July 9th marked the 90th anniversary of the decree of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic that created Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry and laid the foundations for its diplomatic service.  Over the intervening decades, the foreign ministry and the diplomats who serve their country in it have undergone numerous changes reflecting changes in Azerbaijan’s status and political position.  At the same time, however, certain underlying continuities help explain Baku’s diplomacy today and thus deserve special mention on this anniversary. When the foreign ministry was created in 1919...

Azerbaijan is one of only a few countries where diplomats have their own day.  On July 9th, Azerbaijan celebrated National Diplomats Day to mark the 90th anniversary of the country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.  Given its location, Azerbaijani diplomats face some tough challenges, including outside interest in oil, the conflict with Armenia, and problematic relations both with the Russian Federation, the center of its former imperial master, and with Iran, more than a third of whose population is ethnically Azerbaijani and whose government would like to export its Islamic revol...

On July 10, at the conclusion of the G-8 summit in Italy, the presidents of the three countries who occupy three co-chairmanships of the OSCE Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh – US President Barak Obama, Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy – delivered what many observers are calling an almost unprecedented “ultimatum” to the governments of Azerbaijan and Armenia, “urging” them “to resolve the few remaining differences between them and finalize their agreement” on “a renewed version” of the November 2007 Madrid Principles, �...