Confidential friendship
CIS leaders have good reason to observe confidentiality
Sanobar Shermatova

It is difficult to make an objective assessment of the informal summit of the CIS heads of state in Kazakhstan's Almaty. Nothing is officially known about the results of bilateral meetings between the Russian president and his CIS counterparts while it was there that the presidents sought to put in synch their policy courses.

Western Values

Closed two-way negotiations are traditional at every CIS summit. In this particular case, however, there was also a special reason: On several occasions negotiators broached cooperation with the United States. According to well informed sources, the Russian side sought, in tactful form, to wake up its CIS partners to problems that are bound to arise between their countries and the United States as friendly relations strengthen.

Washington usually sets tough demands on its partners in the sphere of human rights, freedom of expression, dialogue with the political opposition, and free elections. Is the elite of CIS member states ready to see U.S.-backed political opposition gain strength? Which of the incumbent presidents in the Central Asian republics is prepared to embrace Western democratic standards in their traditional societies? There are hardly any grounds for hoping that they will be able to avoid that, as did U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. After all, post-Soviet republics, including in Asia, are members of the OSCE and have assumed certain obligations.

Incidentally, the appearance of U.S. bases in Central Asia, far from dampening the intensity of criticism in Western, including U.S., media toward Central Asian rulers, in effect gave it a fresh impetus.

In exchange for promises of loans and assistance, the political elite will have to adopt Western standards. This applies not only to observance of democratic norms but also to compliance in good faith with existing treaties. Say, it came as a shock to the Uzbek government that it would have to pay for the maintenance of German forces deployed in Termez - under the Partnership for Peace treaty that Tashkent and NATO signed a few years ago. When the treaty was being signed, no one in Uzbekistan thought that NATO troops could ever be deployed on its territory. So the provision making it incumbent on the host country to foot the bills of a NATO contingent was ignored.

In the end, the German side bent the rule and agreed to take on all the costs involved in the leasing of an airport and the presence of its forces in Uzbekistan.

What's the Tradeoff?

Possibly, despite a decade of independence, the current political elite of Central Asia is still in the grip of the "Soviet syndrome": Assistance to the weak should be free. Yet friendship with the world's sole superpower will inevitably require a review of both foreign and domestic policy. To what extent is this in the interest of the states themselves and of their leaderships?

The delicacy of the task facing Russian diplomacy lay in that these talks should not be read as anti-U.S., for Moscow would hate to mar the relationship with Washington by appearing to drive a wedge between the United States and Central Asia. Yet, what can Russia give its neighbors in place of loans and assistance promised by the West?

Now, after the summit in Kazakhstan, it becomes clear that Moscow is planning to meet a rise in U.S. influence by stepping up cooperation with its neighbors in the region. Its main trump is identity of economic interests.

Unifying Gas

The idea of forging an alliance of gas producing countries was first brought up in a conversation between Vladimir Putin and Saparmurad Niyazov in the course of the Russian president's official visit to Turkmenistan in May 2000. It was a perfectly logical move: Turkmenistan and Russia are the largest gas producers in the CIS. The plans for building a gas alliance take on special importance given that, according to IGU forecasts, after 2005, the EU states will be almost entirely dependent on external gas sources. By 2030, import will account for approximately 70 percent of Europe's gas needs. In addition, demand for this fuel is expected to grow in Southeast Asia, especially in Japan and China.

At present European needs are met with Russian shipments, but should Turkmenistan emerge as a big-time gas exporter, Russia will have a strong competitor to deal with. Meanwhile, Russian-Turkmen cooperation will enable the two countries to effectively uphold their prices.

A gas alliance with Turkmenistan provides yet another advantage to Russia: a chance to influence the future of the Transafghan gas pipeline. Experts predict an early reanimation of plans to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan and farther on. This route, bypassing Russia, with Western companies calling the shots, is definitely not in its interests.

That is why the statement on the intention to create a gas alliance mentions, besides Russia and Turkmenistan, also Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The fact is that the Soviet-era Druzhba gas pipeline passes through their territory. Not surprisingly, at the summit in Chimbulak, Vladimir Putin elaborated at length, for the benefit of the press, on the unique pipeline network inherited from the Soviet Union, unrivalled in the world.

It is noteworthy that only recently, when discussing the idea of the gas alliance, Turkmen leader Niyazov insisted that only Russia and Turkmenistan participate in it. According to Russian diplomats, that was the reason why, in the course of Saparmurad Niyazov's visit to Moscow this past January, an appropriate agreement was not signed. What prompted the Turkmen president to revise his position is yet another secret of Russian-Turkmen relations.

True, it is too soon to talk about a gas alliance as a fait accompli. A joint statement is just a step in this direction.

http://www.mn.ru/english/issue.php?2002-9-3