BAKU: Azerbaijan has refused to renew its cooperation agreement with The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said on Thursday, accusing Washing­ton of using USAID to pursue its political agenda.

Bayramov, who was speaking at a news conference with his Georgian counterpart, said that Baku had suspended cooperation with USAID in June 2024.

Azerbaijan began criticising USAID in late 2023 after Samantha Power, the agency’s head, said that Azerbaijan’s military operation to return its breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh had “forced more than a hundred thousand people to leave their homes and move into neighbouring Armenia.”

In response to Power’s statement, Hikmet Hajiyev, a foreign policy adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, said that USAID “has no place in Azerbaijan anymore.”

USAID describes itself as the US government agency which leads international development and humanitarian assistance efforts to partner countries. On its website it says its mission is also to “promote and demonstrate democratic values abroad, and advance a free, peaceful, and prosperous world” in support of American foreign policy.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2025