As Soviet-era strongmen fade, Caspian unrest grows

It was here, amid offshore oil rigs and the snow-capped Caucasus mountains, that superspy James Bond once battled an evil conspiracy to save a vital Western-sponsored oil pipeline.

The plot may have been fictional, but the pipeline, slated to begin carrying oil to global markets in 2005, is real. So is the strategic importance of the Caspian basin, home to about 3 percent of the world's proven petroleum reserves.

Marring the picture is the menace of instability, as authoritarian Soviet-era strongmen fade from the stage.

That danger loomed large last week as thousands of opposition supporters battled police here, after international observers alleged fraud and vote-rigging in the presidential elections, which accomplished the first dynastic power transfer in the former Soviet Union. The violence, which led to a police crackdown in which hundreds of dissidents were arrested, was in response to a strongarm campaign by Azerbaijan's longtime leader, Geidar Aliyev, to pass the presidency to his inexperienced son, Ilham.

Official tallies gave the younger Mr. Aliyev almost 80 percent of the vote, but some 600 observers noted irregularities, from police harassment to ballot-box stuffing. One independent exit poll found opposition candidate Isa Gambar leading with 46 percent to Ilham Aliyev's 24 percent.

"This election has been a missed opportunity for a genuinely democratic election process," says Peter Eicher, who led observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In neighboring Georgia, opposition leaders are also charging state interference as the republic braces for parliamentary elections on Nov. 5. Like the elder Aliyev, Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze is a former local KGB chief and Communist Party kingpin who has said he will step down in 2005.

The similarities between the two men are striking. Both returned to lead their strife-ridden countries after the Soviet Union's fall. Each imposed order by authoritarian means, forged truces with victorious Russian-backed separatist move- ments, and charted pro-Western foreign policies. And both leaders backed a plan by a consortium led by British Petroleum to build a 1,000-mile, $3-billion oil pipeline from Baku, through Azerbaijan and Georgia, to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

"The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline will give us direct access to the European market and the world beyond," says Natiq Aliyev, president of SOCAR, Azerbaijan's state oil company, a participant in the pipeline coalition. "Azerbaijan is on its way to becoming one of the world's key oil producers."

But many experts worry that Azerbaijan may fall prey to further unrest, including renewal of war with neighboring Armenia over the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh. In Georgia, there are fears that power struggles among opposition leaders could reignite civil war or fighting with the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

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