Despite its long-avowed status as a neutral nation, Turkmenistan is playing an important supporting role for US and NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan. Washington and Ashgabat are both keen to keep Turkmenistan’s strategic role low-key, especially the financial aspects of cooperation.
Mina Corp, the controversial aviation fuel supplier to the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan, is hitting back at official allegations of corrupt ties to the family of ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Experts in Baku are welcoming US President Barack Obama’s decision to appoint longtime Caucasus hand Matthew Bryza as ambassador to Azerbaijan. But many are cautioning that Bryza’s arrival is unlikely to break existing diplomatic logjams.
Azerbaijan is grappling to come to terms with a fresh Internet news scandal. This one doesn’t concern pesky domestic bloggers who tweak government sensitivities. And it is not about media rights. Rather, it covers a topic generally given a wide berth in Baku, even by Azerbaijan’s political opposition -- First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva.
Of the wide variety of international assistance programs operating in Georgia, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, an independent US aid agency, is the most innovative and important American assistance mechanism.
The White House's nominee to be the next American ambassador to Kyrgyzstan says she is confident that the new government in Bishkek will allow Washington to operating the Manas Transit Center, not far from the Kyrgyz capital, “for as long as we need it.”
The diplomatic cables downloaded clandestinely from a U.S. government network and published last week without authorization by the activist website WikiLeaks have shone a major spotlight on Turkmenistan and served to validate the reporting done by exile groups about their homeland. The cables from 2009 and early 2010 expose not only the closed society of Turkmenistan, but the use of the U.S.
Corruption allegations in US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks have generated some hot rhetoric from Turkey’s leaders. But with no genuine bombshell contained in dispatches released so far, it may simply be business as usual in Turkish politics.
A diplomatic cable dispatched by the US Embassy in Azerbaijan, part of the cache of documents obtained by the WikiLeaks website, compares Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to two iconic mafia dons from “The Godfather” movie trilogy -- impulsive Sonny Corleone and his brother, the coldly calculating Michael.
The Armenian government and the US embassy in Yerevan are staying tight-lipped about WikiLeaks disclosures concerning US-Armenian relations. But the country’s fragmented opposition is trying to score political points with the revelations about supposed arms sales to Iran and the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks.
