Azerbaijani Lawmakers Call on Baku to Sever Ties with USAID

Azerbaijani lawmakers have appealed to the country’s foreign minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, urging him to sever all ties with the United States Agency for International Development.

The announcement was made at the Milli Mejlis, the Azerbaijani Parliament, by its speaker Sabiha Gafarova.

“Azerbaijan is a trusted ally. Azerbaijan is conducting its domestic and foreign policy independently. With its own resources [it] secured its territorial integrity,” Gafarova said, quoting Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev who had said, “No one can tell us what to do and interfere in our internal matters. We will do what is we deem necessary.”

Aliyev last week criticized the United States and especially Secretary of State Antony Blinken, accusing him of masterminding a recent effort by more than 60 Members of Congress demanding that the Biden Administration hold Azerbaijan accountable for its ethnic cleansing of Artsakh Armenians and call for the release of Armenian POWs ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit, COP29, which will be held in Baku next month.

“This morning I was informed that 60 pro-Armenian members of Congress have appealed to the American government to initiate further sanctions on Azerbaijan. When I reviewed that documents, I came to the conclusion that its author and mastermind is none other than the U.S. Secretary of State,” Aliyev said last week during a speech in Jebrail, a region once controlled by the Artsakh Armed Forces.

Azerbaijani press outlets reported that the letter, signed by 43 Azerbaijani lawmakers urging their foreign minister to sever ties with the USAID, was their response to the letter by the 60 Members of Congress.

The latest Congressional effort to urge the Biden Administration to take action against Baku has touched a nerve with Aliyev, who, during an interview in Moscow on Tuesday, called Western sanctions “illegal.”

“The West’s policy of sanctions should not exist, especially when these sanctions are illegal and applied completely unreasonably and selectively. We are strongly against any sanctions,” Aliyev told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin in an interview.

“Sanctions were applied to us in 1992 under the absurd accusation that we were blockading Armenia when our territories were under Armenian occupation,” Aliyev said.

He said those “sanctions” were lifted in 2001, when the United States needed to transport cargo to Afghanistan through Azerbaijan’s territory.

“And United States presidents, regardless of their party affiliation, lifted those sanctions until the moment the United States fled Afghanistan. After that, sanctions were again imposed on us. When I accused them of being ungrateful, I think that is not the harshest word that can be used in this context,” Aliyev added.

During a session of CIS foreign ministers summit, Armenia did not sign on to a statement condemning unilateral sanctions.