WASHINGTON, Sept 29: President George Bush praised Kazakhstan as a ‘free nation’ while meeting on Friday with its leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, despite criticism by human rights groups of the Kazakh government’s autocratic ways.
Washington views Kazakhstan — a vast Central Asian country with abundant oil and gas reserves — as an important strategic ally and economic partner in a region where Russia and China also compete for influence.
But Kazakhstan’s elections have been deemed flawed, including the contest last year in which Mr Nazarbayev was re-elected, and rights groups have criticized the government’s restrictions on the media and political opposition.
Sitting next to Mr Nazarbayev in the Oval Office, Mr Bush thanked him for supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and said that they shared a desire to ‘defeat extremism’ and support the forces of moderation.
“We talked about our commitment to institutions that will enable liberty to flourish,” said Mr Bush, who has made the spread of democracy a top foreign policy goal.
“I have watched very carefully the development of this important country from one that was in the Soviet sphere to one that now is a free nation,” he added.
Nazarbayev has held power in Kazakhstan since 1989, when the majority-Muslim nation was still part of the Soviet Union.
He touted his country’s economic growth rate of nine per cent a year, saying it was highest in the world, and its decision to renounce nuclear weapons.
US INVESTMENT: The United States is Kazakhstan’s biggest investor, accounting for one-third of all foreign investments.
As a measure of the importance Bush places on cultivating good relations with Kazakhstan, his father, former President George Bush, invited Nazarbayev to the family’s Kennebunkport, Maine, estate earlier this week.
Martha Brill Olcott, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Bush likely would want to avoid pressing Nazarbayev too hard on concerns about freedoms.
“Kazakhstan is not a democracy,” Olcott said. But the country’s rapid economic growth and other forces, she added, will lead to more openness, although the pace of change may be slower than the West would like to see.
U.S. oil firms have invested heavily in Kazakhstan. The country, which stretches from the Caspian Sea to China, is expected to join the top 10 oil producers in a decade.—Reuters
