Azernews.Az

BAKU – A decision by US President Barack Obama to appoint a new ambassador to Azerbaijan whose nomination had been stalled by lawmakers for months has been welcomed by Baku but criticized by an Armenian-American lobbying group.

Obama on December 29 bypassed the usual Senate confirmation process to appoint four new envoys whose nominations had been held up, including new Azerbaijan envoy Matthew Bryza.

So-called recess appointments are temporary, lasting only until the end of the next session of Congress, which is due in November or December.

Bryza's candidacy for the vacant post in Baku, formally put forward by Obama in spring, met strong resistance from some Armenian-American groups over what they said was Bryza's pro-Azerbaijani bias.

Azerbaijan responded by welcoming Bryza's appointment. "We are ready to cooperate with the new ambassador and wish him success," an Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman told Russian news agency Interfax.

Bryza formerly served as the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, which seeks to broker a settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani region predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians that has been occupied since a war in the 1990s.

The deputy chairman of the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party, Ali Ahmadov, said Baku expects the new envoy to help step up US mediation of those peace talks.

"So far the Minsk Group [of mediators] has not achieved results satisfying Azerbaijan, and the conflict remains unresolved," Ahmadov said. "Naturally, the U.S. is also somewhat responsible for that."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov said the incumbent US Minsk Group co-chair could make a greater contribution to the resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict than the US ambassador. "It is America that determines what the work and duties of its embassy are, and relations between the two countries are the priority here."

The Washington-based Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), which has lobbied hard against Bryza's congressional confirmation, was quick to denounce the appointment.

Speaking to Radio Liberty, the group's executive director, Aram Hamparian, claimed, "This should be a moment for the US government to turn the page on a failed policy of appeasing Azerbaijan and [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev and their threats to renew war and it should mark an opportunity for them to challenge that. But instead, they're sending somebody to Baku who has a record of essentially silence, acquiescence, [and] appeasement of Azerbaijan's war rhetoric and that's just going to dig a deeper and deeper hole for US policy."

Hamparian also maintained that Bryza's appointment bypassing the Senate's usual procedure "undermines the legitimacy and the credibility of the US envoy."

Armenia's government, for its part, has refused to comment on the nomination controversy.

Bryza's appointment comes after two Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer and Robert Menendez, placed a "hold" on a full Senate vote on the nomination in September.

They said the nominee failed to address their concerns about his alleged pro-Azerbaijani bias in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Menendez claimed that Bryza's "very close personal ties to Turkey and Azerbaijan" compromise his "ability to act as an unbiased representative of the United States in Azerbaijan."

Bryza denied such ties as well as pro-Azerbaijani statements attributed to him in the past during Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings in July and in his subsequent written answers to some US legislators.

In a statement, the US Azeris Network (USAN), an advocacy organization which has supported the Bryza nomination, called his appointment a "triumph of US national interests and security over the special interest of two senators and one ethnic community."

Vafa Guluzada, an Azerbaijani former state adviser and political analyst, says the US political course does not depend on who serves as the country’s ambassador.

"No matter who it will be -- even if it were [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton -- the U.S. is a superpower and is pursuing its policy. And that policy will be continued," Guluzada said.

Elkhan Shahinoglu, the head of Baku-based Atlas research center, welcomed the appointment of the US envoy to Azerbaijan, a post that has been vacant since July 2009, saying that it will affect bilateral relations. However, Matthew Bryza’s taking the post does not mean that all outstanding questons in US-Azerbaijan relations will be answered, the analyst said.

Shahinoglu says that some in Azerbaijan bind great hopes for Karabakh conflict settlement with Bryza’s appointment, but it appears unlikely that those expectations will be justified. He added: "Bryza was active as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, and hopes were bound with him, but no result was achieved in the long run."