Editorials Congress should restore funds for Azerbaijan aid July 2, 2009
As an Azerbaijani-American who is concerned about the Caucasus region,
I find it unacceptable that on June 17, the House Appropriations
Subcommittee ignored and changed President Obama's FY2010 request.His
request was based on real needs assessments by the State Department
and Pentagon, whilst the subcommittee has become a tool of pecial
interests and lobbyists.Obama wanted to: 1) increase military funding
for Azerbaijan, 2) keep economic aid to Armenia lower than what it has
been disproportionally receiving for years, especially since that
nation already receives $236 illion other funds whilst recently
holding exceptionally poor elections, and 3) not to give any direct
aid to the Armenia-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) region of
Azerbaijan. It is run by a military junta that occupied zerbaijan,committed ethnic cleansing and should not be rewarded with our tax
dollars.
It should be stressed that direct U.S. assistance to the NK region
creates and will further exacerbate the concern in allied Azerbaijan
and especially among the Azerbaijani-Americans and their friends. The
NK region, occupied by Armenia in the early 1990s (which displaced up
to 50,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis from there, along with another 750,000
Azeris from its vicinity), is recognized by the United States, as well
as the United Nations and all others, as an integral part of the
Republic of Azerbaijan.
The Armenia-Azerbaijan NK conflict is the most critical issue for
Azerbaijan and regional stability, and Azerbaijan being a strategic
ally of the United States, with peacekeeping troops serving in
Afghanistan, makes me sincerely hope and believe that my Congress will
pay due attention to the concerns of its own national interest, to its
strategic ally and to its citizens and voters, the Azeri-Americans and
their friends. Thus, it should provide need-based amounts of
humanitarian, economic and especially military assistance.
Tarlan Ahmadov, Portland
Copyright 2009 by The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. All
rights reserved.
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The U.S. Azeris Network (USAN) <http://www.usazeris.org/> is a registered non-profit, non-partisan, non-sectarian genuine grassroots advocacy and voter education network that is facilitating political activism and efforts by the Azerbaijani-Americans and other Turkic-Americans and their associations, organizations, councils, conferences, and other formal, semi-formal and informal groups, on federal, state and local levels. USAN is the first nationwide grassroots organization uniting Azerbaijani-Americans, being created by the grassroots, for the grassroots.
