Free and fair elections for Azerbaijan.(COMMENTARY)

0 Comments | Washington Times, The, November, 2005

Byline: Elizabeth Jones, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES Supporting the spread of democracy is once again a key U.S. foreign policy interest. And well it should be. In her recent trip to Central Asia, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed and prodded leaders there to permit their people to have a genuine say in who governs them.

None of us wishes to dictate what kind of democracy each country should choose, but it is impossible to recall the Rose and Orange Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine without being impressed by the insistence of Georgians and Ukrainians that they have a right to choose their own leaders. That is the essence of democracy: the people get to choose. Azerbaijan, a nation with a Turkic and majority-Muslim population that...