By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 1, updated -- A three way race for a UN Security Council seat is shaping up between Azerbaijan and two members of the European Union, Hungary and Slovenia.
Azerbaijan's argument is that under the EU's common foreign policy provisions either of these two would be aligned with Permanent members the UK and France.
Azerbaijan, a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and recent joiner of the Non Aligned Movement, would in this view bring a different perspective.
Azerbaijan recently detained people who protested in Baku, and is seeking to confine protest organizer Bakhtiyar Hajiev for two years, ostensibly for refusing the mandatory year of military service. (Azerbaijan remains in a frozen or “protracted” conflict about Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, which they say has dropped out of the race for the Security Council seat.)
Inner City Press asked one of the spokespeople for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday if in his May 31 meeting with Azeri foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov Ban had raised these detention or other human rights issues, and if Nagorno Karabakh was discussed, as has been reported.
While the UN usually puts out canned “read outs” of Ban's meetings with visiting foreign ministers, this time it had not.
Ban & Azeri FM, still no UN read out shown
In her first noon briefing replacing lead spokesman Martin Nesirky, Vannina Maestracci told Inner City Press she would try to get a read out of the meeting.
She delivered answers on two questions that Nesirky had left unanswered the previous, which may portend well. Watch this site.
Footnote: Mammadyarov was leaving New York on Wednesday for Washington, to meet with Hillary Clinton. Some have analogized the US and Russian relation with Azerbaijan to those with Georgia, and even pointed to the 2008 denouement of the frozen conflict of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, whose president Sergei Bagapsh recently died while seeking medical treatment in Moscow.
Would the US provide more back up to Azerbaijan than to Abkhazia, whose break away from Georgia was just recognized by Vanuatu? Yes, some say, pointing to its natural gas reserves, and US Ambassador Richard Morningstar who works the issue....
Update of 4:10 pm -- and some hours later, this belated readout:
From: UN Spokesperson - Do Not Reply [at] un.org
Date: Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:59 PM
Subject: Response to your question on Azerbaijan.
To: Matthew.Lee [at] innercitypress.com
In their meeting yesterday, the Secretary-General and the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan discussed the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. The Secretary-General encouraged the parties to support confidence-building measures proposed by the Organization for Security and Coooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group Co-Chairs to ease tensions on the ground.
