Azerbaijani authorities are committing human rights abuses, U.S. Congressmen said during hearing on Azerbaijan at Congressional Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, the Armenian News-NEWS.am correspondent reports from Washington.

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California said U.S. relations with Azerbaijan are developing in three main areas: energy, security and human rights. The Congressman believes Azerbaijan has a potential to play a key role in ensuring Europe with natural gas, however, it is impossible to ignore difficult situation with human rights in the country. Presence of over 90 political prisoners in Azerbaijan cannot be ignored, while closing of the RFE/RL Baku office is “unacceptable”, he added.

The witnesses at the hearing were former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan  Richard Kauzlarich, Audrey Altstadt, fellow at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and  Svante Cornell, Johns Hopkins University's Central Asia-Caucasus Institute director. All three experts admitted there is a difficult situation with the human rights in Azerbaijan, but called on the lawmakers not to judge Baku harshly, taking intro account the difficult region of the South Caucasus.

At the same time, all three experts refused to respond to Congressman Rohrabacher's direct question to compare the situation on human rights and freedoms in Azerbaijan and Armenia. According to experts, there are certain recognized criteria for such a comparison. Richard Kauzlarich nevertheless had to admit that “if we take as a criterion the number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, they have more political prisoners than in Russia and Belarus together.”

Audrey Altstadt added that Azerbaijan took the commitment on development of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Council of Europe, however, has failed all of its obligations.

“Cooperation in energy sector cannot simply cannot overshadow the problems of civil society,” Congressman Gregory Meeks added.

Congressman Albio Sires, in turn, noted that Washington is deeply concerned about Azerbaijani leadership's decision to close civil society institutes and independent media. There are many obstacles to recognizing Azerbaijan as a democratic states, in particular government corruption and human rights abuse, he concluded.