Bush, Kazakh declare longterm strategic partnership
Date: 24-Dec-01
Country: USA
Author: Elaine Monaghan
A highlight of a visit by President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Washington, the pact was a reminder of how relations have been strengthened by his support for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, where instability has long troubled the most economically successful of the former Soviet Central Asian states.
Nazarbayev and President George W. Bush met and issued a statement declaring a commitment to strengthening what they called a long-term, strategic partnership aimed at bringing Kazakhstan increasingly into the global economy.
Foreign Minister Yerland Idrisov and Secretary of State Colin Powell also signed an energy partnership declaration that the State Department said "reaffirms U.S. support for multiple export routes of oil, particularly along the proposed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline".
It added, "It also strengthens cooperation on energy security and enhanced protection of production and transport facilities and promotes further cooperation on electrical power, nuclear energy and environmental protection."
Idrisov told Reuters the two presidents exchanged letters in which Bush pledged to work to lift sanctions against Kazakhstan which stem from the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment that linked trade ties to Soviet-era restrictions on Jewish emigration. In reply, Nazarbayev vowed to continue economic reforms.
Washington has long sought Kazakh support in keeping track of nuclear materials and tightening border controls in the region to prevent the spread of the hardline brand of beliefs that gripped Afghanistan and threaten less stable former Soviet states sandwiched between Kazakhstan and Afghanistan.
The Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that killed about 3,300 people accelerated contacts with many countries including Kazakhstan, visited by Powell earlier this month.
Nazarbayev would like his country to play as prominent a role as possible in the reconstruction of Afghanistan and in humanitarian efforts aimed at feeding its people.
Idrisov said Kazakhstan was also willing to contribute peacekeepers to an international force for Afghanistan.
OIL THE STRONGEST PULL
But the Kazakh resource most likely to bind the two countries in a long-term embrace is oil, which Nazarbayev says could lead to exports of 150 million tonnes from 2015.
The two countries share an interest in opening multiple export routes for the oil, though they differ over one potential route that would be cheaper but would take it through Iran, regarded in Washington as a "rogue state" for its support of groups opposed to the Middle East peace process.
Idrisov said Kazakhstan continued to support both the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's pipeline to the Black Sea, opened this month, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan route.
But he added, "Iran is not excluded completely."
A senior State Department official told reporters the energy agreement provided a framework for the United States to help "ensure the Kazakhs are able to develop their energy supplies, develop their energy policy."
"It's a declaration of the ways the governments can cooperate and the fact the governments are cooperating gives a framework for companies to go forward a lot more easily," he added.
