Kazakhstan’s President In Washington To Meet Donald Trump

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev is in Washington today where he will be meeting President Donald Trump to discuss wide-ranging issues, from economics to the civil war in Syria and Kazakhstan’s role in mediating the conflict.

"The president has arrived in Washington. During the visit, Nazarbayev will meet US President Donald Trump as well as representatives of state and business circles of the USA," the Akorda website reported on January 16.

According to the official White House schedule, the two heads of state will meet at 12:00 p.m. EST, address the press corps shortly thereafter, which will be available via live stream; and then attend a working lunch with the Vice President, Mike Pence.

Trump previously met with Nazarbayev at the Arab Islamic American Summit in Saudi Arabia in May 2017.

Nazarbayev is expected to discuss ways to attract more American investments into what is Central Asia’s largest country and economy. Although the U.S. has been one of Kazakhstan’s major trade, economic and investment partners since it was founded in 1991 shortly after the collapse of the USSR, in recent years Chinese and Russian investments have grown significantly. Furthermore, there has been a drop in U.S.-Kazakhstani trade turnover, putting the U.S. at number seven.

Meeting US ambassador George Krol on January 9 in Astana ahead of today’s official visit, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev highlighted the importance of comprehensive ties with the USA.

"We have built friendly relations between our countries over the last 26 years and signed over 70 interstate, intergovernmental and interdepartmental agreements,” Nazarbayev said on January 9, during a meeting with U.S. Ambassador George Krol. “Nearly 500 companies with American capital are operating in Kazakhstan. Over 140 of them are joint companies," he said, according to KazInform news agency.

While Nazarbayev is optimistic, date shows that economic relations are on the downturn.

The number of American companies operating in Kazakhstan as of January 1, 2013 was 528, but by May of 2017 that number fell to 496. The first eight months of 2017 saw a trade turnover of $1.1 billion, down from a high in 2014 of $2.4 billion.

“The fall in volume is associated with a significant decrease in the prices of resources, since the supply of uranium, yellow phosphorus, tantalum, sulfur to the U.S. market is a significant place in the structure of Kazakhstan's exports,” Sultanbek Sultangaliyev, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist People's Party of Kazakhstan and political expert said in an interview last week.

At the same time, the number of Russian companies increased by 45.7 percent and reached to 7,326 as of May 1, 2016. The Chinese companies in Kazakhstan also increased by 107 percent compared to 2013, and now 1,029 companies operate in the country.

The lion’s share of U.S. investments in Kazakhstan comes via its oil and gas sector. In 1993, a joint venture was formed, called Tengizchevroil, which included Chevron, ExxonMobil, KazMunayGas and LukArco. Now, American giants ExxonMobil, Oryx, Texaco are involved in the Kazakhstani economy.

The perilous situations in Afghanistan and Syria are expected to be high on Nazarbayev’s agenda during his meetings with Trump and Pence, as well as Kazakhstan’s relationship with Russia.

Astana is determined to contain the security threat stemming from Afghanistan, which lies to its south although shares no border. Religious extremism and fundamentalist movements are a concern for governments in Central Asia, which have rebounded from spates of attacks attributed to radicals who were trained and fought in Afghanistan or the Middle East.

Chairman of the Kazakh Council for International Relations and political scientist Yerlan Karin believes that Nursultan Nazarbayev's official visit to the USA will lead to resuming talks on Afghanistan.

"This visit is very important for the USA. The point is that the White House announced it would develop a new U.S. strategy on Afghanistan in the near future. The Afghan strategy is a key aspect of the U.S.'s domestic policy, since it is an indicator of what this or another administration will offer as well as how it will act further and solve this issue," Yerlan Karin said, according to Tengri News.

Karin believes though Kazakhstan does not have specific suggestions on how to resolve the Afghan problem, it is an active regional player. Kazakhstan chairs a UN committee concerned with matters in Afghanistan and the Taliban, and moderates talks on Afghanistan.

Nazarbayev’s visit to the U.S. coincides with Kazakhstan occupying the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council. Nazarbayev will chair a council meeting on Thursday, where he is expected to outline his vision for the year.

Addressing a news conference in Moscow on Tuesday, ahead of Nazarbayev’s visit to Washington, the Russian Foreign Ministry introduced its view of what is known as the C5+1, namely the five Central Asia Republics (CARs) of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and the U.S.

"We have nothing against our Central Asian neighbors’ having the widest possible range of external partners,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

“We presume that these relations will fully respect the obligations that exist between us. However, we hear about the U.S. desire to somewhat abuse this format and promote ideas that are relevant to what was formerly called the Greater Central Asia project under former administrations,” Lavrov added, referring to a U.S. foreign policy that sought to engage the CARs but ensure Russia was excluded.

“I am sure that if this is so, and if similar plans are promoted by our American colleagues at meetings with Central Asian friends, they will all see the inferiority of such attempts, which are actually dictated not by the interests of economic development, but purely by geopolitics,” Lavrov said.