US defense chief courts the put-out authoritarian leader of a nation he needs for war resupply
By Anne Gearan, APSunday, June 6, 2010
Gates courts put-out Azerbaijan, a key Afghan hub
ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT — U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is trying to soothe the put-out authoritarian leader of Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that helps move supplies and soldiers to the war in landlocked Afghanistan.
Tens of thousands of war-related flights have crossed over Azerbaijan since the war began in 2001, and last year alone about 100,000 U.S. and allied personnel passed through the country. Azerbaijan is also part of an overland supply chain that is a key alternative to the primary land route through Pakistan.
Gates said his peacekeeping mission to Azerbaijan on Sunday is meant to reassure President Ilham Aliyev that the United States does not take him for granted.
“It’s important to touch base and let them know they do play an important role,” Gates told reporters traveling with him from Singapore, where he attended a defense conference.
Gates was spending a day in the capital Baku, making him the first Cabinet-level official to visit since 2005.
Gates carried a letter to Aliyev from President Barack Obama. More high-level visits are in the offing, Gates said.
Aliyev has complained that he gets too little attention from Washington and that U.S. officials have not done much to resolve a festering ethnic conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. He is also irritated by mild U.S. criticism of his human rights, press freedoms and elections policies.
Aliyev won a landslide re-election in 2008 that international elections monitors called flawed and a referendum last year set him up to rule indefinitely. The country functions more as a monarchy than a republic.
The imperatives of fighting an eight-year war in a country without seaports has forced the United States and NATO to cut deals with unsavory leaders and sometimes unscrupulous businesses that get goods and soldiers in and out.
The supply dilemma has been most apparent in Kyrgyszstan, home to an air base that is the main air transit hub for the war, but involves deals with other former Soviet republics and sometimes uneasy cooperation with Russia.
“I don’t feel that anybody in particular has us over a barrel,” Gates said. The supply routes “are the most efficient and cost-effective way” to supply the war.
The U.S. isn’t overlooking undemocratic practices in the interest of expediency, Gates said.
“If you ask the leaders of these countries they’d say we have not ignored these issues,” he said.
Concern about creeping authoritarianism in Azerbaijan was one reason top U.S. leaders stayed away.
Aliyev’s protests including the postponing of a joint military exercise with the United States and a demand that the U.S. go over its books to ensure Azerbaijan was properly paid for allowing commercial overflights.
The accounting turned up about $2 million in back fees owed by contractors, a U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the payments have not been completed. The Pentagon will pick up about $900,000 of the arrears, because some of the contractors it hired are no longer in business or are insolvent.
Online
Azerbaijan:
tinyurl.com/l2r4fl
tinyurl.com/25v2yq
