With the battle over Nagorno-Karabakh seemingly concluded, enterprise has resumed in Baku
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has met with BP Chairman Helge Lund to debate future oil and gasoline initiatives within the Caucasian nation. Though Western powers condemned Baku’s latest assault on Nagorno-Karabakh, they’re more and more depending on Azerbaijan for power.
Aliyev and Lund met in Baku on Wednesday to mark the anniversary of the so-called ‘Contract of the Century’, a 1994 settlement that opened Azerbaijan’s Caspian oil fields as much as a consortium of overseas extractors, together with BP.
BP’s “curiosity in future oil and gasoline and power initiatives in Azerbaijan” was mentioned throughout the assembly, based on Azerbaijan’s APA information company.
Hours earlier than the assembly, Azerbaijan reached a ceasefire cope with the authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic-Armenian enclave inside its territory. The ceasefire ended simply over 24 hours of bloodshed, as Azerbaijani forces shelled Nagorno-Karabakh below what it referred to as “counter-terrorism measures” in opposition to an alleged buildup of Armenian troops.
Underneath the ceasefire, Nagorno-Karabakh will possible return to full Azerbaijani management. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars over the province within the early Nineties and in 2020, however present Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan introduced earlier this summer time that he was able to relinquish Yerevan’s declare over the area.
This choice proved immensely unpopular with the Armenian public and diaspora, and Pashinyan has tried accountable Russia for failing to come back to the protection of Nagorno-Karabakh. Nevertheless, Moscow has identified that it was Pashinyan’s personal choice to formally acknowledge the province as Azerbaijani territory, whereas the Kremlin has criticized the Armenian chief’s latest outreach to the West.
American, British, and European diplomats explicitly condemned Azerbaijan’s use of navy power, though the response in London was extra muted than on the continent, with Overseas Secretary James Cleverly declining to challenge a press release on Tuesday. The UK has beforehand been condemned for permitting BP- and Aliyev-funded promotional materials to be aired on state tv, whereas Cleverly confronted and ignored calls to denounce Baku’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh earlier this summer time.
In Europe, relations with Baku are much more paramount because the EU lower itself off from Russian gasoline imports final yr. In a bid to switch Russia as an power supply, the bloc lower a cope with Azerbaijan final July to double its annual gasoline deliveries to twenty billion cubic meters by 2027.
Regardless of calls from the European Parliament to impose sanctions on Baku and to reexamine the 2022 gasoline deal, European Council President Charles Michel accepted the ceasefire, saying that he referred to as Aliyev to induce the “protected, dignified remedy by Azerbaijan of Karabakh Armenians.”
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