Kazakh leader vows reform before taking OSCE chair

politics

Kazakh leader vows reform before taking OSCE chair

By SRI ⋅ June 30, 2008 ⋅

Kazakhstan’s president promised the West on Sunday his country would pursue democratic change before its chairmanship of Europe’s main human rights watchdog in 2010.

Oil-rich Kazakhstan, key to Europe’s efforts to diversify its energy supplies, won approval last year to take over the rotating annual chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The ex-Soviet nation’s opposition has since criticised Kazakhstan, which has never held an election judged free and fair by OSCE monitors, of backsliding on its democracy pledges.

Addressing the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in the Caspian state’s capital Astana, President Nursultan Nazarbayev reassured the West he was fully committed to democratic change.

“We want to be a modern, democratic and prosperous nation,” he told the Assembly, the OSCE’s first such meeting in Central Asia. “The potential of Kazakhstan’s constitution… allows us to fulfil many very important steps of further democratisation.”

By Maria Golovnina (Reuters)