International Herald Tribune: "Azerbaijan leader's U.S. visit raises eyebrows"

Being a guest of President George W. Bush is being billed in Aliyev's circle as a chance for the 44-year-old president - marked with allegations of corruption, election rigging and pinpointed repression against opposition figures - to gain more international legitimacy.

"We have long waited for this visit," said Ali Gasanov, head of the president's public and political office. "Now it has been scheduled and we hope that we will be able to discuss global issues."

For President George W. Bush, who has made democracy promotion a prominent theme of his foreign policy, Aliyev's visit could prove tricky.

Aliyev's invitation arrived at time of increasing diplomatic difficulties between the United States and both Russian and Iran, two counties 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 sometimes conflicting pulls of American objectives in the former Soviet Union than its president, an ally with political warts.

Aliyev is a secular Muslim politician who is steering his nation's oil and gas to Western markets and who has lent public and military support the war in Iraq. But his administration has never held a clean election, and it has used riot police officers to break up anti-government demonstrations with force.

The invitation has raised eyebrows in the former Soviet world, where Bush's calls for democratization have increased tensions between opposition movements and the entrenched autocrats.

Opposition leaders have long said the United States' desire to diversify Western energy sources and to encourage democratic growth have collided in Azerbaijan. With Aliyev's invitation to the White House, made last week, they now say Bush has made a choice: Oil and location trump other concerns.

Ali Kerimli, leader of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, noted that when Aliyev was elected in 2003 in a vote deemed neither free nor fair, the White House withheld an invitation, waiting for improvement in Azerbaijan's record of promoting civil society and recognizing human rights.

"It is difficult for Azerbaijan's democratic forces to understand what changed," said Kerimli, who was beaten by police officers in front of this correspondent with several thousand demonstrators during a crackdown on a protest against fraudulent parliamentary elections last fall. The demonstration had been peaceful until 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," he said.

American officials insist nothing has changed, and that Aliyev has been invited to 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, than 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 reforms.

On the first two of these issues the United States has made clear its satisfaction. Aliyev has supported new pipelines to pump Caspian hydrocarbons away from Russia and Iran to Western customers, and provided troops to U.S.-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.

Aliyev often greets foreign delegations in Baku, the capital, briefing them in smooth English on his efforts to push his nation toward Western models of democracy and free markets.

But Azerbaijan has remained undemocratic.

No election held under the Aliyevs' rule has been judged free or fair by the principal international observers; instead, fraud and abuse of state resources for chosen candidates have been widespread.

Aliyev's government also maintains a distinctly Soviet state television network and its elevation of the late Heydar Aliyev, the president's father, has created a minor personality cult.

Moreover, the Azeri government is often described as one of the world's most corrupt; an ongoing criminal case in federal court in New York, against three international speculators, describes massive shakedowns and bribes in the late 1990s at Socar, Azerbaijan's state oil company. Aliyev was a Socar vice president at the time.

American officials say that Azerbaijan has been liberalizing slowly, and evolving into a more responsible state. But given Aliyev's uneven record and the allegations against him, his visit has raised questions about the degree to which American standards are malleable.

"Russian public opinion, when it looks at the United States policy in Azerbaijan, can not 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 of Political Studies in Moscow and an advisor to the Kremlin.

Markov and others have noted that the West has applied sanctions against 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," he said.

"Ilham Aliyev will be in the White House not because he promotes democracy. He will be in the White House because he controls oil."

In Armenia, which has fought a war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a wedge of Azeri territory that both nations claim, Aliyev's invitation has also generated interest. The conflict has been frozen for several years, but Aliyev's statements in recent months 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 in an e-mail message. "There are also serious issues which need to be raised with them."

Diplomats insist that Azeri leaders are cooperative in private sessions, and pledge to move the country on a democratic path. But in public the Azeri leadership typically acknowledges Western criticism in passing, and sometimes has waved the complaints away.

About the post-election criticism, Gasanov said, "We consider that criticism between friendly nations and we hope that the reasons for the criticism will not be raised again."

By C. J. Chivers, The New York Times