4 Leaders Try to Offset Russia's Clout
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – Leaders of four former Soviet republics discussed ways to counterbalance Russia's wide influence in the Caspian and Black Sea basins at a summit of their regional grouping.From Steve: On the other side of the Caspian, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan still have no concrete link into the Baku-based oil-and-natural gas pipelines to the Mediterranean.
The summit is the first for the organization, called GUAM, the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, since its four member countries – Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova – agreed last year to deepen ties and cooperation.
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Instead they recently agreed to build another natural gas pipeline through Russia. To the degree that they are seeking leverage against Russian influence of their energy markets, they are doing so by building up transportation with China, and organizing barge traffic to Baku.
But one wonders if this will be sufficient for their long-term economic independence.
Labels: Azerbaijan, Baku, Caspian, Ceyhan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, oil pipelines, Putin, Russia, Russian oil, Ukraine
4 Comments:
This is an interesting Russian Daily piece on GUAM.
Just on the light side - what does Guam think of GUAM?
Very nice site. Look forward to your book.
That's a good question. As you know, Uzbekistan dropped
out, otherwise it previously was called GUUAM, fairly unwieldy.
Thanks for your note.
IHT has a reprint of an earlier NYT article: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/21/asia/stan.php
It says:"The president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, also said he would like to build a pipeline across the Caspian Sea that would link this Central Asian country and its vast natural gas fields to routes that could carry the gas to the West."
How serious can he be given that just weeks earlier he agreed with Russia to build a trans-Russian pipeline?
I think it's serious in the character of, "I'd like to have a Jaguar parked in my driveway." Neither Turkmenistan nor, more important, Kazakhstan have shown the will nor vision to build such a line, which really is their best guarantee for political and economic independence.
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