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Federal politicians and their wives are being treated to expenses-paid, business-class trips to Azerbaijan as the repressive former Soviet republic jostles for a diplomatic edge over Armenia, The Australian writes.

The shuttle diplomacy marks a rapid transformation in Australia’s engagement with the country — previously epitomised by a modest $98 million annual trade, chiefly Australian butter and Azerbaijani petroleum — and has brought Australian MPs face-to-face with the country’s autocratic President, Ilham Aliyev. The two trips, in June and November, have already begun paying dividends in the Australian parliament with Liberal MP Luke Simpkins asking Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to support Azerbaijan in Karabakh conflict, The Australian highlights.  

According to the article, this ‘rang alarm bells in Australia’s influential Armenian community.’ Mr Simpkins’ outer-Perth electorate of Cowan have only four Azerbaijani-born residents at the last census. Other delegates to visit Azerbaijan have included four former federal ministers: the Coalition’s David Johnston, Sharman Stone and John Cobb and Labor’s Alan Griffin — plus ALP backbencher Laurie Ferguson.

Arin Markarian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Australia, said oil-rich Azerbaijan was known for funding ‘very comfortable’ visits for Western politicians. “Simpkins … is wined and dined in Baku, and all of a sudden develops an intimate knowledge of Caucasus geopolitics — intimate enough to take a hardline anti-Armenian view … without once visiting Nagorno-Karabakh or Armenia to talk to the other side,” he told The Weekend Australian, saying his request to meet the MP had gone unanswered.

Mr Simpkins did not return calls, although a fellow delegate recalled the MP ‘fearlessly’ raised questions about the suppression of political rights and civil liberties in Azerbaijan, which monitoring organisation Freedom House says is on par with Afghanistan, Iran and Yemen. Meanwhile, Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh Republic fare much better, The Australian writes.

The authorities in Azerbaijan spend huge sums on lobbying and establishing relations with Western politicians. Reportedly, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) secretly covered all the expenses of a US delegation taking part in a conference ‘US – Azerbaijan Convention: Vision for the Future’ in May 2013. The European Azerbaijan Society, a lobbyist organisation, also funded EU politicians’ trips to Baku. The European Stability Initiative reported that many deputies are regularly invited to Azerbaijan and generously paid. In a normal year, at least 30 to 40 would be invited, some of them repeatedly. People are invited to conferences, events, sometimes for summer vacations, and are given many expensive gifts, mostly expensive silk carpets, gold and silver items, drinks, caviar and money. In Baku, a common gift is 2 kg of caviar.

Reportedly, this was done to ‘conceal’ from the international community the repressive atmosphere in the country, human rights abuses, persecutions of political activists, falsifications of results of presidential and parliamentary election and so on.