The European Commission’s President, Jose Manuel Barroso, and EU Energy Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, are starting on January 13 an unprecedented joint visit to Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. They are responding to Turkmenistan’s recent positive signals about supplies for the EU’s Nabucco transport project, but also to... MORE

Moldova’s Alliance for European Integration (AEI) has won a new, and potentially longer, lease on life, after 16 months of insecure governance (EDM, January 7). Its post-election government is due to be installed on January 14. The AEI’s success, however hard-won, shows the European Union’s... MORE

After almost four years of construction, the Oguz-Gabala-Baku water pipeline was inaugurated on December 28, 2010. Costing almost $1 billion, the pipeline is already termed by many in Azerbaijan as the “second BTC,” referring to the strategically important Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline built a decade ago to... MORE

The prospects for resolving the Karabakh conflict are as uncertain as ever after the inability of Armenia and Azerbaijan’s presidents to reach any tangible agreements on the margins of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Astana on December 1-2. It... MORE

The US Embassy’s February 25, 2010 report from Baku opens an almost panoramic view on the current state of the bilateral relationship (https://cablegate.wikileaks.org). Two aspects stand out in this comprehensive account of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s discussion with the visiting US Under-Secretary of State William... MORE

Perhaps more than the WikiLeaks themselves, it is the massive security breach and counterintelligence failure that will, for some time to come, discourage candid conversations between the US government and some of its key partners.Azerbaijan is no exception in this regard. In Azerbaijan’s case, however,... MORE

Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, has expressed “moderate” optimism about a near-term resolution of the Karabakh conflict after hosting yet another meeting of his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts. The talks held in the southern Russian city of Astrakhan on October 27 underscored Moscow’s key role in... MORE

Azerbaijan’s upcoming parliamentary elections on November 7 are unlikely to change the distribution of power within the country. As with the previous election to the highest legislative body in 2005, this time pundits are observing a divided opposition, confident ruling party and dozens of independents,... MORE

Azerbaijan’s perceived willingness to hold the next parliamentary elections in an open, transparent and democratic atmosphere has attracted an unprecedented level of international attention for this rapidly evolving, young democracy with one of the fastest growing economies in the world.Paradoxically, more than 25,000 observers are... MORE

As Azerbaijan prepares for its next parliamentary elections, scheduled for November 7, many local and international observers are noting the growing role of religion in single-mandate races. A total of 1,412 persons have attempted to register to compete for 125 seats in the highest legislative... MORE