Kanat Saudabayev speaks at Atlantic Council
Kazakhstan, Politics and Society, VideoblogNo Comment
On Wednesday February 3, Kazakhstan’s Secretary of State and Foreign Minister, Kanat Saudabayev spoke to a group of journalists and foreign policy community specialists at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. (transcript in English and MP3 in Russian here). This talk comes on the wings of Kazakhstan chairing the OSCE this year. Saudabayev is in Washington for several weeks talking up Kazakhstan’s achievements in his capacity as OSCE chairman (RUS).
He spoke of Kazakhstan’s objectives for its year holding the chairmanship: security in Afghanistan (particularly important as Kazakhstan has just signed a transit deal with NATO over an alternative route to Afghanistan and emphasized the key role of Central Asia to security in Kazakhstan, as well as the goal of Kazakhstan to become closer to Europe (RUS):
He also emphasized that Kazakhstan, being the only country to recently give up its nuclear program peacefully, would be a perfect partner to approach Iran on its nuclear policies, and not in the least because Kazakhstan, as a landlocked country, was eager to get a safe passage through to the Persian Gulf for trade purposes, and access to Indian markets through Afghanistan (RUS):
He also spoke about his goals of arranging an OSCE summit, the likes of which hasn’t been done for at least 13 years due to the security implications of having over 20 world leaders together in one place. He’ll be pushing this in 2010.
One thing he diplomatically avoided was discussing Kazakhstan’s human rights record when asked what Kazakhstan’s government was doing to improve its Freedom House human rights and press freedoms ratings, saying that if the OSCE thought Kazakhstan was important enough to allow it to head the OSCE in 2010, that said much about the country’s human rights record and that the country would strive to improve irregardless of international organization approval, but due to the wish of the people of Kazakhstan (RUS, and sorry about the bad video quality
He was introduced by former Senator Chuck Hagel, who, as a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, visited many countries in Central Asia, including Kazakhstan and was a key critic of the war in Iraq.
Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TQoOukDiNk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHMOKWjpjJc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx2FMSZH5UA
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