TURKMENISTAN: SCENESETTER FOR THE VISIT OF

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 ASHGABAT 001102

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

USOSCE FOR AMBASSADOR FINLEY
STATE FOR SCA/CEN, DRL

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM ECON KDEM TX
SUBJECT: TURKMENISTAN: SCENESETTER FOR THE VISIT OF
AMBASSADOR JULIE FINLEY, OCTOBER 20-23



1. (U) Sensitive but unclassified. Not for public Internet.


2. (SBU) Embassy Ashgabat warmly welcomes you to
Turkmenistan. You are coming to Turkmenistan in the early
months of an expanding dialogue between Turkmenistan and the
international community in general, and the OSCE and the
United States in particular. In the ten months since the
death of former President Niyazov, the new president has
taken deliberate steps to move the country back toward the
mainstream from the eccentricities and outrages of the
Niyazov era. In contrast to his predecessor's often-hostile
attitude toward the OSCE, President Berdimuhamedov seems
willing to cooperate with the organization, especially in the
human and security dimensions, and is allowing the OSCE's
Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)
and the OSCE field mission in Ashgabat, the OSCE Center, to
assist with one of Turkmenistan's most urgent needs:
increasing the country's human capacity. Given
Turkmenistan's neutrality, the OSCE's multinational nature
makes it easier for the Government of Turkmenistan to turn to
the OSCE than to Western countries, for assistance on some
particularly sensitive issues, including election reform.
The United States supports this engagement, which in turn
bolsters U.S. efforts since Niyazov's death to turn the page
in the bilateral relationship and to advance widespread,
albeit gradual, change. We are confident your visit will
help promote the OSCE's very constructive role here, as well
as U.S. foreign policy across all three dimensions.

THE OSCE IN TURKMENISTAN: A ROLLERCOASTER RELATIONSHIP


3. (SBU) While the OSCE has had a field mission in Ashgabat
since January 1999, relations with the OSCE for most of the
last eight years have been rocky at best. In response to the
wave of arrests -- including that of Turkmenistan's
Ambassador to the OSCE, Batyr Berdiyev -- following the 2002
attack on former President Niyazov's motorcade, the OSCE
invoked the Moscow Mechanism and assigned a French rapporteur
to investigate Niyazov's handling of the event. Turkmenistan
denied the rapporteur a visa. In 2004, relations continued
to worsen when the government indicated that it would not
renew the visa of the Romanian diplomat who headed the OSCE
Center. Although the current Head of Mission, Ambassador
Ibrahim Djikic, succeeded in calming much of the rancor and
restoring at least a limited working relationship, the OSCE
Center again became the focus of controversy in June 2006
after the Government of Turkmenistan publicly accused the
Center's Human Dimension Officer, Benjamin Moreau, of seeking
to undermine President Niyazov's government.


4. (SBU) Turkmenistan's relationship with the OSCE took an
abrupt turn for the better almost immediately after Niyazov's
death. Then-interim President Berdimuhamedov invited ODIHR
to advise the government on the presidential election. While
ODIHR advisors concluded that the poll fell far short of
international standards, ODIHR was encouraged enough by
Berdimuhamedov's expressed willingness to broaden cooperation
that ODIHR's Director, Ambassador Christian Strohal, visited
in May, and he, the president and Deputy Chairman of the
Council of Ministers/Foreign Minister Rashit Meredov mapped
out a program of cooperation. The OSCE Center's patient,
constructive approach has paid off. Cooperation has
blossomed, with the OSCE Center now able to carry out
programs -- including in the human dimension -- that would
have been unthinkable just a year ago.

