USA TODAY

Rice presses for democracy

October 13, 2005

By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY

ASTANA, Kazakhstan - As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice toured Central Asia promoting democracy, opposition leaders complained that the United States cares more about tapping the region's oil.

Rice spent Thursday in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. She flies today to Moscow to discuss policy toward Iran and Syria.

"We are concerned that for the United States, the key issue is oil; second, the war on terrorism; and only third, democracy and human rights," said Bulat Abilov, a leader of Kazakhstan's Ak Zhol (Bright Path) party, one of several opposition groups that allege government intimidation.

Located south of Russia and east of China, Kazakhstan has an estimated 3% of the world's oil and gas, according to State Department estimates. It is also considered a key ally in stopping the proliferation of nuclear materials and combating Islamic fundamentalism.

Abilov said he was disappointed Rice did not use her speech at Gumilov Eurasian National University to criticize President Nursultan Nazarbayev for alleged harassment of opposition leaders and the press.

Nazarbayev, who took power in 1989, has held a series of elections the State Department has called unfair. After meeting him, Rice said she wasn't ducking difficult issues: "If we were interested only in oil and the war on terrorism, we would not be speaking in the way &ellipsis; we are about democracy."

Nazarbayev was the Soviet Communist Party's chief in Kazakhstan before the country emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. He disputed opponents' claims that he and his family control the nation's media and banks.

"It's up to you if I meet your definition of a dictator," he said at a news conference with Rice. "We have political parties, we have opposition that criticizes the authorities. You can get opposition newspapers anywhere you want."

Nazarbayev also pledged a clean election in December and said foreign observers would be welcome. He faces more than a dozen challengers.

International election monitors said the 1999 elections that kept Nazarbayev in office were unfair, and Human Rights Watch wrote the president this week to say the organization had received "numerous reports of your government's continuing harassment of the political opposition and violations of the right to freedom of assembly."

Nazarbayev and leaders of other Central Asian republics, such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, are cracking down on opposition groups in reaction to mass protests in other former Soviet republics, said Troy Etulain, director of the Tajikistan office of Internews, a non-government organization that trains journalists.

Those protests, which toppled governments in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in the last year, have led Kazakhstan and Tajikistan to curtail the activities of foreign organizations and local opposition groups. Rice visited Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday.

Tajikistan last week jailed its main opposition leader for 23 years on alleged corruption charges.

Etulain said that the government had refused permission to open independent radio stations and that eight print journalists had been convicted of various offenses this year. One was sentenced to two years in jail for illegally tapping electrical lines.

Rice acknowledged Central Asia's lack of democratic traditions after a meeting Thursday with Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmonov. But, she said, the "important issue" is to make progress toward democracy.