Štefan Füle
We are glad to see Azerbaijan and the European Union moving closer to each other. Our cooperation is bearing fruit. Just look at the results of the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius and the signature of the Visa Facilitation Agreement. The Visa Facilitation Agreement as well as the Mobility Partnership have been signed. These agreements, together with the Readmission Agreement – to be signed early next year – will boost people to people contacts, which is an important element of our cooperation.
Political upheaval in Ukraine may help Mukhtar Ablyazov, the former fugitive banker at the center of a $6 billion fraud case, fight extradition to the eastern European country. A French court in Aix-en-Provence may decide at a hearing today whether to extradite Ablyazov, 50, to Ukraine, where prosecutors have charged him with perpetrating a $167 million fraud while he was chairman of Almaty, Kazakhstan-based BTA Bank from 2005 to 2009
Participation in Interpol is in the U.S. national interest. However, Interpol's practice of allowing its members to transmit diffusions without systematic prior review by Interpol raises serious concerns. The U.S. should work with other democracies to reform Interpol's diffusion system and require the U.S. National Central Bureau to report annually on information provided to or received from Interpol about U.S. citizens. Because many Interpol members are not law-abiding democracies, the U.S. should further limit the nations that can access data that it provides to Interpol, protect U.S. citizens and individuals with a U.S. nexus from baseless or politicized Interpol notices and diffusions, and emphasize that continued U.S. support for Interpol depends on Interpol's scrupulous adherence to its 1956 constitution.
Outside of Central Asia there is very little knowledge of Kazakhstan. Once you begin to explain, some will recognize it as the large darkish red tones that illustrated most geography classrooms around the word. It is somewhere up there, between Russia and Mongolia and China. Business people, however, probably will recognize that it is one of the world's major source of hydrocarbon, uranium and grain.
Der kasachische Präsident Nasarbajew und sein Geheimdienstchef Alijew waren Weggefährten. Jetzt sind sie Feinde und tragen ihren Konflikt bei uns in Europa aus – es geht um Mord, Geldwäsche und die Frage, wie reiche Potentaten das Recht aushebeln können.
When Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, rang the bell to open trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in late November 2006, he was symbolically ushering in a new era. Companies flush with cash from Kazakhstan's energy-driven economy were flocking to list in London, where they were welcomed as rising stars.
President Xi Jinping's latest, highly ambitious tour through the Central Asian republics in September took regional political circles by surprise, writes Baktybek Beshimov, a former Member of Parliament and Ambassador of Kyrgyzstan to India in his article entitled "China expands grip in Central Asia".
