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US Azeris Network calls Congress: no aid to Nagorno Karabakh separatists

30 March 2013 01:24 (UTC +04:00)

Co-founder and board member of the U.S. Azeris Network Adil Bagirov and the representative of the Armenian National Committee (ANCA) Raffi Karakashyan were given the opportunity to address at the hearings, related to grant financial assistance to various countries in 2014.

According to A. Bagirov, USAN’s speech was the first in the history that a representative of the Azerbaijani ethnic organization in the United States addressed to Congress. Over the last six years USAN presented only written statements in Congress.

During his speech, Bagirov reminded to the Subcommittee that financial assistance to Armenia exceeds the amount of financial assistance to Azerbaijan for many years.

"There is a great disbalance in the US assistance to Azerbaijan and Armenia, it should be at the very least equal to both countries, although Azerbaijan is more than twice the size and population, and has several times the size of refugee / IDP population," said Bagirov.

He also brought to the attention of the members of the Subcommittee that the U.S. is the only country in the world, which makes direct aids to the separatist regime in Nagorno-Karabakh, without the consent of Baku but neither Abkhazia nor South Ossetia nor Transnistria nor Chechnya nor North Cyprus do not receive such support from the U.S.

Bagirov talked about U.S. law barriers to help violators of the territorial integrity in the former Soviet republics. “Why is this legally-binding instruction ignored and not complied with year after year?" asked USAN founder form the Subcommittee.

The USAN asked the members of the Subcommittee to allocate Azerbaijan at least the amount requested by the Obama administration, and at least $ 26 million which was provided in 2011 and $ 10 million as humanitarian aid and 900,000 as military aid. USAN also asked not to provide assistance to Nagorno-Karabakh next year and not to allocate more than what is requested by the President of the United States to Armenia. Last year, the Administration was requested 16.3 million for Azerbaijan and 36.6 million for Armenia.

In turn, the representative of the Armenian Committee thanked the Subcommittee for the allocated assistance to separatist Nagorno Karabakh in the amount of $ 5 million last year, and asked to provide Armenia at least $ 50 million and support for the participation of separatist Nagorno Karabakh regime in the peace talks as well as reviving the 907th amendment and termination of the provision of military assistance to Azerbaijan.