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CENTRASIA: WILL KYRGYZSTAN BREAK THE STATUS OF THE U.S. ENCLAVE?
Recently, American diplomats, Paul Polites and Kakku Kimara have been expelled from Kyrgyzstan. “According to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the two diplomats working for the U.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan have been declared as personas non grata in the republic”, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated on July 12, 2006. The Ministry emphasized that “this decision was made in conformity with the facts given by the special services about repeated interference in the country’s domestic affairs which is incompatible with the diplomat’s status and the recognized standards of the international law”. Two weeks later there was a reaction: the diplomatic department’s employees accredited in the USA and Canada, Saltanat Tashmatova and Asan Usupov were turned down.
The White House, which failed to build the mutually beneficial partner relations with Kyrgyzstan and provoked the diplomatic conflict resulting in the expulsion of the both countries’ diplomats, tries to improve its policy towards Kyrgyzstan by making it less tough. This is the viewpoint of the majority of the political scientists who are sure that the seeming victories in the Middle East turned George Bush’s head and whereby he denied political and financial assistance to the Kyrgyz authorities. The U.S. President administration had a low opinion of the situation with the Kyrgyz non-governmental organizations as well as refused even to consider the price for the lease of the Manas air force base, which had been proposed by Kyrgyzstan. However, the present stage of the Kyrgyz-American relations cannot be regarded only as result of a failure in the bargains. This is the only correct foreign policy capable of granting the Kyrgyz people the benefits they have been striving for. Now, the Bishkek’s relations with its neighbors are inversely proportional to the cooperation with the USA. For all the assurances that it is possible to simultaneously ‘run with the hare and hunt with the hounds’, Kyrgyzstan’s neighbors, which went through the Bush pseudo democracy and have experienced the colonial foreign policy conducted by the White House, would be unlikely to establish good-neighborly relations with Bishkek if it did not break the status of the U.S. enclave.
The Kyrgyzstan’s statehood consists in historic, geographical and entographical friendship with its Asian neighbors. A great deal in the Kyrgyz economy depends on the improvement of the relations with Russia. The future of the project on the completion of the Kambaratinsk HPP-1 and HPP-2, the construction of the aluminium plant in Kyrgyzstan and other large projects directly depends on Russia’s capital.
Foreign Minister Alikbek Djekshenkulov said that now the Russian-Kyrgyz relations are up to the mark. Russia is the major trade partner of that country and ranks first in Kyrgyzstan’s volume of trade with other countries. The Minister also emphasized that Kyrgyzstan attached great importance to close cooperation with Russia within the framework of the CIS, the CSTO, the EAEC and the SCO; he also supported the Russian foreign-policy initiatives.
Prime-Minister Felix Kulov is convinced that the friendship with Russia and the Central Asian countries is fruitful. In spite of all the U.S. efforts to embroil Kyrgyzstan with its neighbors, particularly with Russia and Uzbekistan, he reported: “I believe that Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan will not be able to be on such relations for a long time and in the near future our cool relations will improve”. We shall remind that the U.S. administration tried to provoke the conflict between those countries several times, exerting pressure on the Kyrgyz authorities and opposing their official position to those of Moscow and Tashkent. The factor of energy supplies from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan played significant role in that. Aide of the U.S. Secretary of State on the Eurasian Affairs Daniel Frid emphasized that America ‘will not permit the foreign pressure’, especially in the energy sphere. All that is done to strengthen the U.S. precarious position in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.
The Central Asian people have always lived and they will live in friendship, cooperation, peace and accord. They are united by historical rites and customs, common religion and boundaries as well as brotherhood and ties of relationship. The Kyrgyz leaders have spoken about that many times. Now those relations are bolstered up. The friendly relations and the trade-economic cooperation are being developed, the cultural organizations activity is becoming more intense. In the age of the USA-led globalization the development of the cooperation between the Central Asian states and Russia may turn out to be of pivotal importance for the region’s nations.
Sergei DEMIDOV, political writer, Bishkek
CentrAsia, August 29, 2006
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