An adviser to former president Bill Clinton intervened in 2005 to help win Kazakh approval of a uranium mining deal benefiting a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, according to a video statement made by the former chief of Kazakhstan's state nuclear firm.

As global demand for nuclear energy rises, Kazakhstan sees a future for its large uranium reserves. But the country is still struggling to make sense of the role uranium played in its past.

(SRI) - Mukhtar Ablyazov, former head of one of Kazakhstan's largest banks, BTA Bank, has brought new accusations against Timur Kulibayev, deputy chairman of the state holding and investment company Samruk-Kazyna and son-in-law of President Nazarbayev, Interfax reported.

Since the winter energy crisis two years ago, when freezing temperatures lasted for several weeks, cooperation dynamics within Central Asia have witnessed rapid change. Upstream Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which rely on electricity imports during winter, were hit particularly badly as they were unable to supply the population with enough electricity and gas. Consequently, Tajikistan was forced to declare a humanitarian crisis.

DUSHANBE (Reuters) - Al Qaeda aims to infiltrate Central Asia to train militants and turn the ex-Soviet region into a zone of unrest, a U.S. envoy said on Saturday.

Yevgeny Zhovtis, a leading human rights activist in Kazakhstan who is currently serving a jail sentence for vehicular manslaughter, thinks the world's leading democracies are turning a blind eye to authoritarianism. In a statement presented February 19 at a gathering of rights activists in Washington, Zhovtis took a swipe at the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, asserting that the world is experiencing "a crisis of the very concept of human rights."