US Decision To Cut Aid To Uzbekistan Seen as 'Public Slap in The Face' (Internet) Centrasia.ru WWW-Text in Russian 15 Jul 04
US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Elizabeth Jones arrived in Tashkent yesterday. A day before, on 13 July, the US administration announced its decision to reduce financial aid to Uzbekistan by $18 million.
The announcement of the US Department of State says that this decision had been made due to "insufficient progress in democratic reforms" in Uzbekistan. The document mentions the deaths of detainees in Uzbek prisons and the unwillingness of the Uzbek authorities to register opposition parties.
Obviously, Ms Jones has been entrusted with a mission to exchange views on this matter with the Uzbek leadership, to which Washington had repeatedly expressed its most sincere acknowledgements for assistance in carrying out the antiterrorist operation in Afghanistan.
As is known, Uzbekistan was the first of the Central Asian CIS states to make its air base in Xonobod [southern Qashqadaryo Region] - a few dozen kilometres away from the Afghan border - available to the Americans. This air base became the biggest military advanced post of the USA in post-Soviet Central Asia, and it was the beginning of a serious change in the strategic balance of forces between the USA and Russia.
Elizabeth Jones will try to persuade Tashkent that the decision to reduce financial aid, according to a statement from the Department of State, "does not mean a change in the USA's interests in the region or its unwillingness to continue cooperation with Uzbekistan". Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this US move will be accepted by Tashkent extremely sensitively. This can be considered a public slap in the face for the Uzbek regime. Tashkent has already accustomed itself to the sermons of US politicians who call on it to listen to the problems of the White House administration, which is experiencing enormous pressure from Congress and the American public for "non-critical" cooperation with a country where human rights are seriously violated and there are no democratic processes. However, as a rule, such admonishments took place at closed-door meetings.
[Passage omitted: EBRD wound up its programs in Uzbekistan's state sector]
It is not by chance that, on the eve of Elizabeth Jones' visit, the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a communiqué which stresses that the characteristics of US-Uzbek relations are "strategic partnership" and that this is "developing effectively". It is hard to say whether official propaganda in Uzbekistan will publicly note Washington's move, which is not very pleasant to Tashkent.
However, one can say confidently that it was Islom Karimov who felt first that this was unavoidable. In September last year, receiving [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, who made a two-hour stopover in Samarqand on his way back to Russia, the Uzbek president spoke about the former "euphoria" surrounding hopes for economic cooperation with the West.
Karimov can be confident that unlike Washington, Moscow will not attach conditions of democratic changes to any aid. A statement issued recently by the heads of CIS states condemning the OSCE for its policy of "double standards" in relations with CIS states is testimony to that.
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