At a September 17 meeting convened to discuss the investment potential for Central Asia and the Caucasus, featured speakers instead focused on geopolitics, staking out a skeptical stance on a possible US attack against Iraq. Every speaker from Central Asia or the Caucasus endorsed Russia’s view that the UN should exhaust all hope of ensuring Iraqi compliance with weapons inspection demands before the international community authorizes a war.
Officials from Central Asia and the Caucasus, speaking at the Eruasia Summit, generally opposed the concept of unilateral US military action against Iraq. The meeting -- sponsored by two UN agencies and the private consulting concern the Eurasia Group -- featured speakers including Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi and Azerbaijani Azerbaijani UN Diplomat Eldar Mamedyarov. In appealing for foreign investment in Central Asia and the Caucasus, speakers invoked the new friendship between the United States and Russia and the importance of regional security.
Countries struck different tones: Kharazzi sounded defiant, Turkey’s chief diplomat stressed collaboration, and Ivanov made a strident and technical case that UN inspectors had begun addressing key questions about Iraq’s fissile and nuclear capability. But at and beyond the conference, all countries squarely insisted that UN procedure should being the determining factor for what happens in Iraq. The United States eroded decades of Russian influence in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and elsewhere by providing large amounts of aid and military support. But those countries, by refusing to back American interpretations of the Iraq problem, are revealing that the new alliance may be less firm than previously believed.
Indeed, these countries seem willing to treat their membership in an American-led anti-terrorist coalition as a chance to play for respect on other issues. Shortly after praising American investment in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, Mamedyarov put the United States said: "Each member of the UN should strictly follow the resolutions of the [UN] Security Council," he told EurasiaNet. "It is in the interest of the international community that there be no unilateral action." The diplomat then drew a parallel between this principle and Azerbaijan’s position on the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. But his unambiguous language echoes what observers of the war on terrorism have suspected for months. Central Asian leaders, these observers say, feel more indispensable to the United States than beholden to it.
In Central Asia, governments that provided bases to American and allied soldiers in Afghanistan have volunteered their misgivings about self-directed American action in Iraq. A Kyrgyz newspaper reported on September 18 that "official Bishkek also views negotiations as the only acceptable way to resolve this confrontation." Uzbekistan struck a similar note. "The policy of Uzbekistan gives priority to the solution of any problems by means of negotiations," Tashkent radio personality Makham Risqiyev told listeners on September 16. "Close and friendly relations with one country do not mean a plot against another." This represents a harder line than that endorsed by Azerbaijan or even Iran, both of whose representatives at the Eurasia Summit allowed for the possibility of military action if the Security Council deems it necessary. Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have faced criticism for squelching political opposition after cementing alliances with the Americans.
These states’ eagerness to preemptively oppose unilateral action in Iraq could complicate American efforts to establish influence in the region. As energetically as they dubbed themselves antiterrorist in autumn 2001, leaders now proclaim themselves respectful of national sovereignty. Ivanov, defending Russia’s week-old warning that it might send soldiers into Georgia to root out "bandits," assured listeners that "Russia is not going to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign Georgia." This tack echoed through many speeches. Kharazzi, who began the conference, accused the United States of interfering in Iran’s politics by pointedly refusing to support President Mohammed Khatami in his battle to wrest power from the country’s conservative religious clerics. Tellingly, Kharazzi said Iran would endorse whatever the Security Council decided and would "act in its own self-interest." He urged the audience to view Iraq’s September 16 invitation to weapons inspectors as "a triumph of multilateralism."
The idea of an assertive UN colored the conference. Foreign ministers from Armenia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan who had appeared on the agenda instead attended the UN General Assembly a few blocks away. Mark Malloch-Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, told EurasiaNet that the UN’s recent assertiveness on the Iraq question could create an opportunity for broader efforts to foster democracy and growth in Central Asia.
For much of his presentation, Kharazzi stressed that Iran, labeled by US President George W. Bush as a member of the Axis of Evil, possessed democratic institutions, citing recent hotly contested presidential and parliamentary elections. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Kharazzi also said Tehran had an interest in helping to coordinate regional economic and security arrangements. Answering a question about what diplomatic steps could thaw relations between Iran and the United States, Kharazzi shrugged. "Everything is in the hands of the extremists," he said emotionlessly. When the questioner asked him which country he was describing, Kharazzi replied: "Here [the United States]."
As Afghanistan struggles to make the transition to a stable state, countries in the region are looking for investment and strong protectors. With Russia firmly opposed to any rupture in Iraq and the diplomacy-minded European Union about to consider enlarging eastward, Central Asian and Caucasian leaders appear unwilling to instantly adopt American views of an unstable region.
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