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Moscow, Baku clinch important deals
MOSCOW, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- Following a decade of lukewarm ties, Russian-Azerbaijani relations could soon grow into a strategic partnership, Azerbaijani President Geidar Aliyev said Saturday at the end of his three-day visit to Moscow.
During Aliyev's stay, he and Russian President Vladimir Putin clinched a deal defining the future of the Soviet-made missile tracking station, located in Azerbaijan, that has been a chief irritant to Moscow-Baku ties over the last decade.
Under the deal, the radar, based near the town of Gabala, will be operated by 1,500 Russian servicemen over a 10-year lease period that will cost the Kremlin $7 million per year.
At the same time, Moscow agreed to pay $31 million in overdue payments for electricity supplies to the radar over the 1997-2001 span.
The agreement was reached after a number of previous attempts failed, mostly due to major disagreements over the lease term, property rights and participation of Azeri troops in the work of the radar.
Baku insisted on a short-term, three-year lease, claiming that the station was the property of Azerbaijan and insisted that Russia should also allow deployment of Azeri air defense troops to guard Gabala.
Moscow rejected property claims and sought a long-term lease up to 20 years.
Baku also urged the Kremlin to share intelligence information gathered at Gabala, while local residents lodged separate protests alleging the radar's work endangered ecological situation in the area.
The new deal provides for Azeri troops at Gabala and will also ensure that the data obtained by Russia's radar systems are shared with Baku.
The Gabala radar was built in 1985 to monitor ballistic missile launches of the Soviet Union's southern neighbors with a maximum tracking range of 7,200 kilometers (4,464 miles).
During the U.S.-led "Desert Storm" operation in the Persian Gulf in 1991, the radar at Gabala provided Moscow with valuable information from the region.
Another irritant in relations between Moscow and Baku -- the division of the Caspian -- is also not far from being solved, Aliyev said Saturday.
The two countries, along with ex-Soviet Kazakhstan, see eye to eye on the issue and have "practically agreed their positions on it," Azerbaijan's leader said.
Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan favor division of the oil-rich Caspian's seabed into five sectors in proportion with the five Caspian countries' respective shorelines.
This option doesn't suit the two remaining Caspian states, Iran and Turkmenistan, who favor partition into five equal sectors as their shorelines are considerably smaller.
Russia and Azerbaijan have both signed preliminary agreements on the issue with Kazakhstan and are now expected to sign a bilateral deal confirming their intentions.
Analysts hope that the problem can finally be resolved at a long-delayed five-nation summit on the Caspian, scheduled to be held later this year.
Aliyev's talks Saturday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov were highlighted by the Azeri leader's pledge that Russia play a bigger role in solving the territorial dispute over the Armenian-held enclave of Nagorno Karabakh.
The enclave, located in Azerbaijan and taken over by the ethnic-Armenian majority living there in the armed conflict in the early 1990s, has defied Baku authorities and proclaimed self-styled independence.
More than 30,000 people were killed in the conflict and an additional 1 million Azeris driven out of the region.
Russia, fostering traditionally strong ties with Armenia, has remained largely reserved during the conflict, prompting Baku to conclude it was siding with the separatists.
Such attitude has apparently changed as both Putin and Ivanov assured Aliyev that the Kremlin would seek the end to the conflict through political means at a negotiating table, so that there would be "no winners and no losers."
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