Turkmenistan: On Eve of President's Trip to Moscow, Attempts to Pacify

On the eve of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's scheduled trip to Moscow on December 23, the Turkmen envoy to Russia is trying to make nice, after months of acrimonious exchange between the two countries.

In an interview with Viktoriya Panfilova of the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta
, Turkmen Ambassador Halinazar Agahanov defends his country against charges in the Russian media that Ashgabat doesn't really have enough gas to feed all its customers, citing the estimates of 26.2 trillion cubic meters in reserves, supplied by the British consulting firm Gaffney, Clines & Associates. The diplomat then tries to smooth troubled relations by invoking the long tradition of cooperation between Russian and Turkmenistan, despite both having large reserves of hydrocarbons. Yet, inevitably Turkmenistan's litany grievances shines through.

Agahanov points out that for a long time, Ashgabat was entirely dependent on only one gas pipeline, the Central Asia-Center (CAC) line maintained by Russia. "We recall very well the situation in the mid-1990s, when the leadership of Russia's Gazprom tried rather brutally to dictate terms for the purchase of Turkmen gas, and even shut off the line completely for two years," says Agahanov. "You'll agree that this is an abnormal situation, when the leading branch of the economy of one country is put under dependence on the bureaucratic interests of a partner in the gas business," he added.

But nowadays, with the increase in world demand for energy, and a change in the political landscape (evidently a reference to the collapse of the USSR and Moscow's dwindling power over its former republics), diversification of delivery routes is expected, the Turkmen ambassador argues. Under its "diversification" policy, Turkmenistan has built the pipeline to China and increases sales to Iran and is negotiating the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline. And here a morsel is dropped for those hoping to see the Trans-Caspian Pipeline (TCP) move along: "recently the process of substantive discussion of construction of a pipeline in the direction of Europe has been significantly activated."

Even such attenuated phrases about what is clearly a protracted process still enrages Russia, of course, so Panfilova presses Agahanov on this point. He replies that after the 2008 Memorandum on Cooperation signed with the EU (when 10 billion cubic meters of gas were pledged); after the mandate for the European Commission was signed in September to negotiate with Turkmenistan on the Trans-Caspian Pipeline (TCP), then there was a "legitimate start of a negotiations process with the participation of interested parties to develop a document in which principled positions will be clearly defined related to the delivery of natural gas from the Caspian Region to Europe."

(We could add that nothing like this lengthy process was required to build the pipeline to China.)

Agahanov also waves away environmental concerns about the TCP, pointing out aptly that Russia doesn't invoke them when it has laid its own Blue Stream and North Stream pipelines.

As for impending "war in the Caspian," Agahanov implies this scenario is merely due to "provocateurs, indiscriminate in their means" who are "fulfilling political orders." Yet then he proceeds to offer nothing more sturdy in assurance other than a statement signed in Baku last year in which the Caspian littoral states affirmed that "the Caspian Sea is a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation and all issues in the Caspian Sea must be decided by the Caspian states by exclusively peaceful methods."

That hasn't stopped the Caspian states from all continuing to build up their armaments, including Turkmenistan, which has started a navy. And no progress has been made on legal agreement about the Caspian, as Jamestown Foundation recently reported. At a recent meeting in Astana, Russia and Iran insisted that all major energy projects be decided by consensus of all five states, yet Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov, insisted that Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan had a “sovereign right” to build the undersea TCP, Interfax reported. The Caspian states couldn't even agree on a temporary ban on sturgeon fishing.

Ultimately, Agahanov concludes with a conciliatory phrase, that "elements of temporary differences and misunderstandings are not capable of changing the chosen course or strategic partnership between Turkmenistan and Russia." He believes Turkmenistan and Russia can talk out their differences as they have "more reasons for understanding than for disagreement."

Soon after this interview, however, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry came out with another blast, accusing the Russian press of distorting the issue of dual passports.