The US Congress will not provide financial aid to separatist Nagorno-Karabakh in 2012.
The territory was omitted from the list of recipients of US government aid in a bill for aid in 2012, passed by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs on Thursday.
The US allocated $10m to Karabakh in 2011.
Azerbaijani MP Asim Mollazade said that the decision not to grant aid to Nagorno-Karabakh was linked to two issues:
"First, the United States was illogically funding separatists inside Azerbaijan, a country which is currently fighting terror in Afghanistan and this illogicality has been removed. Although pro-Armenian Congressmen continued their activity in the United States, there have been some positive changes in this direction. The second point here is connected with the problems with the US budget," Mollazade said.
A foreign affairs expert at the the Azerbaijani president's Strategic Research Centre, Zaur Shiriyev, said that the work of the Azerbaijani diaspora and government had also had an influence.
"The demands of the Azerbaijani diaspora to stop funding separatists in Nagorno Karabakh - especially, the work of the US Azerbaijanis Network - combined with the raising of this issue at bilateral meetings at the state level have resulted in the cessation of aid to the separatists," Shiriyev said.
Meanwhile, political scientist Gabil Huseynli considers this decree to be political.
"The US budget is really experiencing crisis. However, they usually allocated $8-10m in aid to Karabakh, which does not mean anything to the trillion budget of the United States. I think this decision will promote talks and is a step towards creating positive aspects in the talks."
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