New York – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Monday with Kazakhstan’s foreign minister as the U.S. sought closer ties to the oil-rich country despite what critics call its disturbing backslide toward autocracy.
Before the meeting, Rice did not answer when asked whether human rights or energy would top the agenda for the meeting with her Kazakh counterpart. The session on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly sets up a White House invitation for Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Friday.
Afterward, the State Department said Rice’s session with Kazakh Foreign Affairs Minister Kassymzhomart Taokaev, held in her suite at the opulent Waldorf-Astoria hotel, included discussions about Kazakh cooperation in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also covered hopes for “a multidimensional relationship with Kazakhstan, which includes U.S. encouragement for continuing reforms,” the department said.
The State Department’s assistant secretary of state for human rights, Barry Lowenkron, accompanied Rice to the meeting.
Nazarbayev’s trip starts today with a private visit to the Bush family home in Maine to meet President Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush.
“The time has come when we can raise our relations to a completely new level,” the Kazakh leader said before leaving for the United States.
Kazakhstan has grown in importance because of its huge oil reserves. The vast Central Asian republic, which is the size of Western Europe, is expected to pump 3.5 million barrels of oil a day in the coming decade.
With the other four former Soviet Central Asian nations being more authoritarian, too unstable, too poor or a combination of all three, Kazakhstan has emerged as the West’s logical ally in the strategic energy-rich region north of Afghanistan and Iran.
The Bush administration also has praised Kazakhstan as a model because of its decision in the 1990s to dismantle nuclear weapons it acquired under Soviet rule.
Nazarbayev has held tight control for 17 years, overseeing Kazakhstan’s notable economic advance after the 1991 Soviet breakup. The economy has grown around 10 percent annually in the past eight years.
But democratic reforms have stumbled and Nazarbayev’s image has been tarnished by allegations of graft.
Nazarbayev was re-elected with 91 percent of the vote in December balloting that international observers called flawed. The 2004 parliamentary vote produced a legislature without a single opposition lawmaker.
In July, Nazarbayev signed legislation that sets up new regulations for media organizations, a law that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe called “a step backward” for media freedoms.
Two of Nazarbayev’s most outspoken critics were killed over the past year – a worrying signal in a country that had no culture of political murders. Authorities have said both slayings were nonpolitical.
The U.S. has criticized the election and Kazakhstan’s human rights record but has kept its comments mild.
