Politics

Rice Sets Sights On Energy-Rich Ex-Soviet Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) ― Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is leading U.S. efforts to court energy-rich Kazakhstan, the former Soviet republic balancing close relations with Russia and openings to the West after Moscow's invasion of Georgia.

As Rice seeks improved ties, democracy and human rights seemed likely to take a back seat during her visit Sunday to Astana, capital of the vast Central Asian nation. The stop is intended to signal U.S. rejection of Moscow's claim to a sphere of influence in the region.

The top U.S. diplomat, who was in India on Saturday, planned to stress Kazakhstan's potential as an alternative energy supplier. Her schedule included meetings with Foreign Minister Marat Tazhin, Prime Minister Karim Masimov and President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country's autocratic ruler.

Nazarbayev has maintained a military alliance and close relations with Russia. He also has kept a door open to the West and looked to develop new export routes to Europe for Kazakhstan's vast energy resources.

That balancing act has been in doubt since Russia's invasion of Georgia in August, which threatened to close off the corridor for pipelines around Russia.

Since Russian forces pushed close to Georgia's capital before pulling back, the Bush administration has tried to signal its commitment to countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Last month, Vice President Dick Cheney traveled to Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan, another important energy exporter in the region.

The administration does not want to be seen as the one "that lost Eurasia and the Caspian region," said Ariel Cohen, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

The United States also has sought to develop military ties with Kazakhstan as a regional power close to U.S. operations in Afghanistan.

Kazakhstan's membership in a Russian-led Eurasian security bloc precludes the country from joining NATO. But it retains close contact with and regularly conducts joint military exercises with the Western alliance.

Despite the interest in cultivating relations with Nazarbayev, Rice planned to bring up democracy and human rights issues during the visit, according to the State Department. Assistant Secretary of State David Kramer, who focuses on those issues, went to Kazakhstan ahead of Rice.

But as its rivalry with Moscow intensifies, the U.S. has proved less eager to raise sharp differences with Kazakhstan and other countries in the region, which the U.S. see as key to unraveling Russian energy monopolies. Washington accuses Moscow of using the monopolies to achieve political ends through the constant threat of turning off oil and gas supplies.

Though President Bush promised to make democracy promotion a priority in his second term, that interest has increasingly given way to pragmatic goals.

Kazakhstan's democratic record will be scrutinized over the coming year as it prepares to take over as head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2010. The position atop the democracy-promoting group was offered as an incentive to positive change.

In a speech at the OSCE's Madrid summit in 2006, Tazhin promised to step up democratic reforms and improve media freedoms.

A report released this past week by a democracy watchdog organization, Freedom House, found that the country has fallen well short of those commitments. The group warned that Kazakhstan's performance threatens the OSCE's credibility. But Jeffrey Goldstein, Freedom House's senior program manager for Central Asia, said Rice's trip could be positive.

"It depends on what she is going to do or say when she gets there," he said. "We think reform should be as high up the agenda as possible."

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