Moscow Attempts to Win More Cooperating Attitude of Kazakhstan

Moscow is vexed because of Astana movement towards the West, particularity in the field of energy and military cooperation. Still, the greatest concern of the Kremlin is the decreasing number of levers to pressurize Kazakhstan.

Today's get-together of Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbaev is the first but hardly the last meeting of this year – the leaders saw each other dozens of times in 2005. But such intensity of negations doesn’t point to unclouded nature of bilateral relations. By contrast, it indicates great problems.

First of all, the obvious concern of the Kremlin is improving contacts of Astana and the West in part of setting up routes for energy supplies bypassing Russia. Past June, for instance, Kazakhstan jointed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that Moscow views nearly the key project targeted against Russia on soil of the former Soviet Union. Moreover, Nazarbaev gave his consent for concluding an energy agreement with the EC.

The Energy Summit of Europe that will be held in Warsaw in May will focus on constructing the European branch of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, and Nazarbaev has been invited already along with presidents of Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Another problem that is likely to be raised by Putin today is Astana's drifting from cooperating with Moscow in the Caspian area.

In addition to energy clashes, the presidents will focus on military and engineering relations. Moscow appears very apprehensive about the increase in activity of Kazakh-NATO contacts. Astana plans, for instance, to joint the NATO campaign in Afghanistan by sending 200 troops there.

As alternative to NATO, Putin is likely to urge Kazakhstan to integrate into Collective Security Treaty Organization.

And last but not least, the Kremlin is said to attempt to persuade Kazakhstan to make exactly Russia's enterprises the main contractors to create an integrated system of controlling the space and air area of Kazakhstan (only the first stage of the project is estimated to yield $500 million to $600 million to a contractor).

But the chances of Russia's companies are rather slim. In late past year, Kazakhstan announced an international tender to upgrade its air defense systems, where the bidders are Russia's Rosoboronexport, Britain's DFT-Systems, France’s Thomson, West European EADS and the U.S. Lockheed Martin, which is the obvious frontrunner.

/Kommersant Moscow/