The current economic difficulties in Azerbaijan caused by the oil price fall may increase the risk of a further escalation of violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh feared yesterday the senior US intelligence.
“Baku is in full military buildup while the deteriorating economic conditions in Azerbaijan raise the possibility that the conflict escalates in 2016,” warned the US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in its annual assessment of threats United States.
“The aversion of Azerbaijan to publicly renounce claim the Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia’s reluctance to give up the territory it controls continue to complicate any possibility of peaceful solution,” said Clapper.
Heavily dependent on oil revenues, Azerbaijan suffers increasingly from the collapse of world oil prices. The Azerbaijani national currency, the manat, has lost more than half its value against the US dollar last year, despite the fact that the Baku authorities spent nearly $ 9 billion to maintain its rate exchange.
Last month, the agency Standard and Poor’s lowered the rating of Azerbaijan by one notch and said now fear the recession of Azerbaijan’s economy this year, after more than a decade of rapid growth driven by oil.
Recently, the country’s economic problems have caused rare demonstrations in several cities of Azerbaijan. The demonstrators marched following the deterioration of living conditions, including the increase in bread prices. These rallies were fueled speculation in Armenia that the government of President Ilham Aliev could intensify violations of the cease-fire in the Karabakh conflict zone to “distract” the Azerbaijanis dissatisfied with his failed economic policies.
Last year already, along the “line of contact” around Karabakh and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border was a sharp increase of the fighting.
The United States and Russia and France, the two other mediating powers trying to negotiate an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace agreement, have expressed concern that climbing throughout 2015. “There is no military solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict “, said the US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and French Minister for European Affairs Harlem Desir in a joint statement issued in December.
Driven by massive oil revenues, which totaled more than $ 116 billion since 2001, Aliev has for years talked about a “widening gap” between Armenia and Azerbaijan which he said, would in Baku to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh. A considerable portion of these revenues were spent on the acquisition of large amounts of offensive weapons.
Azerbaijan had intended to spend the equivalent of $ 1.2 billion for its defense and security in 2016. There are only four years, Aliyev stated that military expenditures of Azerbaijan exceeded the entire State budget of Armenia (about $ 3 billion).
The collapse of the Azerbaijani currency also resulted in some embarrassing economic statistics for Aliev: less than $ 300 a month, the official average salary in Azerbaijan is now much lower, in dollar terms, than the poorest in Armenia.
Claire © armenews.com