Kazakstan Courts Ashgabat

Kazak foreign minister Kasymzhomart Tokaev’s current talks in Ashgabat are officially focusing on gas, but his trip can also be seen as an attempt to bring Turkmenistan back into the fold of Central Asian states.



Tokaev’s official visit on August 30-31 counts as a rare event in relations between these two countries. Kazak and Turkmen officials have conducted very few high-level meetings, and analysts note that President Nursultan Nazarbaev has not been able to establish the same close working relationship with his Turkmen counterpart Saparmurat Niazov as he has with other regional leaders.



Observers say the timing of the visit is far from accidental – it takes place on the eve of an informal summit in the Kazak capital Astana where the presidents of Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan will gather to discuss water and energy issues. The summit should result in the creation of a regional water and energy consortium, and although Turkmenistan will not attend, the suggestion is that Tokaev’s visit may be designed to bring Ashgabat into the consortium.



Аs the region’s two leading producers of hydrocarbons, Kazakstan and Turkmenistan need a closer relationship, analysts say. The major bilateral concern is therefore how to get their energy resources to world markets. They could share the same infrastructure to move their oil and gas to markets both east and west.



A future trans-Caspian pipeline could carry Turkmen and Kazak gas to Turkey and onward to Europe. The United States and Europe have recently stepped up efforts to implement this project, but this requires that Kazakstan and Turkmenistan come to an agreement on the disputed status of the Caspian Sea.



To the east lies China, with which Niazov has already signed a gas export deal. This could eventually result in sales to Japan, too. The pipeline route would go through Uzbekistan, where the Bukhara gas fields would also feed into it.



Another eastward route also under consideration would run from Turkmenistan through northwestern Kazakstan to China, bypassing Uzbekistan. This option would be more attractive for Kazakstan. It would supply gas to southern and southeastern areas of Kazakstan, freeing them from their current dependence on Uzbek gas. The China National Petroleum Company has the concession to build this pipeline.



Analysts believe the Kazak foreign minister may have gone to Ashgabat with concrete proposals on the route for this pipeline, and on the amount of money Kazakstan would put into the project.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)