TURKMENISTAN POST-NIYAZOV


5. (SBU) A hydrocarbon-rich state that shares borders with
Afghanistan and Iran, Turkmenistan is in the midst of an
historic political transition. The unexpected death of
President Niyazov on December 21, 2006, ended the
authoritarian, one-man dictatorship that by the end of his

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life had made Turkmenistan's government among the most
repressive in the world. The peaceful transfer of power
following Niyazov's death confounded many who had predicted
instability because the former president had no succession
plan. President Berdimuhamedov quickly assumed power
following Niyazov's death with the assistance of the "power
ministries" -- including the Ministries of National Security
and Defense, and the Presidential Guard. His position was
subsequently confirmed through a public election in which the
population eagerly participated, even though it did not meet
international standards.

NIYAZOV'S LEGACY


6. (SBU) Berdimuhamedov inherited a country that former
President Niyazov had come close to running into the ground.
Niyazov siphoned off much of Turkmenistan's hydrocarbon
proceeds into non-transparent slush funds used, in part, to
finance his massive construction program in Ashgabat at the
expense of the country's education and health-care systems.
Politically, his increasing paranoia -- particularly after
the 2002 armed attack on his motorcade -- led to high-speed
revolving-door personnel changes at the provincial and
national level, and an obsessive inclination to micro-manage
the details of government. Criticizing or questioning
Niyazov's decisions was treated as disloyalty, and could be
grounds for removal from jobs, if not worse. Niyazov's
increasing paranoia and xenophobia, expressed as "positive
neutrality," led to Turkmenistan's political and economic
isolation from the rest of the world. His policies calling
for mandatory increases in cotton and wheat production led to
destructive agricultural and water-use policies that left
some of Turkmenistan's arable land salinated and played-out.

EDUCATION -- "DIMMER PEOPLE EASIER TO RULE"


7. (SBU) Niyazov's attacks on the educational system grew
increasingly destructive in his later years. The Soviet-era
educational system was broadly turned into a system designed
to isolate students from the outside world and to mold them
into loyal Turkmen-speaking presidential thralls. President
Niyazov famously defended this policy when, in 2004, he told
a fellow Central Asian president, "Dimmer people are easier
to rule." Niyazov's destruction of his country's education
system included cutting the Soviet standard of ten years of
compulsory education to nine, firing large numbers of
teachers, and introducing his own works as core curriculum at
the expense of the traditional building blocks of a basic
education. He slashed higher education to two years of study
and discouraged foreign study by refusing to recognize
foreign academic degrees. Taken together, these steps
created a "lost generation" of under-educated youth
ill-equipped to help Turkmenistan take its place on the world
stage.

RULE OF LAW -- A LOW BAR


8. (SBU) Niyazov seriously harmed Turkmenistan's political
system. His capricious authoritarianism left a legacy of
corrupt officials lacking initiative, accountability, and --
in many cases -- the expertise needed to do their jobs.
Young officials who came of age after Niyazov's destructive
changes to the education system are particularly deficient in
skills and broader world vision needed to facilitate
Turkmenistan's entry into the international community. Many
laws lack transparency and provision for oversight and
recourse. The population's lack of understanding of the
meaning of rule of law has left the bar low in terms of
citizens' expectations of their government.

BERDIMUHAMEDOV BEGINS TO REBUILD THE SYSTEM


9. (SBU) Berdimuhamedov still speaks of maintaining his

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predecessor's policies and the government pays respectful
li-service to Niyazov, but the new president has started
reversing many of the most destructive, especially in the
areas of education, health, and social welfare. He has
restored -- and in many cases -- increased old-age pensions
that Niyazov had largely eliminated. The president is
embarking on a course of hospital-building, with the main
focus on improving medical facilities in Turkmenistan's five
provinces. To this end, he has already authorized
construction of five provincial mother-and-children
(maternity) hospitals. He has also publicly committed to
improve rural infrastructure and to ensure that every village
has communications, electricity, and running water.


