Kazakhstan is one of five former Central Asian Soviet Republics that are now independent states - in effect Kazakhstan celebrated at the opening of this year’s UN General Assembly its 15th participation at the GA. Kazakhstan is rich in natural resources including oil, uranium, and coal. It is of a size equal to all of Western Europe and it has an area polluted by the Soviets, with radioactive and chemical materials, that equals the area of France. Soviet nuclear testing sites and the Soviet space program site are located in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan had on its territory a large nuclear weapons arsenal but it declared that it wants to become nuclear free - and it is very active in this direction.

Kazakhstan’s population is very diverse as it served served as a voluntary magnet, as well as an involuntary penal location, during the Soviet years. Many Russians were living in Kazakhstan when it became an independent country. Some of them moved to Russia but many of these people returned because they found life more attractive in Kazakhstan then in Russia. Others, like the Germans, that were resettled to the Khazak Republic from East European parts of the Soviet Empire, were airlifted to Germany, and most of them are gone. The same is true for many Jews that were deported to Central Asia, like one person, a small grocer, whose sin was that he refused to accept a Soviet bill because of rumors that those bills were going to be withdrawn from use. Some war time residents, like Ana Pauker, the Romanian Communist, and her entourage, that stayed in Kazakhstan voluntarily, left back to their countries of origin following the advancing Soviet troops. The official statement from the Kazakhstan government says that 130 different peoples or ethnic groups are represented in today’s Kazakhstan; though the one most sizable group is made up by the Russians. The government is wise to handle the situation so that no effort is made by the Russians to split the country like it may happen in the Ukraine - so Kazakhstan may be spared from this sort of conflict. In general, yet far from being a democracy, the country nevertheless is ruled with an eye at how best to make sure that there is an understanding between the different religious or ethnic groups. New immigrants have arrived from China, the Caucasus, and other Asian states, I was told that even some Africans found their way here.

At www.SustainabiliTank.info we took special interest in Kazakhstan like we did in this Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. Both cases we consider that they have an enlightened form of authoritarian government that has also a streak of far reaching ideas, and if the reader uses the search mechanism on our web, we are sure he will find interesting material in the archive of our website. Last year I visited Bhutan. I was previously in Turkmenistan and in Uzbekistan also, but somehow did not get yet to Kazakhstan. While Bhutan has designed the concept of “Gross National Happiness,” Kazakhstan has concentrated on interethnic accord, including aspects of “Religion, Society and International Security.” Kazakhstan is attempting to become a multidirectional center by establishing accords with countries beyond its neighborhood - be these the EU and OSCE to the west, the Arab countries and Israel to the south, and all the Asian countries to its east, arranging meetings with the participation of countries that do not sustain relations among themselves. To the essence of these ideas, in the case of Kazakhstan we will enlarge now as Kazakhstan was very active in New York and Washington this month - the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister were present at the UN and the President was today in Washington.

September 21, in the morning, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Kassymzhomart Tokaev, participated at UN at the “High-Level Conference on Interfaith Cooperation for Peace.”

His statement follows:






The same day, in the evening, Foreign Minister Tokaev spoke at the Asia Society on: “Kazakhstan’s Quest for Peace, Prosperity, and Political Modernization in Central Asia.”

The Minister was introduced by the Chief Executive of Sun Oil Company who is involved in the oil business in Kazakhstan via the Khaxhdan Company. We learned that the Minister who speaks a fluent English, speaks also Russian, Mandarin, and French and has written five books on diplomacy that include: “Foreign Policy of Kazakhstan in the Context of Globalization,” “the Diplomatic Service of the Republic of Kazakhstan,” and “United Nations: Half a century of serving for peace.” He has a PHd in Political Science from the Moscow Institute of International Relations, and studied at the Beijing Language Institute. He has the personal background that could enable him to reach out someday to closer involvement with the UN. He was the State Secretary-Minister of Foreign Affairs since 1994, then 1999-2000 he was the Prime Minister. A career diplomat, since 1989 his posts moved nevertheless between the Foreign Ministry and the office of the Prime Minister with a stint as Deputy Prime Minister.Much of the presentation dealt with oil but we learned that oil is only 30% of the State revenue, second is Uranium and third is coal.The goal of Kazakhstan is to set up a stronger education system, buy high tech and develop a knowledge based industry. Among the problems in Central Asia he mentioned migration.The Shanghai Organization for Cooperation that includes China was mentioned - so the intent of having a neighborhood policy with the EU and this is what he intends to discuss in Brussels and Athens.

The following day, Foreign Minister Tokaev spoke before UN General Assembly. In its effort to become even more active in the UN system, Kazakhstan is a candidate for UN ECOSOC, and in Europe it has proposed to host the 2007 meeting of OSCE. Also, in economic terms, he announced that the World Bank has included Kazakhstan among the top 20 countries with most attractive economies for investment. Kazakhstan has also applied for membership in the World Trade Organization and the negotiations have reached the final stages.

Kazakhstan is using the occasion of the UN meetings to enlarge on its standing with the US Administration. There are already $15 billion in US direct investment in Kazakhstan ( one third of all foreign investments in Kazakhstan) - this is mainly in the oil business, and Kazakhstan is participating in the US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kazakhstan wants to see the previous “arc of crisis,” that stretched through the other four former Soviet Central Asian Republics all the way to Afghanistan, changed into an “Arc of Opportunity.”

The last ten days a real publicity campaign was managed by Kazakhstan as per:

And in Friday September 30, 3006 New York Times, this to coincide with a lunch at the White House where President Bush hosted Kazakhstan President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev:

The danger in pushing now Washington on subjects of oil is that at this time, with the November elections only five weeks away, everything is seen in Washington from an internal political angle. Kazakhstan, not being exactly a democracy, while its strongest relation to the US is via oil pipelines, is a too strong reminder of other US foreign relations leanings - and thus a subject of contentions. Personally, I have now developed doubts about so called democratization in countries that are too new to the subject. In effect I like the efforts to develop first habits of cohabitation between the various components of Kazakhstan, this because elections are not the only sign of democracy - rather the fair treatment of minorities must be included and this is not achieved easily.

In short: The Wall Street Journal of Friday had only the following to say about the lunch meeting: “Bush praised Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev in a White House meeting criticized as an unseemly gesture to an oil-rich ruler who tolerates no dissent.” Very strange from a business paper that usually is in full agreement with the White House. Even stranger that these days the US media is full with mentions of a satiric movie supposedly about a Kazakh TV reporter called Borat Sagdiyev, who even stranger, looks like a young image of a mustached Ambassador Bolton. He even speaks, moves, and gestures, like him except that he has a Russian accent. To make himself more public, the actor playing Borat positioned himself in front of the Kazakhstan Embassy in Washington for a staged press conference, where he was the one to be interviewed. All what I could think off watching this on TV was that seemingly some oil interests, in the US or even more plausible - in the Middle East - had it out to cooperate with US Democrats to slow down this Kazakh effort to get closer to the US Administration. We, at SustainabiliTank.info have contended all the time that in reality oil is not a blessing to those that have it. Kazakhstan - please beware!

The New York Times dwelt on this some more and the article follows: