Congressional Research Service: Relationship between U.S. and Azerbaijan has cooled in 2009-2010
U.S. Congressional Research Service published a report on January 24, in 2013 called "Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia: Political Developments and Implications for the U.S. Interests", where the relations between the U.S. and the EU with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were being analyzed, Kavpolit.com reported.
The document states that the U.S. policy towards the South Caucasus states includes support for the resolution of the problems between Armenia and Azerbaijan as a result of the Karabakh conflict.
"According to some experts, the relationship between the United States and Azerbaijan has cooled after the administration (of the USA. - Ed.) supported the efforts of Armenia and Turkey in 2009-2010 for improving relations, which Azerbaijan was against, and after the fact when President Aliyev was not invited to attend the Nuclear Security Summit in April 2010, in the U.S.," the report said.
Besides, Azerbaijan, probably, was looking for establishing closer working relationship with Russia after the Russian-Georgian conflict in August 2008; this shows that Russia remains the major force in this region. "President Obama in a meeting with President Aliyev September on 24 September, in 2010, stressed the importance of the US-Azerbaijani relations. President Obama expressed his appreciation for Azerbaijan's contribution in the support of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, and the two presidents pledged to maintain closer bilateral relations", the report says.
In 2011, according to the report, the US-Azerbaijani relations, albeit unevenly, improved, perhaps, reflecting the constraints of U.S. criticism of human rights violations in Azerbaijan. In April 2011, Azerbaijan canceled his participation in the US-Azerbaijani military exercises "Regional response” scheduled for May 2011. Thus, the military exercises in 2010 were canceled, for some reasons which gave way to various assumptions related to the condition of bilateral relations, the document says.
"In early 2012, the Ministry of National Security of Azerbaijan and other sources reported that the alleged terrorists supported by Iran planned to attack the U.S. and Israeli embassies, as well as other structures and their staff in Baku, but the Azerbaijani security forces took up steps to eliminate the threat," the report says.
According to the document, in April 2012, the Obama administration "resets" the U.S. – Azerbaijani meeting of the intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation, the last of which was held in 2008.