AZERBAIJAN BRIBES AMERICAN CONGRESSMEN?

PanARMENIAN.Net - Burton is serving his third term representing the state of Indiana at the Congress. The influential member of the Republican party heads the House Committee on Government Reform. Burton was one of the initiators of the campaign against Bill Clinton, connected with Monica Lewinski. A radical supporter of the war in Iraq, Burton is also the informal leader of the "hawks" at the Congress. He is considered to be one of the most anti-Russian congressmen. More than once Burton has spoken out against the recognition of Armenian genocide. He actively cooperates with the political circles of the Turkish community of USA. Since 2001 Burton has been a co-chairman of the Turkish-American Friendship Group of the House of Representatives.

Dan Burton is in close connection with the largest American companies that deal with lobbying political and economic interests. His speech at the House of Representatives was the outcome of the contract signed by Azerbaijan with one of the mentioned companies. During the interview to the correspondent of "Liberty" radio station the Armenian diplomat mentioned that this is a campaign which was previously worked at by congressman Livingston who lost at the previous elections and is currently replaced by Burton. It seems that the company involved is "Cassedy & Associates" or "Patton Bogs". There is information that official Baku has tried to establish cooperation with those companies that can publish any statement at the Congress for a certain payment.

Azerbaijan has recently activated its lobby and this is confirmed by Valeri Vainberg the member of the electoral headquarters of US Republican party and the editor-in-chief of the Russian language "Novoe russkoe slovo" magazine, published in New York. In one of his interviews he agrees that Azerbaijan is really doing huge work to lobby its interests and the efforts return very well. "Every dollar spent for PR can bring back thousands of dollars. It is the best place for investments", Vainberg said.

For lobbying political interests Azerbaijan spends funds also from the state budget. Those funds by the way could be used for the construction of houses for refugees who still live in tents, dying of frost. The government of Azerbaijan ripps off money from socially vulnerable people and spends that money for lobbying. This can be proved by the interview of Novruz Mamedov to Azeri "Echo" magazine. Novruz Mamedov is the head of the international department of the president's administration. Answering to the question whether there is a separate expense item in the state budget for lobbying the interests of Azerbaijan abroad, Mamedov said, "Of course, there are certain expenses for lobbying aims, but I am afraid to give certain figures…" The high-ranking official of the Aliev administration calls his compatriots to realize that the support of foreign politicians can be achieved with money only. He assures that "in the nearest future spending funds on such purposes will be considered quite normal in Azerbaijan". "We need to allocate more funds for that aim due to our current situation and neighborhood", Novruz Mamedov concludes.

It is quite clear that the government of Azerbaijan uses not only budget funds but also off-budget resources. By off-budget resources, funds generated from oil sales are first of all meant. "In this view the oil strategy that is implemented by president Aliev is vitally important", Mamedov says. It is easy to guess that the majority of funds spent for lobbying are taken from the Oil fund. The distribution of the financial resources of the fund is not supervised by any international financial establishment and even the country's parliament. The authorities of Azerbaijan are currently discussing the issue of creating centralized mechanisms for financing lobby activities. "I think that soon this strategy will be clearly reflected in the budget.", Novruz Mamedov says.

The fact that in Baku they have decided to raise funds for bribing foreign politicians does not do credit to Azerbaijan. It is now obvious that the Azeri could manage to attract American congressmen with ideological considerations. Now after the failure of the "Azerbaijanian group" which was to be "knit together" at the House of Representatives by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Curt Weldon, Azerbaijan has to set hopes on money only.