LOS ANGELES—In a confidential cable dated July 9, 2009—and leaked by WikiLeaks this month—Philip Gordon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs, reportedly said that “Resolving Nagorno-Karabakh is the key to unlocking Turkish-Armenian relations” at a July 3, 2009 meeting with 27 EU political directors.
According to the same document, Gordon saw the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict as an important step toward facilitating regional energy supplies. “The Russians have been reasonably productive on this account, but it is unclear whether they are just going through the motions or are seriously engaged, particularly as a Nagorno-Karabakh solution would facilitate a Southern Corridor gas route.”
EU Council Secretariat Director General Robert Cooper expressed his doubts about Russia’s motivations in the Karabagh conflict. “Cooper asserted that if the Russians really wanted to resolve Nagorno-Karabakh, they would have done so already,” Gordon reported in the cable.
Numerous U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show that both Ankara and Baku had named the resolution of the Karabagh conflict as a precondition to opening the Turkey-Armenia border.
During the Armenian-Turkish protocols process earlier this year, State Department officials had publicly denounced the existence any preconditions in the protocols process; WikiLeaks cables, however, suggest that behind closed doors, high-level State Department officials were busy advising European allies that a resolution to the conflict was key to the Turkey-Armenia issue.
In another confidential cable, dated Oct. 10, 2008, from the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Amb. Tatiana Gfoeller reports on a meeting with the British Prince Andrew, who revealed that he had met with Azeri president Ilham Aliyev.
According to the cable, Prince Andrew told the ambassador that “Aliyev had received a letter from [Russian] President Medvedev telling him that if Azerbaijan supported the designation of the Bolshevik artificial famine in Ukraine as ‘genocide’ at the United Nations, ‘then you can forget about seeing Nagorno-Karabakh ever again.’”
An article published on Dec. 13 by the German Der Spiegel (one of four news outlets that received the trove of 250,000-plus cables from WikiLeaks) entitled “Boys and Their Toys: The US Befriends Azerbaijan’s Corrupt Elite,” details high-level U.S. officials’ relations and dealings, among them then-vice president Dick Cheney, with the most corrupt Azeri officials.
Read the Der Spiegel article by visiting http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,734307,00.html.
Be the first to comment