Racing Up Hill : Selected papers of Azerbaijan's first Ambassador to the United States of America

Abstract

The story explains how the Republic of Azerbaijan, a small, distant, and new country, established a strong and highly regarded diplomatic presence in Washington between 1993 and 2006. It is also a record of the work of one man, Hafiz M. Pashayev, Azerbaijan's first ambassador to the United States and its representative throughout these years, who did much to achieve this. It is a tale of formidable obstacles and of decisive advantages, of lofty principles and low cunning,of steady learning and willful ignorance. It is, in short, a microfilm of diplomacy itself. Pashayev's assignment could not have been clearer: to garner solid American support for Azerbaijan's independence and territorial integrity; help in the difficult transformation from a planned socialist economy to a market system, and from a Soviet-type government to a more open and democratic one; and to facilitate American active participation in the development of the country's hydrocarbon resources so as to strengthen rather than erode these other processes. Thirteen years on, it appears that Pashayev's efforts have fruit in all three areas.