10. (SBU) In education, Berdimuhamedov is reversing many of
the policies Niyazov ordered him to implement while he served
as Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers for Education.
Since his inauguration, Berdimuhamedov has ordered a return
to the compulsory standard of ten years' education, a return
of universities to five years of classroom study, and a new
emphasis on exchange programs and the hard sciences. On July
13, he called for recognition of foreign academic degrees, a
major step which would allow exchange students to receive
credit for their overseas study. The goal is to repair
Turkmenistan's broken education system as quickly as possible
and to give the country the educated workforce that it needs
to compete commercially. These efforts, however, are
hampered by old-thinking bureaucrats, especially in the
Ministry of Education, who sometimes block or otherwise
impede foreign assistance programs. This may perhaps be a
legacy of the culture of xenophobia Niyazov had encouraged.

ELIMINATING THE CULT OF PERSONALITY


11. (SBU) Berdimuhamedov has incrementally started
dismantling Niyazov's cult of personality. Huge posters of
the deceased president are beginning to be removed from
public buildings, and references to Niyazov's "literary"
works, especially the "Ruhnama," are less frequent and might
fade away over time. The new president has banned the huge
stadium gatherings in his honor and the previous requirement
for students and government workers to line the streets,
often for hours, along presidential motorcade routes. That
said, in many places, Niyazov's picture has been replaced by
Berdimuhamedov's, and the new president's quotes are now
replacing Ruhnama quotations on newspaper mastheads. But
these fairly common Central Asian practices are still far
from "personality cult."

FIRST STAGES OF POLITICAL REFORM


12. (SBU) Berdimuhamedov has begun replacing the ministers
he inherited from Niyazov. His focus seems to be on finding
better-qualified individuals. On August 24, he established a
"Human Rights Commission" to help bring the practices and
policies of Turkmenistan's government agencies into line with
international human rights standards and conventions. He has
established a state commission to review complaints of
citizens against law enforcement agencies, which has become a
mechanism for pardoning at least some of those imprisoned
(including for complicity in the 2002 attack on the
presidential motorcade) under Niyazov. Since August,
Berdimuhamedov has pardoned at least 26 prisoners of concern,
most notably including the former Grand Mufti of
Turkmenistan, Nasrullah ibn Ibadullah, and has promised that
he will pardon more. Berdimuhamedov has also agreed to allow
UNDP to provide human rights training to police.


13. (SBU) In addition, he has slowly begun to walk back some
of the most restrictive controls on movement, first removing
police checkpoints on the roads between cities, then -- on
July 13 -- eliminating the requirement for Turkmenistan's
citizens to obtain permits to travel to border zones

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(however, the permit system remains in force for foreigners).
Although the president has been slower to strengthen the
rule of law, and correct Turkmenistan's previous human rights
and religious freedom record, he has told U.S. officials he
wants to "turn the page" on the bilateral relationship and is
willing to work on areas that hindered improved relations
under Niyazov. Since an August visit by a delegation from
the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
(USCIRF),at least two religious groups that have been trying
to register (in some cases for up to six years) in accordance
with Turkmenistan's 2004 Law on Religion have been permitted
to do so. He has also approved an unprecedented number of
visits by U.S. delegations since he took office, including
those directed toward promoting reform.

ECONOMY AND FINANCE


14. (SBU) Turkmenistan's economy is closely controlled by
the state, and, although the government for many years
regularly proclaimed its wish to attract foreign investment,
it made little effort up to now to change the state-control
mechanisms, restrictive currency-exchange system and dual
currency exchange rates that created a difficult foreign
investment climate. However, in recent months, we have seen
greater willingness among upper-level personnel at
Turkmenistan's main economic and financial institutions --
including both the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the
Central Bank -- to acknowledge that reforms are necessary.
Part of this new attitude is linked to the president's
growing frustration, expressed publicly during several
cabinet-level meetings in August, with Turkmenistan's
complex, opaque web of on- and off-budget funds, which have
made a thorough accounting of state income and
disbursements/expenses virtually impossible. And, in fact,
President Berdimuhamedov's frustration with the lack of
accountability in the budget was one of the key factors that
led, in late July, to the creation of a Supreme Auditing
Chamber. That said, growing interest in investing in
Turkmenistan among western businessmen in hopes that the new
government eventually will make the changes necessary to
improve the investment climate is also providing an incentive
for change.

