Newsletter No. 351
News-Analysis
August 3, 2006

 

KOIZUMI'S VISIT TO CENTRAL ASIA -- SOME ISSUES

As reported previously in Shingetsu Newsletter No. 337, Prime Minister Koizumi will be making a historic visit to Central Asia in late August. It has now been reported that after Kazakhstan, the other country that he will visit is Uzbekistan.

In regard to Kazakhstan, Koizumi's visit is quite natural in light of Japan's growing investments in that country. Kazinform held an interview with MOFA's Noriyuki Shikata today, and they discussed Japanese policy toward Kazakhstan. According to Shikata, Japan's interests in this Central Asian country include, "commercial and trade interaction, energy collaboration... and political security."

Interestingly, Shikata made a comment to the effect that "democratization of the political systems and the development of market economies of these [Central Asian] countries might help them accomplish... ambitious objectives." Tokyo has not been particularly insistent in the past that Central Asian countries become more democratic. But, then again, see more below.

Another interesting hint was when Shikata said that the Central Asia Plus Japan (CAPJ) framework did not seek any sort of competition with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the region. However, he did add one qualification: "as long as the [SCO] is an open and transparent mechanism."

We may surmise that Tokyo's policy toward the SCO is therefore to ensure that it remains "open and transparent" -- presumably that means no secret or informal deals with the nations of the region, or "open covenants, openly arrived at," to borrow an old phrase from Woodrow Wilson.

His Kazakh listeners were happy to hear Shikata describe their nation as "one of the leading countries in Central Asia."

In May of this year, Shingetsu Newsletter No. 272 reported that Tokyo was showing increasing interest in Uzbek energy resources, and that the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Uzbekistan, Rustam Azimov, made a low-key visit to Japan. Still, the fact that Prime Minister Koizumi is now, apparently, going to personally go to Tashkent is rather surprising.

The regime of Islam Karimov is considered to have one of the worst human rights records in the region (only Turkmenistan is worse). When Karimov visited Beijing in May 2005 -- just after the Andijan massacre -- Western pundits attacked China for its insensitivity to human rights issues. Now, with the very same regime in place a year later, and no further moves toward democracy, Koizumi will visit Uzbekistan. Will the same degree of criticism result? Or does competition for energy resources with China, his pro-American credentials, and a one-year grace period mean that Koizumi will get a free pass? We'll soon see.

In any case, as the Saudis and some others learned long ago, when you are rich in oil and natural gas -- no matter how repressive you are at home -- the door to international respectability is almost always open.