Azerbaijan’s parliament on October 22 approved a military budget of 2.5 billion manats, or about $3.12 billion. That figure is higher than the entire state budget of Baku’s neighbor and longtime foe, Armenia.
Some Baku residents probably did a double-take when the news broke recently: two members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutiun, a nationalist Armenian party fervently opposed to Azerbaijan’s claims to Nagorno-Karabakh, had arrived in the Azerbaijani capital on a surprise visit.
Energy-rich Azerbaijan may have made gains of late in giving its citizens reliable access to gas and electricity, but on one key front, potable water, the government is lagging. A large percentage, if not a majority, of Azerbaijan’s 8.2 million citizens lacks easy access to potable water.
The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has approved the nomination of Matthew Bryza as Washington’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, a post that has been vacant for more than a year. Azerbaijani media energetically heralded the committee vote, although most online outlets misinterpreted it to mean that Bryza had been confirmed as the new US envoy to Baku.
The Senate confirmation process for the Obama administration’s nominee as US envoy to Azerbaijan appears stuck in neutral. Experts believe that the confirmation has become entangled in partisan politics.
Soccer in Azerbaijan has caught the fancy of some of the country’s leading corporations, which are spending tens of millions of dollars to upgrade facilities and sign high-profile coaches and players from around the world.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s September 2-3 visit to Azerbaijan yielded a big energy deal, as the Russian state-controlled conglomerate Gazprom secured an agreement to dramatically increase its purchases of Azerbaijani natural gas.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul ended a two-day official visit to Baku on August 17 with the signing of a strategic partnership agreement, but the details remain a guessing game. Local analysts say that they are left to conclude that the trip, coming a few days before Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Armenia, was meant mostly for consultations.
Russia’s reported plans to sell two of its S-300 Favorit air-defense systems to Azerbaijan are seen as a done deal in Baku, where analysts argue that the systems could be put to good use protecting the country’s extensive energy extraction projects and pipeline networks.
Longtime Azerbaijani ally Turkey appears to be taking on a larger role in supporting the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, an Azerbaijani exclave sandwiched between Armenia and Iran. The first steps in this intensified cooperation are taking shape just months after plans for rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia went into cold storage.