FOREIGN POLICY: A NEW FOCUS ON ENGAGEMENT


15. (SBU) Notwithstanding his statements that he plans to
continue the "neutrality" policies of his predecessor,
Berdimuhamedov -- probably at the advice of Deputy Chairman
of the Cabinet of Ministers and Foreign Minister Rashit
Meredov -- has put an unprecedented emphasis on foreign
affairs. Berdimuhamedov has met or spoken by telephone with
all the leaders in the region -- including with President
Aliyev of Azerbaijan, with whom Niyazov had maintained a
running feud. He has exchanged visits with Russia's
President Putin, and held a high-profile gas summit with
Putin and Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev in Turkmenistan's
Caspian seaside city of Turkmenbashy (Krasnovodsk). China
has a strong and growing commercial presence in Turkmenistan,
and continues to court Berdimuhamedov through a series of
high-level commercial and political visits. In mid-July,
Berdimuhamedov made a state visit to China, focused mainly on
natural gas and pipeline deals. While Turkey has given
Berdimuhamedov top-level treatment, including an invitation
to Ankara, its relationship with Turkmenistan continues to be
colored more by the image of its lucrative trade and
construction contracts, amounting to hundreds of millions of
dollars, than by generous development assistance or fraternal
support.


16. (SBU) Berdimuhamedov had a very successful trip in
September to New York for the UN General Assembly, where he
met with Secretary of State Rice. He has also held positive
meetings with high-level U.S. State Department officials and

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leaders of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) and United Nations to discuss areas of
potential assistance. He met with UN High Commissioner on
Human Rights Louise Arbour in May, the Head of the OSCE's
Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR),
Christian Strohal, and agreed to a future visit by the UN's
Special Rapporteur on Religious Freedom.

ENERGY RESOURCES


17. (SBU) Turkmenistan has world-class natural gas reserves,
but Russia's monopoly of its energy exports has left
Turkmenistan receiving less than the world price and overly
beholden to Russia for export. Pipeline diversification,
including both a pipeline to China proposed for 2009 and the
possibility of resurrecting plans for Trans-Caspian and
Trans-Afghanistan pipelines that would avoid the Russian
routes, and construction of high-power electricity lines to
transport excess energy to Turkmenistan's neighbors,
including Afghanistan, would not only enhance Turkmenistan's
economic and political sovereignty, but also help fuel new
levels of prosperity throughout the region. Berdimuhamedov
has told U.S. interlocutors he recognizes the need for more
options and has taken the first steps to this end, but he
also moved toward increasing the volume of gas exports to
Russia -- agreeing in principle to build a new littoral
pipeline -- during the May tripartite summit in Turkmenbashy.
He will require encouragement and assistance from the
international community if he is to maintain a course of
diversification in the face of almost certain efforts by
Moscow to keep Turkmenistan from weaning itself away from
Russia.

U.S. POLICY


18. (SBU) U.S. policy in Turkmenistan is three-fold:

-- Encourage democratic reform and increased respect for
human rights and fundamental freedoms, including support for
improvements in the education and health systems;

-- Encourage economic reform and growth of a market economy
and private-sector agriculture, as well as diversification of
Turkmenistan's energy export options; and

-- Promote security cooperation.

In raising human rights concerns, the United States:

-- Encourages further relaxation of Niyazov-era abuses and
restrictions on freedom of movement;

-- Promotes greater religious freedom, including registration
of unrecognized groups like the Roman Catholic Church, and
making legal provision for conscientious objectors; and

-- Advocates the growth of civil society by urging the
government to register Turkmenistani non-governmental
organizations.
HOAGLAND