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Courted From All Sides
Find original article in The Moscow Times here
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov is having a kind of coming out party in New York this week, ending the self-imposed semi-isolation into which late former President Saparmurat Niyazov plunged Turkmenistan and its top leadership.
The youthful Turkmen president has a busy schedule ahead of him. In addition to having met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday, he will address the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday; he is sure to be sought after by senior European diplomats attending the annual meeting. In addition, he will give a speech before an audience at Columbia University and at a smaller meeting organized by the Eurasia Group, a New York-based political risk advisory and consulting firm.
The United States and the Europeans are eager to convince the Turkmen president that they are ideal partners for cooperation in the energy sphere, that they can bring the most modern technology available into upstream production and can teach the Turkmen how to best protect their national interests through maximizing the sanctity of contracts. In addition, the U.S. hosts and their European partners hope to provide Berdymukhammedov with a reliable transportation alternative to Russia’s and China’s in the form of a new gas pipeline that goes under the Caspian Sea and connects with the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline.
