They even visited Turkmenistan…
Politics and Society, Uzbekistan11 Comments
UPDATE 2 The OSCE did in fact visit Uzbekistan. Apologies to our readers for the mistaken reporting!
UPDATE: There is some question as to the accuracy of the below information. Nathan has the lowdown at the Registan on who is saying the OSCE visited Uzbekistan, and who says they didn’t. The link to the eurasianet story that said they did not went dead (which might be indicative in and of itself), so I replaced it with the RFE/RL version where it was also carried.
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The OSCE recently toured all the Central Asian countries… except Uzbekistan. In the ultimate snub, the OSCE is even trying to engage Turkmenistan, but has chosen to ignore Uzbekistan completely.
De Gucht’s omission of Uzbekistan from his itinerary but inclusion of Turkmenistan was likely meant to send a message to Tashkent that its image abroad is suffering.
If Uzbekistan needs that message spelt out for it, then its government is even more dire straits than observers are reporting. This cycle is self-perpetuating. As Uzbekistan isolates itself from the West, it is subject to harsher and harsher criticism, and now brazen insults, which will push the country even further away.
What the OSCE tour does emphasize is just how alone Uzbekistan is these days, even with regard to its own neighbors. The country may have some success reaching out to countries like Russia, but most other countries (like South Korea) are unlikely to seriously jeopardize their relation by allowing Uzbekistan to take diplomatic refuge.
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[...] The OSCE recently visited all of the states of former Soviet Central Asia except for Uzbekistan, which it is snubbing and ignoring completely, says James at neweurasia. [...]
Hi,
You again misleading readers. De Gucht visited Uzbekistan on Friday and met local officials, including Uzbek President Islam Karimov.
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If I am misleading readers, it is not knowingly. Do you have a source on that? If so I will update the post. I cited my source in the link….
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According to REGNUM, De Gucht actually visited Uzbekistan on 1 April:
“Islam Karimov and OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht exchanged opinions on the issues of the current state and prospects of relations between Uzbekistan and the OSCE
as well as on the issues of further development of Uzbek-Belgian cooperation.”
The Russian version of the press-service’s website says the same.
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Who Is Wrong?
Yesterday, James posted about OSCE Chairman/Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht’s Central Asia visit. James noted that Uzbekistan was left of de Gucht’s itinerary and said that it is a sign of Uzbekistan’s diplomatic isolation fr…
Hi,
OSCE head visited Uzbekistan and I have seen video feed on Uzbek TV with de Gucht and Karimov with participation of Uzbek Foreign Minister Elyor Ghaniev and delegates of the OSCE.
The meeting took place on Saturday, 1 April and I assume that OSCE office was on weekend holidays.
Besides, the Uzbek president’s web site http://www.press-service.uz also made report on the visit.
I have also read reports of Interfax and BBC Monitoring on the visit of de Gucht.
I think RFE/RL made wrong reports and mislead readers. This is usual case for them.
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Jack, Olesya: You were right; please accept my apologies.
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That’s OK. People are making mistakes usually and do not trust media for 100%.
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James, that was April fool’s day joke, right?
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If it was, the joke was on us…
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[...] Arena has one of the stranger articles out there about the OSCE’s visit to Uzbekistan. According to the source, the OSCE head Karel De Gucht (who RFE/RL erroneously reported had not visited Uzbekistan – a story repeated by myself here at neweurasia) asked a pointed question about Andijan, questioning whether the protesters were terrorists or peaceful demonstrators. The response was a tale I for one have never heard before. [...]