Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for this interesting debate. I am constantly struck by how much diverse expertise we have in this House on the many countries around the world. I can recall the questions that were asked some months ago on the Georgian Government’s reform of public services by a number of Peers who had just returned from Georgia. I recall my first visit to Yerevan in 1995, when the key lady on the floor of the hotel where I was staying said to me, in hushed tones, that I was staying in the very same room that Caroline Cox—the noble Baroness, Lady Cox—had stayed in some months before. I recall some years later in Abkhazia, with Anna Politkovskaya and a number of other journalists, meeting the Foreign Minister of what seemed to me that benighted and unrecognised country. His last words to me as I turned to leave were: “May I ask you, when you return to London, to please give my best regards to Lord Avebury?”.

We all recognise that there are many comings and goings. I enjoyed the pictures on the web that I looked at this morning of the noble Lords, Lord Laird and Lord Kilclooney, on their most recent visit to Azerbaijan. If I may make just one partisan point: when noble Lords demand that Ministers should travel more often and then demand that Ministers are always here at short notice to answer debates, it should be recognised that this coalition Government have visited more countries with more senior Ministers than our predecessors but that the demands of Parliament are one of the things that hold us all back.

The coalition Government are of course keen to promote Britain’s security and prosperity and, at the same time, to influence the Governments with whom we deal to improve the quality of their rule of law, human rights and democracy. None of the three countries in the Caucuses is yet a fully-fledged democracy. All of them have had problems with media freedom and media ownership; all have had problems with the rule of law. We are extremely happy that Georgia has just had an election which was ruled by most observers to be free and fair, and in which there has been a democratic change of Government from one party to another. Azerbaijan has not yet reached that stage, nor is there a fully-fledged opposition in Azerbaijan, but there was not one in George until relatively recently. Armenia has elections next year, which we very much hope will be up to the standard of being assessed as free and fair.

We are working across the region with our partners in the EU, the Council of Europe and the OSCE. I should say to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, that our assessment of the EU’s mission is that it is there to strengthen the stability of our neighbourhood. The basis of the European neighbourhood policy—the eastern partnership is part of this—is that we export security or we import insecurity. It is much better to export security. There is no more expansionist mission than that. I have visited Georgia on a number of occasions and talked to the EU and OSCE representatives there, and that is very much what they are attempting to do. He commented that the relationship between Russia and Georgia is very similar to that between Britain and Ireland. I did once say in a discussion in Moscow that it seemed to me that the attitude that the Russians—with whom I was talking—had towards Georgia was very similar to that which the British had towards the Catholic Irish in the middle of the 19th century. That is part of the problem of accepting that these are countries which are entitled to their independence and to be treated as equal partners. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who complained about the Azeris acquiring weapons in large quantities from others, that the Russians sell weapons to Azerbaijan and to Armenia. That is one of the problems in trying to resolve that frozen conflict.

We are, as several noble Lords have remarked, the largest foreign investor in Azerbaijan—primarily in the oil industry, but also now spreading to the retail sector and others. I recognise that several noble Lords have commented that they would very much like to see a senior Minister going there. As we speak, the Minister for Culture, Ed Vaizey, is in Baku attending the internet governance forum. The Prime Minister has met the Azerbaijani President twice in the last six months. Other Ministers have visited the country. There are at the present moment no plans for a Cabinet Minister to visit in the near future, but such plans are kept fully under review. I had the great pleasure last night of speaking at the Iraqi-British business commission with the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, who was, as always, fully up to speed. It is not simply a matter for the Government: I encourage all noble Lords to be as actively engaged as possible in encouraging further British investment and trade with all these developing countries.

Why are we interested in the region? Of course for all these connections; the transit of oil and gas to Europe via a southern energy corridor is of considerable importance to Europe’s energy security as a whole. The region is important to us in terms of security, and is one of the many transit routes to Afghanistan. Noble Lords have mentioned that Iran is also a neighbour and that the sanctions on Iran have led to an increased Iranian interest in both Azerbaijan and Georgia. The Azeris are always conscious that there are more Azeris living in Iran than in Azerbaijan itself and that to go to Nakhchivan you have to go partly through Iran.

However, our common security means that we are engaged with the region. All three countries have contributed to the ISAF in Afghanistan. There are now two Georgian battalions in Helmand, taking over some tasks from the US Marine Corps and thus actively assisting the British forces in that region. The Eastern Partnership sees this as a collective Western relationship with the region. Georgia is the country which has most openly declared its intentions of joining both the European Union and NATO. This is a long-term process, but deeper relationships are currently being negotiated with Armenia and Georgia, and a deep and comprehensive free-trade area, to use the EU jargon, is now under way in terms of negotiation with both these countries.

We have also talked about the frozen conflicts. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, what happened across Georgia and between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in a number of other areas as the Soviet Union broke up, were some very bloody and disorderly conflicts, which have left us with what we have now. There were faults on all sides. Let us also touch on what happened in Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine. We are left, however, with the enormous problem of the Nagorno-Karabakh and with people on both sides of this ethnic conflict who feel deeply aggrieved at each other.

The Minsk process has failed yet to make much progress. We do, however, have only that process to work with. The United Kingdom, which is not a member of the Minsk group, continues to support the Minsk process, difficult as it is. We cannot entirely get rid, for example, of Russia as a major player in all this. Therefore, to rebuild a group which would attempt to negotiate without Russia would not be particularly helpful. If we were to invite China to adjudicate, I am sure that the Chinese Government would be much more impartial than the current chairs of the Minsk group but they might not necessarily be that much more helpful.

The British Government are putting in a certain amount of money themselves in terms of supporting NGOs, British and others, within Azerbaijan and across the region. We also support what the EU is doing in terms of promoting human rights and the rule of law. Of course, we invest as well. We would love the Azeris to fund what we do but we have, across the whole of eastern Europe, invested heavily, as we now are also doing in north Africa, in rule of law missions, in improving the capability of political parties to take part in elections and in looking at the administration of elections. That is very much how we see our democratic mission.

To wind up, we are committed to this region because it is part of the wider European neighbourhood. We are committed with our European partners because we share common interests. We are committed as a country that is an active exporter to compete with our European partners—the Germans, the French and others—for business and investment in the region. So we have a mixture of interests in which we recognise the growing importance of Azerbaijan, the importance of the Caucasus as a whole to our future energy security and the importance of helping the Caucasus to become more stable, more prosperous and more democratic for the peace of that region and of our broader region as a whole.

Committee adjourned at 7.44 pm.