by Farkhod Tolipov (the 08/07/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev made an official visit to Tashkent on June 13, 2013, which was expected to be a breakthrough in Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan relations. During the visit, the two states signed a Treaty on Strategic Partnership. This event can indeed be considered a breakthrough in bilateral relations between the two states, which have until recently been perceived as competitors for regional leadership in Central Asia. While Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan signed an unprecedented Treaty “On Eternal Friendship” in the late 1990s, the Uzbek-Kazakh friendship has always been fragile and hardly eternal. Will the new Treaty change the status-quo in Central Asia?
by Georgiy Voloshin (07/10/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
On June 30 and July 1, British Prime Minister David Cameron paid his first official visit to Kazakhstan. This was also the first ever visit of a head of the British government to this Central Asian country. Accompanied by Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Cameron took part in the inauguration of an oil-processing plant off the Caspian coast in the Atyrau region. The launch of this industrial facility whose construction had lasted for more than eight years coincides with the resolution of a months-long conundrum surrounding the Kashagan oilfield, one of the largest oil deposits in the world discovered during the last 40 years.
by Sergei Gretsky (07/10/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
The recent visit of Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Uzbekistan on June 13-14 was closely watched in the capitals of other Central Asian states as well as Central Asia’s neighbors. The visit continued the discussions started last year during Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov’s visit to Kazakhstan when the two presidents initiated a process of closer alignment between Astana and Tashkent in regional security matters. This time the two leaders have taken relations between their countries a step further by signing a Treaty on Strategic Partnership.
by Georgiy Voloshin (the 06/26/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
On June 21, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed into law a bill introducing a comprehensive reform of the country’s pension savings system. The main novelty of the bill is a provision increasing women’s retirement age from 58 to 63 years, thus ensuring full equality with the working male population. Earlier in April, the chairman of Kazakhstan’s National Bank, Grigory Marchenko, made public the results of an independent assessment made by international experts according to which the state budget might lose US$ 19.6 billion worth of potential tax revenue by 2023, should a similar reform not be adopted by the end of this year.
The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst is a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Council, Washington DC., and the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. For 15 years, the Analyst has brought cutting edge analysis of the region geared toward a practitioner audience.
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