American talks on security. There is no doubt that the upcoming presidential elections in Iran and their outcome will only add topicality to this dialogue between Baku and Washington.

For Washington, which does not have a very positive image in the Islamic world, it is particularly important to have such an ally as Azerbaijan among the Muslim countries. In the regional context, the US needs not a satellite but a reliable ally in the South Caucasus - a strategically important area of American politics. Until recently this role was fulfilled by Georgia, but the coming to power of Bidzina Ivanishvili and his statements about a rapprochement with Russia have clearly worried Washington. And it would seem that now the US is not averse to placing its stakes on a more stable, predictable and, no less importantly, self-sufficient Azerbaijan.