RUSSIA PUSHES BACK AGAINST NATO ALLIANCE IN CENTRAL ASIA
The announcement at the June 28-29 summit in Istanbul that the 26-member security collective intends to "put special focus on engaging with our partners in the strategically important regions of the Caucasus and Central Asia" has set off a stream of commentary from Moscow on how best to respond. Currently, NATO has limited its official statements on the planned engagement to the appointment of two liaison officers for both regions and a special staff representative to facilitate cooperation.
At a July 1 press conference in Moscow, Gleb Pavlovsky, president of the Effective Policy Fund, a political consulting firm, declared that only Russia could guarantee security in the Central Asia and the Caucasus. "It is the Commonwealth of Independent States, rather than NATO, member-nations that provide tangible guarantees of security on the border of this vast area," Pavlovsky said. "A country that expects to have its problems resolved by acceding to NATO will be disappointed." But other Duma members are advocating a subtler tactic in discouraging Central Asia’s interest in partnership with the West.
A strategic alliance agreement signed with Uzbekistan on June 17 during a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization foresees a regional security system based on cooperation between the Uzbek and Russian ministries of defense, foreign affairs, interior affairs, and security councils. Russia has also recently tightened its ties to Tajikistan, with a June 4 agreement on a land lease that would reportedly give Russia indefinite access, fee-free, to a military base outside of the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.
While such agreements constitute significant successes in Russia’s struggle for influence in the region, a reported deal between energy-rich Kazakhstan and a UK military firm could pose a considerable setback.
In the meantime, Russia is emphasizing a series of planned military exercises in Central Asia to underline assertions that regional concerns about terrorism are best solved within a CIS or SCO framework. The "Frontier-2004" exercises, to be held in July in Kyrgyzstan, will involve Kyrgyzstani, Kazakhstani and Tajik troops in exercises with the Russian units.
So far, Western analysts have downplayed the potential effectiveness of this center, referring to past bungled attempts by Moscow at building Eurasia-wide initiatives.
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