QABALA TEST

Consultations on the joint use of the Qabala radar station are planned for 15 September in Baku and will involve senior Foreign Ministry officials and US, Russian and Azerbaijani experts. Many Russian and American experts today predict that the Baku round will produce no result, as they think the interests and approaches of Moscow and Washington to the key issue of global security are incompatible. The Russian president's proposals on joint use with the USA of Azerbaijan's Qabala radar station and his recent proposals to set up a regional monitoring and early warning system caught the American side unawares. Washington does not appear inclined to cooperate on the basic point of Putin's initiative - carrying out a joint analysis with the USA and European countries of the missile threat up to 2020. The Russian president thinks that such cooperation could change the quality of Russian-American relations in the security sphere and move them up to a higher level of trust. 

It is interesting that there are supporters of the Russian initiative in the USA, including amongst the most senior experts. Philip Coyle, an adviser at the Centre for Defense Information in Washington and a missile defence expert (from 1994 to 2001 he was deputy US defence secretary and director of the operational, test and evaluation of weapons, including missiles), said in a recent article in the authoritative US publication Global Affairs that Vladimir Putin had proposed a literate, technical and political solution. Considering the location of the Azerbaijani station, it clearly has a number of advantages over the planned facilities in Poland (10 anti-missile) and the Czech Republic (radar). "The proposed missile defences can 'defend' all of Europe, including South Eastern Europe," Coyle wrote. He also pointed out the weakness in the American position: "From the very beginning many critics have seen a contradiction in the fact that the American plan could not cover all of Europe, that raised questions about why the US would chose to 'defend' some European countries and not others. Also, in an actual missile-vs.-missile battle, the originally proposed sites in Poland and the Czech Republic could result in debris falling on Russia if US missile defence interceptors sent hypothetical Iranian missiles careening off course. The Azerbaijani site minimizes that problem, as well." 

Meanwhile, Washington is actively holding consultations with its allies, Poland and the Czech Republic, on basing US missile defence systems in these countries. Polish diplomats think that a final agreement will be ready by the end of the year. "The question of locating an American missile base on our soil could be agreed in the next two to three months. We and the USA are united in our overall desires, so now we just have to agree on some legal and financial issues," Poland's deputy foreign minister, Witold Waszczykowski, who leads the missile defence talks with Washington, said on 7 September at the end of two days of talks with a US delegation. US Deputy Secretary of State Daniel Fried, who was in Poland at the time at an economic forum in Krynica, spoke in the same spirit: "I expect that there will be several rounds of talks before the agreement is signed, but everything should be completed by the end of the year." The opinion was shared by the chairman of the Congress faction in support of the missile defence shield, Republican Trent Franks, who said that the missile defence shield would be created in Poland and the Czech Republic even if the next US president were a Democrat. He warned that the alternatives proposed by Russia could not replace the facilities in Eastern Europe and advised Moscow "not to rattle sabres to get control over the countries of Europe". NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer recently warned Russia against "unhelpful and unproductive criticism of the plans of the USA and warnings to our Czech and Polish allies that are unacceptable in today's Europe". 

Against the background of the ongoing disagreements between the USA and NATO, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, the position of Azerbaijan is important. Of course, Azerbaijan is playing a tiny role in the dialogue of the super powers, but the stakes in this "anti-missile" game are very high. Therefore, having supported Moscow's initiative and the talks process on the Qabala radar station, Baku must go further and give more active help - to the extent that it can - to the search for a formula for global strategic alliance between the USA and Russia in our region. Should this be successful, Azerbaijan could play a role, unprecedented in the history of its foreign policy, to ensure global security and support the balance in European and world politics, an important result of which could be ensuring a higher degree of security for our country and raising its status and role in world politics.