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EDM: US Policy in S Caucasus Real Target of US Ambassador Opponents

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  • EDM: US Policy in S Caucasus Real Target of US Ambassador Opponents

    The Jamestown Foundation

    EURASIA DAILY MONITOR

    Tuesday, September 28, 2010-Volume 7, Issue 174

    US POLICY IN SOUTH CAUCASUS -- THE REAL TARGET OF US AMBASSADOR'S OPPONENTS


    by Vladimir Socor


    Wrenching as it is to American and international audiences, the ad
    hominem assault on the US Ambassador-designate to Azerbaijan during the
    Senate confirmation process aims far beyond the nominee. Matthew Bryza
    and his spouse are the incidental targets in this attempt to undermine
    US-Azerbaijan and US-Turkey relations. The militant Armenian National
    Committee of America (ANCA) has orchestrated this effort with two allied
    Senators during the US mid-term election campaign.

    The post of US ambassador in Baku has been vacant since July 2009.
    US-based Armenian advocacy groups such as ANCA are interested in
    prolonging that hiatus. They seek to affect US policy by leveraging
    their capacity for obstruction. Their Congressional allies are in effect
    rewarding the radical political element, closely linked with the
    irredentist Dashnaktsutiun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation), within
    the larger Armenian diaspora.



    On September 21, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recommended to
    the full Senate to approve Bryza's nomination. The vote was 17
    in favor and two opposed, after a grueling July 22 hearing, with an
    extensive follow-up of written questions and answers in the ensuing two
    months. The two dissenters, Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer of
    California and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, proceeded on September 22
    to place a hold on the nomination, thus preventing it from reaching the
    Senate floor for a confirmation vote.



    The process seems blocked for months to come. Not long ago, Menendez
    single-handedly blocked the Senate confirmation of the US
    ambassador-designate to Armenia, career diplomat Richard Hoagland, for
    two years, until the George W. Bush administration withdrew that
    nomination. Menendez wanted the nominee to break with US policy and
    recognize an Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey 1915-1918
    --although such a gesture could by general reckoning gravely
    damage US-Turkey relations.



    Whether Senators Boxer and Menendez espouse any coherent strategic
    vision regarding the South Caucasus seems doubtful in light of their
    record. Their stance is primarily linked with US electoral arithmetic.
    Boxer faces a tough challenge to her Senate seat this coming November in
    California; whereas Menendez chairs the Democratic Party's
    Senatorial Campaign Committee, with a direct stake in the outcome of the
    upcoming mid-term elections. For similar reasons, the Obama
    administration seems to tolerate the blocking of its own nominee by
    these Senators from its own party, presumably until after the elections.



    The questions to Bryza thus far have been answered to the apparent
    satisfaction of all but these two committee members. The hostile
    questions have generally echoed ANCA's prosecutorial press
    releases; and were then played up again by the same organization to its
    own voting-bloc constituency (ANCA media releases, September 13, 14, 21,
    22).



    For example, the nominee has been criticized for failing to condemn
    Azerbaijani positions or endorse Armenian positions, in his role as
    co-chairman of the tripartite mediating group (Russia-US-France) on the
    Karabakh conflict. Such criticism, however, ignores a mediator's
    obligation to remain impartial as long as the negotiating process
    continues; lest his mission (and, thus, the status of the US as
    mediator) be disqualified. Bryza has also been aggressively confronted
    with criticism of two US Administrations' decisions since 2002
    to waive (suspend for one year at a time) Section 907 of the
    `Freedom Support Act,' which places significant
    constraints on US government-to-government relations with Azerbaijan
    (`Ambassadorial Vacancy Disables US Policy in Azerbaijan and
    Beyond,' EDM, September 28).



    His detractors have wrongly accused the nominee of maintaining relations
    one-sidedly with Azeri and Turkish officials. The decade-long record
    shows, however, that Bryza has carefully cultivated equidistant
    relations with Baku and Ankara as well as Yerevan, being equally welcome
    in the three capitals, and also in Tbilisi. Few US officials in any
    region of the world, and none in this region, enjoy comparable access at
    the highest levels of all the governments involved, and the insights
    based on such access. As the confirmation process moved into high gear,
    a US-based Greek Cypriot advocacy group joined ANCA in opposing
    Bryza's nomination. The Cyprus Action Network of America (media
    release, September 13) accuses Bryza of supporting the then-UN Secretary
    General Kofi Annan's 2007 proposals to resolve the Cyprus
    conflict and overcome the island's division. In this case as
    well, the nominee had represented the US government's policy.



    Bryza's spouse, the scholar Zeyno Baran, has been accused during
    the confirmation process over her Turkish origin and supposed
    `official connections' in that country; whereas in
    reality, Baran's published work has criticized what she regards
    as flaws in the post-2002 Turkish government's policies. It is
    unprecedented in US politics to attack a public official with reference
    to the spouse's origin, membership in editorial boards of
    journals, past work on energy policy (a topic on which Baran's
    work is consistent with US and EU declared energy policies), and even
    over their wedding.



    One influential US editorial page has listed Boxer sarcastically as a
    Senator from Armenia (`Barbara Boxer, D -
    Armenia,' The Wall Street Journal, September 20) for blocking
    the Bryza nomination. However, the government of Armenia has not joined
    this battle at all. Yerevan has worked reasonably well with Bryza in his
    previous capacities as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and
    co-chair of the mediating group in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.



    In the US Armenian diaspora, the mainstream American Assembly of America
    (AAA) has also stopped short of opposing Bryza's nomination.
    While promoting Armenian interests against Azerbaijan during the
    confirmation process as always, the AAA did not attack the nomination,
    and refrained from welcoming the hold on it. Instead, the AAA found
    significant points of agreement in the US position on the Karabakh
    conflict, as represented by Bryza under top-level State Department
    instructions, both before and during the confirmation process (AAA media
    release, September 22).



    By seeking to block and derail this nomination, ANCA and its supporters
    are actually attempting to change US policy on the South Caucasus, in
    line with ANCA's uncompromising nationalist politics. They have
    targeted Bryza precisely for representing US policy loyally and
    impartially, during more than ten years of work on the South Caucasus.



    --- Vladimir Socor




    From: A. Papazian
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