Skipping NATO to Meet the Middies

Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev, left, talks to two Turkish middies as he visits the Naval Academy in Annapolis. (Craig Herndon — The Washington Post) Related Links The Nightmare That Wasn't

By Hamil R. Harris and Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 24, 1999; Page A19

Homemade cheese pizza, fig newtons and a strawberry milkshake are not routinely on the menu for a foreign president on an official visit to the United States.

But Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev skipped the gourmet food and stuffiness of NATO's 50th anniversary celebration yesterday to dine with 4,000 midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

"I have never seen 4,000 people sit down at a meal at one time," Aliyev said as he wrapped up a four-hour trip to Annapolis, where he got rock star treatment from the young naval officers.

For 70 years, Azerbaijan was under Soviet occupation, but in 1991, the oil-rich nation of 8 million won its independence like other former Soviet republics. Now, Aliyev is trying to forge new ties with the West even though his nation faces a military threat from its neighbors.

He is not alone. Several Central Asian nations that once were part of the Soviet Union but now are members of NATO's second-tier Partnership for Peace program, have sent delegations to the summit.

In addition to Azerbaijan, the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have sent representatives.

Several have problems with pollution, climate and internal ferment back home. But many sit atop fabulous mineral wealth, view the Kosovo crises with distant alarm and arrive at NATO's summit as junior partners seeking prestige and investment, more than just a say-so.

And it is not so much elevation to NATO that they want, as the fresh air of western military know-how, business and technology after decades in the stifling embrace of their giant northern neighbor.

"Attention on deck!" shouted a midshipman as the naval students snapped to attention to welcome Aliyev to Arthur Rachwald's Russian foreign policy class. The professor said that in his 15 years of teaching at the Naval Academy he never had the head of a former Soviet republic address his students.

Midshipman 1st Class Glenn Larson, 22, said he didn't know where Azerbaijan was – before he took the class. But yesterday he and 30 other cadets shared a lecture hall with Azerbaijan's delegation and heard about a nation that has a variety of concerns.

"I am aware of the great leaders you have here at the Naval Academy. . . . I am convinced that the men and women here are very happy people," Aliyev told the midshipmen before he talked about how his country's war with Armenia displaced more than 1 million people.

He said Armenia – with the help of Russia – still occupies 20 percent of his country, even though his country signed a peace agreement five years ago.

Indeed, Russia remains a worry for many of the fledgling Asian nations.

Kazakhstan's ambassador, Bolat K. Nurgaliyev, said this week that his country opposes, but does not condemn, NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia – a political position between those of Russia and NATO, which his country does not officially aspire to join.

"We understand that it is a long process, something that has to go through several stages," he said. Indeed, experts say, NATO could never extend such membership without a major provocation to the Russians.

There are, though, worthy goals short of that.

One of Azerbaijan's concrete needs, for example, is a flotilla of small patrol vessels to police its sector of the Caspian Sea, according to Azerbaijani Embassy officials.

High on Kazakhstan's NATO agenda is business.

On Thursday night, in a glittering downtown hotel, Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, inaugurated the first meeting of the Kazak-U.S. business association to further the already substantial western investment in his oil- and mineral-rich nation.

"What Kazakhstan can offer . . . is mind-boggling," Nurgaliyev, the ambassador, said. "A quarter of the world's reserves of uranium. Lead, copper, zinc." As well as oil, oil, oil.

Despite severe belt-tightening as a result of the Russian and Asian economic crises, Kazakhstan is getting by. Last year, its embassy moved into the majestic, 111-year-old brick and brownstone Sherman House at 16th and O streets, and the president's 19-year-old daughter, Alia, is enrolled at George Washington University. (She is married to the son of the president of Kyrgyzstan, who attends the University of Maryland.)

Last June, in another expensive operation, Kazakhstan moved its capital 600 miles from Almaty in the earthquake-prone southern mountains, to Astana, on the windblown steppe in the center of the country, to have a more central location.

"There were many people who were skeptical, saying, it's impossible to move the capital," the ambassador said. "But we did it."

Yesterday, in Annapolis, the president of Azerbaijan finished his lecture, toured the grounds of the Naval Academy, then sat down to eat with the midshipmen. But before some of his military officers touched their plates, they closely scrutinized the alien packets of fig newtons.

"It's an honor" to have him here, said Regimental Commander Ramian Sanders as he and other officers marched the middies into Bancroft Hall. "With all of the turmoil in the world, he took the time to come out here and visit the Naval Academy."