President Barack Obama promised in a letter released on Monday to tackle "serious issues" straining relations with Azerbaijan, an important link in Afghan supply lines and energy export routes to the West.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates handed Obama's letter to President Ilham Aliyev during a visit meant to ease tensions with the oil-rich Caspian Sea country, strategically located between Russia and Iran.
A U.S.-backed push for a historic rapprochement between Azerbaijan's foe Armenia and its historic ally Turkey has damaged ties between Washington and Azerbaijan, which worries its interests will be damaged by the reconciliation efforts.
Baku in April accused the United States of siding with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory that has been under ethnic Armenian control since a 1994 ceasefire in a war, and threatened to "reconsider" its relationship with Washington.
"I am aware of the fact that there are serious issues in our relationship, but I am confident that we can address them," Obama wrote in the letter delivered on Sunday by Gates, the most senior U.S. official to visit Azerbaijan since Obama took office in January 2009.
On the plane leaving Azerbaijan on Monday, Gates said his visit "set the stage for further expansion of the relationship."
By: Brant
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2 comments:
the problem with giving two bit tyrants too much attention or too much money is the same as when my dirt okie relatives got too much money...they end up doing something dumb. This just encourages Azerbaijans leadership to continue to violate the rights of its own citizens and use its oil money to (attempt) to retake Karabagh by force. I hope Obama/Gates included a not to disguised stick somewhere in that letter or Gates conversations...
Seems like we've overlooked a lot of useful tyrants over the past decade, eh?
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