Central Asian powerhouses target West in summit

RUSSIA: The leaders of China, Russia and four Central Asian countries meet in Kyrgyzstan this week to pursue what is widely seen as an anti-US agenda, before attending large-scale war games in Russia to underline their group’s rising clout.

Presidents Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin will join the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek on Thursday for the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

Founded six years ago, the SCO covers a vast territory including increasingly important gas and oil fields in Russia and Central Asia, as well as the emerging economic giant of China.

The six countries deny forming an anti-Western alliance. According to the Chinese ambassador to Moscow, Liu Guchang, the Bishkek summit will discuss “longterm good-neighbourliness, friendship and cooperation.”

But many analysts see the SCO as a growing bastion against US expansion into Central Asia and against Western pressure for free elections and open media.

Even if the organisation remains loosely integrated and modestly funded, military exercises held last week in China and this week in Russia’s Ural Mountains — with SCO presidents due to attend the final day on Friday — show that intentions are serious.

Under the innocuous sounding title “Peace Mission 2007” about 6,500 soldiers backed by planes, heavy weapons, and paratroopers are training to seize a fictional settlement.

Most of the troops are Chinese or Russian, but for the first time all SCO member states will contribute personnel.

While advertised as “anti-terrorism” exercises, the manoeuvres more closely resemble full-scale military assaults in built-up areas.

Russian newspaper Kommersant quoted military sources saying that the scenario for the manoeuvre was in fact “based” on a bloody 2005 crackdown by Uzbek authorities on civil unrest in the city of Andijan.

Many believe the SCO’s principle interest is in closing ranks against US influence that surged through Central Asia in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

“A big part is to be an alternative. An alternative to what? To US plans for global domination,” Alexander Knyazev, a politics professor in Kyrgyzstan, told the www.fergana.ru website, which specialises in Central Asian news.

The Pentagon was forced from a base in Uzbekistan in 2005 after criticising the Uzbek authorities’ Andijan crackdown. Now Kyrgyzstan is under pressure to close a US base near Bishkek, while Russia says it wants to expand its own air base there..

“The size of these exercises is growing, and many experts do not believe that they are confined only to so-called anti-terrorist activities, or even just to Central Asia,” Stephen Blank, an expert at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, told Radio Free Europe.

But supporters praise the SCO for maintaining stability in a difficult and strategic region.

Oksana Antonenko, at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, points to the variety of countries that are either members or have observer status. The latter include Iran, but also India, the world’s largest democracy, and Pakistan, a key US ally in the Muslim world.

The president of gas-rich, but deeply isolated Turkmenistan will also be attending the summit in Bishkek for the first time.

“This is a serious institution,” Antonenko said in a telephone interview. “There is a momentum for the SCO to flourish.”

Moscow, Monday, AFP