US appreciates Azeri anti-terror support

State Department report excludes Armenia from coalition list

By Azernews Staff

The US State Department highly appreciated Azerbaijan’s part in combating international terrorism in its report “Patterns of Global Terrorism: 2001”, released May 21 in Washington, D.C.

At the same time, the report didn’t include Armenia in the list of countries helping the international anti-terror coalition.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said during the briefing on the release of the department’s report that "the terrorist threat is global in scope, many-faceted and determined".

Observers relate it to Armenia’s involvement in Russian assistance to nuclear programs for Iran, a country the US sees as a major sponsor of terrorism.

The State Department report highlighted the support of different countries for the anti-terror fight and chronicled terrorist activities in the world.

The State Department extolled Azerbaijan’s ‘unqualified’ and ‘integral’ support for the United States and offer of ‘whatever means necessary’ to the US-led international coalition against terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

To date, Azerbaijan has granted blanket overflight clearance, offered the use of bases, and engaged in information sharing, the apprehension of terrorist suspects, and law-enforcement and intelligence cooperation. It played an important role in efforts to curb the international logistics networks supporting the mujahidin in Chechnya and to combat international terrorist financing.

It has made a concerted effort to identify possible terrorist-related funding by distributing lists of suspected terrorist groups and individuals to local banks. In August, Azeri law enforcement arrested six members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir terrorist group who were put on trial in early 2002. Members of Jayshullah, an indigenous terrorist group, who were arrested in 1999 and tried in 2000, remain in prison. In December 2001, authorities revoked the registration of the local branch of the Kuwait Society for the Revival of the Islamic Heritage, an Islamic nongovernmental organization (NGO) suspected of supporting terrorist groups. After the September 11 attacks, Azerbaijan increased patrols along its southern land and maritime borders with Iran and detained several persons crossing the border illegally. It has deported at least six persons with suspected ties to terrorists, including three to Saudi Arabia and three to Egypt. The Department of Aviation Security increased security at Baku's Bina Airport and has implemented International Civil Aviation Organization recommendations on aviation security.

In early October, the Azeri parliament voted to ratify the UN Convention on the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, bringing to eight the number of international counter-terrorism conventions to which Azerbaijan is a party.

Azerbaijan and the US has a good record of cooperation, as the former assisted in the investigation of the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings and has cooperated with the US Embassy in Baku against terrorist threats to the mission.