Turkmenistan: Berdymukhamedov Playing Hard-to-Get with the European Union?

It seems Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov will not be attending a European Union energy summit in Prague on May 8. According to a report in the Russia's Vremya Novostei, the Turkmen leader supposedly declined to make the trip after he failed to receive guarantees that he would not face protesters.

The Turkmen leader tried to have Czech authorities guarantee a smooth May 8 visit to participate in the energy summit, a meeting that some experts say is designed to reinvigorate efforts to build the Nabucco pipeline. But without assurances that pesky human rights advocates could be kept under wraps, he begged out of attending.

Some experts are not buying the Vremya Novostei hypothesis about Berdymukhamedov's motivations. Andrei Grozin, director of the Central Asia Department at the CIS Institute in Moscow, believes the cancellation has nothing to do with the protests.

"If the Turkmen president really needed this summit, he would go. [His cancellation] might mean that Russia and Turkmenistan have achieved some sort of consensus on the gas situation during their closed meetings over the last few weeks, or even that Chinese-Turkmen relations improved significantly somehow."

Another possibility: Berdymukhamedov is playing hard-to-get. In recent weeks, he has taken a tough line against Russia, thus raising expectations that Ashgabat might be prepared to make a firm commitment to Nabucco. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Pulling a no-show at this stage may be a bargaining tactic designed to show Brussels that he is not desperate to make a gas deal, and thus try to make the EU pay a premium to secure Turkmen exports.

"Berdymukhamedov is probably trying to raise his image in the eyes of Europeans to show that he can come if he is interested, and he can refuse to participate if he is not interested."

Vice Prime Minister Tachberdy Tagyev will attend in Berdymukhamedov's place.