Obama Push for Caspian Energy Routes

Berk and his fellow Azeris were forced to flee from the mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in 1994, when Armenia occupied it after years of ethnic fighting. Ending their exile is central to untangling a knot of issues in the Caucasus that has bound Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Russia since the Soviet Union ended in 1991.

The U.S. argues that former Soviet states can help preserve their independence by selling energy to the West rather than to Russia, which contracted to buy Azeri gas last month. Looming over the region is the memory of Russia’s August 2008 war with neighboring Georgia, which like Turkey lies on the export route for Azerbaijan’s oil and gas.

“The Russians now sit within tens of kilometers of the pipelines,” said Neil MacFarlane, a professor of international relations at the U.K.’s University of Oxford. “A settlement involving Turkey, Armenia and Karabakh would help forestall that challenge.”

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