Back To Business As Usual? U.S. To Dispatch Key Diplomat O’Brien To Azerbaijan Tomorrow To Discuss Relations, Peace

In an attempt to, what appears to be, backpedaling from its previous stance, the United States announced on Monday that it will send its chief diplomat for Europe and Eurasia to Azerbaijan tomorrow to discuss strengthening bilateral relations and to emphasize Washington’s commitment to peace, TURAN’s U.S. correspondent reports.

Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien "will travel to Baku, Azerbaijan and Bucharest and Tulcea, Romania, December 6-8," the State Department said in a release Monday evening,

While in Baku, the Assistant Secretary "will meet with Azerbaijani officials on strengthening bilateral relations and supporting the peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia" the Department said.

In Romania, O’Brien will participate in a summit on grain exports alongside high-level officials from Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, and the European Commission, and will discuss issues of mutual interest in our strong bilateral relationship with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

While O’Brien's Azerbaijan trip was formally acknowledged by Washington a week after Secretary of State Antony Blinken reached out to Ilham Aliyev to signal his intent to resume high-level engagements, authorities in Baku have been publicly entertaining this forthcoming visit since last Monday, claiming that it was actually the Secretary's idea in the first place, and that Aliyev "has agreed to this proposal on the condition that after this visit the unfounded ban on the visits of Azerbaijani high-level officials to the United States will be lifted."

Baku had also objected in particular to testimony on Nov 15 by O’Brien before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in which he said "there cannot be 'business as usual' in Washington's relations with Azerbaijan "as long as the peace agreement between Baku and Yerevan goes unconcluded."

The remarks perceived as 'biased' by the Azerbaijani government and led to them canceling a scheduled meeting with Armenia on Nov. 20 in Washington due to the "one-sided approach of the United States," as the country's Foreign Ministry put it.

The move soon followed by wide-spreading anti-American rhetoric in Azerbaijan's pro-government media, while the government publicly mused about banning the activities of USAID, and a campaign against supposed "Western spies" continued with the arrests of a half a dozen independent journalists in more than 10 days.

However, in a signal of Washington's continued appetite for engagement with the situation, the new U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, Mark Libby, arrived in Baku over the weekend.

Will O’Brien's forthcoming visit be enough to move the needle in bilateral relations?

Richard Kauzlarich, who served as Bill Clinton's ambassador to Azerbaijan (1994–1997), told TURAN's Washington correspondent the following:  "The trip should stabilize the US-Azerbaijan bilateral relationship. It is essential to give the new US Ambassador a better basis for doing his job in Baku." 

The most crucial issue, according to Kauzlarich, is "advancing the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan."

O’Brien must also raise the unfair accusation that Azerbaijani students who studied in the U.S. are "agents," Kauzlarich added.

Finally, he concluded, the assistant secretary "should raise the continued arrests of independent journalists and the illegal detention of Dr. Gubad Ibadoglu."