Azeri President’s war threats are a bluff

Azeri President’s war threats

are a bluff

December 02, 2010 13:23
WikiLeaks has published the U.S. diplomat Donald Lu’s message, which contains an unflattering description of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev utilizes distinctly different approaches to foreign and domestic policies,” says the message.
“He typically devises the former with pragmatism, restraint and a helpful bias toward integration with the West, yet at home his policies have become increasingly authoritarian and hostile to diversity of political views. This divergence of approaches, combined with his father’s continuing omnipresence, has led some observers to compare the Aliyevs with the fictional ‘Corleones’ of Godfather fame, with the current president described alternately as a mix of ‘Michael’ and ‘Sonny’.
According to the message, Heydar Aliyev “becomes by implication the ‘Vito Corleone’ of Azerbaijan.”
“The President and his cohorts, who largely were carried over from his father’s administration, now seek predictability, stability and continuity to preserve and protect public and private fortunes. Aliyev’s cabinet has changed very little over the years, with few “reformers” brought in or remaining in power. The Prime Minister position is largely ceremonial and weak. Because of family connections, dynastic succession, the strong arming of the opposition and the creation of an elaborate patronage/protection network, the Aliyev Administration has developed an “organized crime” image in some quarters, leading some analysts to see Ilham Aliyev at times in a mafia-like role.
“President Aliyev inherited from his father a clever, realistic foreign policy that he has largely maintained… He encourages involvement with NATO and…supports a policy of westward transit of Azerbaijani oil and gas through non-Russian channels.
“For all his bluster about Azerbaijan’s legal right to liberate the Armenian-occupied territories by force, Aliyev has worked constructively on the Minsk Group-proposed Basic Principles and developed a reportedly good rapport with Armenian President Sargsian [Serzh Sargsyan] - in contrast to the much more confrontational relationship between the countries’ foreign ministers.
“Similarly, even as Aliyev regards with horror the prospect of Turkey-Armenia rapprochement ahead of Nagorno-Karabakh resolution, the President has instructed SOCAR to continue gas transit and supply talks with Turkey…The gas transit talks are a hardball affair to be sure, but Aliyev surely recognizes that Azerbaijan cannot really afford a total rupture with Turkey and certainly is not going to go so far as to foreclose on options out of pique while the Turkey-Armenia question remains open.
“For all of the cool-headed calculation that generally influences Aliyev’s foreign policy, his domestic policies are another matter. As Aliyev perceives a challenge to his authority or affronts to his family dignity…The example of the crude retaliation against the young bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade is the most recent and public example.”
The message also mentions Aliyev’s decision to rescind licenses for some foreign broadcasters. Heydar Aliyev would never have allowed himself to be goaded into ridiculous reactions.
The explanation for the dissonance between Aliyev’s foreign and domestic policies is that he is insecure in domestic politics and relies heavily on the advice of old-line Soviet-style political figures carried forward from his father’s administration, such as Presidential Chief of Staff Ramiz Mehdiyev.”
“It is clear that Azerbaijan’s future development would better suit United States policy goals if Aliyev pursued his domestic policies in a manner that resembled his foreign policy methods, however imperfect they may be,” the message reads.

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