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In Caspian, US-Led Security Workshop Targets 'Purple' Menace
Baku (AFP) Oct 13, 2005 A handful of countries on Russia's southern flank face a weapons proliferation threat from "Purple," a theocratic republic on the Caspian Sea that sponsors terrorism and has a covert nuclear weapons program. This at least is the basis of a fictitious scenario at the heart of a three-day security workshop sponsored this week by the United States in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan including all Caspian and Black Sea littoral states, with the exceptions of Russia and Iran. In the "Black Sea and Caspian Sea Maritime Nonproliferation Conference," an indoor exercise which began Tuesday in Baku, the theocratic government of "Purple" has used oil profits to obtain nuclear arms under cover of a peaceful nuclear energy program, drawing US sanctions in the process. Delegates to the conference insist that the scenario, although it has a familiar ring about it, has no existing country in mind. But a "player handbook" distributed to participants and obtained by AFP makes clear it bears more than a few glaring similarities to the real thing. "It's clear, they're talking about Iran," said Azad Isazade, an independent military analyst based in Baku. The oil-rich Caspian region is of strategic interest to the United States both as a source of energy and of security threats from poorly secured Soviet-era weapons in demand in the Middle East, US officials have said. At the conference, naval officers from Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Romania, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and the United States "explore new avenues to cooperate" in "preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and other illicit trafficking by sea," the handbook said. Russia, at the northern end of the Caspian, shares these interests but stayed away from the Baku workshop "so as not to irritate Iran," with which Moscow has close economic ties, particularly in the field of nuclear power, Isazade said. Azerbaijan has been at pains to reassure Iran that its growing military cooperation with the United States was not a threat. The handbook's text "doesn't mean that specifically Iran is the country that poses a threat to the whole Caspian region," said Farkhad Talizade, deputy commander of Azerbaijan's border guard service. US officials also insisted Iran was not being targeted in the exercise. "We've got a generic threat that is named generically and is not oriented to any country," said US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Currier. Washington however has not limited itself to theoretical training exercises in the oil-rich Caspian region. The US has undertaken the construction of two radar installations near Iran's northern border and south of Russia and has encouraged both Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to beef up their sea defenses in order to counter "transnational threats" in the region. Washington has spent some 30 million dollars on upgrading Azerbaijan's coastguard with a radar system, personnel training and repair of ships and recently said it wanted to spend 135 million dollars to improve Azerbaijan's and Kazakhstan's sea forces. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express The Long War - Doctrine and Application
Bush Tries To Save Patriot Act
Washington (UPI) Dec 19, 2005It has been a weekend of unprecedented reactive political activity - it might even occur to some to call it panic - by the White House. |
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