Leader's U.S. visit mixes Kazakh oil and democracy
ALMATY (Reuters) - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev flies to the United States on Tuesday for a visit that may be smiles and backslapping on the surface but will raise difficult questions for Washington and the West.
Nazarbayev has been in power since 1989, when Kazakhstan was still a Soviet republic, but has yet to preside over any poll judged free and fair. Moreover, U.S. prosecutors say -- but he denies -- he has accepted $60 million in oil company bribes.
Balanced against that, this vast oil-producing Central Asian state is the most economically advanced and politically stable of the five ex-Soviet "stans" that also include Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
And, as Nazarbayev told reporters before his trip: "Of the $50 billion that we've attracted as investment to Kazakhstan, a third belongs to American companies."
During his first trip to the United States in five years, Nazarbayev will meet President George W. Bush on Friday and spend time with George Bush senior at their holiday home.
Skilled at balancing competing interests, he is equally welcome in the White House's Rose Garden, the Kremlin corridors, or the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
What attracts all three powers is the fact that Kazakhstan will join the top 10 oil producers in a decade, is doling out oil and gas exploration and production licenses and still has decisions ahead on routes for pipelines.
For Washington, and other Western capitals, that may sap the will to publicly upbraid Nazarbayev on such issues as democratic reform.
"The biggest rough spot we have is the slow movement in terms of furthering democratic reforms and development of civil society," a Western diplomat in the capital Astana said.
Apart from a string of flawed elections, civil liberties have been deteriorating with a new, more restrictive media law and a draft law that will tighten already draconian laws that forbid any demonstration not sanctioned by the authorities.
THANKS FOR THE CARROT
Against this backdrop, Nazarbayev is still publicly pressing for the 2009 annual chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a European rights group that also conducts election monitoring.
A consensus decision by its 55 members -- including the United States and Russia -- has to be made by December. Russia backs Kazakhstan while Western states had tried, in vain, to use the chair as a carrot to encourage a democratic reform.
There were signs that Washington and London wanted quietly to urge Kazakhstan to postpone its application in order to save face all round, but Nazarbayev said this month he still wanted 2009. He denied he would lobby Bush on the issue.
"This is really one of those things that's like making sausage," the Western diplomat said. "it's not something you want to do out in public."
The allegations against Nazarbayev about bribe-taking were made in a case that has yet to go to court. U.S. officials say it is solely the prosecution of a single U.S. citizen, James Giffen, who used to work for Nazarbayev and pleads innocence.
For Nazarbayev, the trip to Washington is also a rare chance to raise Kazakhstan's profile outside the former Soviet Union.
"Many people still can't tell the difference between countries that end in 'stan," he said, in reference to other ex-Soviet Central Asian republics that have suffered civil unrest and even, in the case of Tajikistan, civil war.
Unfortunately for him, it has so far just served as free publicity for British comedian Baron Sacha Cohen whose mockumentary about Borat -- a sexist, racist, and made-up Kazakh television reporter -- is about to hit the cinemas.
