TURKMENISTAN ON THE EVE OF A/S BOUCHER'S VISIT -

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ASHGABAT 000180

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR SCA/CEN (PERRY)

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/16/2017
TAGS: PREL PGOV TX
SUBJECT: TURKMENISTAN ON THE EVE OF A/S BOUCHER'S VISIT -
MIRED IN BAD HABITS BUT TALKING ABOUT CHANGE

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Classified By: Charge d'Affaires, a.i. Jennifer L. Brush for reasons 1.
4 (B) and (D).

SUMMARY
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1. (C) A/S Boucher, the Government of Turkmenistan is
delighted to host you again as is Team Ashgabat. Even though
all of Washington may not be excited about the first-ever
multi-candidate elections in Turkmenistan, the local
population is over the top, soaking up every detail of the
campaign. As the USG continues on its carefully calibrated
approach:

-- having you introduce the idea of turning the page in our
bilateral relations;

-- having DAS Feigenbaum explore ways to turn the page; and

-- having the Adams team see for themselves the very real
opportunities and willingness to turn the page;

we wait for you to take the next step, discussing our future
relationship with the new President of Turkmenistan.


2. (C) Turkmenistan remains enmeshed in an internal battle
of emollients versus irritants. Government officials
throughout the country are learning to say the right thing,
but their actions continue to belie their words. We hope
that your visit will start the process of increasing the
emollients and decreasing the irritants. Enormous challenges
remain. The wreck of a country Niyazov left behind, combined
with 70 years of colonial Soviet rule, compounded by
nomadic/tribal customs and lack of a nation-state, create the
need for a new model. Neither was Turkmenistan North Korea,
nor will it be Denmark. Rather the current state offers a
rare opportunity to develop a new model; a model molded by,
and representative of, the proud people of Turkmenistan.

End Summary.

The Elections
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3. (C) We judge that this presidential "campaign" displayed
genuine official striving, however feeble, to depart from
Turkmenistan's old, worse electoral standards. Its elements
of true democracy were embryonic at very best; the process
overall was nowhere in sight of "free and fair"; "meetings
with voters" all stayed wholly under official control; and
everyone assumed from the start that Berdimuhammedov would
win by landslide. Still, citizens' main daily-life concerns
were incessantly aired at candidates' question-and-answer
sessions and publicized in media (exception: official
corruption),and our pre-election trips across the country
encountered a tentative fresh atmosphere of hope if not yet
expectancy.

Berdimuhammedov
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4. (C) Berdimuhammedov himself unmistakably embraced a
post-Niyazov policy with his very first campaign comments on
education, internet and pensions. Almost daily, there is
some new straw in the wind to suggest that he and the
apparatus he heads may have ascended to power already
resolved to undo much of Niyazov's caprices: citizens, new
freedom to buy airline tickets directly; an apparently
tolerant answer to a question about multiple political
parties in Turkmenistan; the rumored transfer and eventual
release of prominent political prisoners; an MFA hint to us
that old energy questions can be revisited. It looks more

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and more thinkable that Berdimuhammedov will announce further
concrete steps in short order following his inauguration, and
we do not rule out that his inauguration address could
include a surprise: e.g., wholesale post-Niyazov Cabinet
appointments, or announcement of prisoners, pardon/release.


Emollients
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5. (C) At the very top, post-Niyazov policy plainly includes
the goal of external rapprochement in particular with the
U.S. MFA facilitation of the Adams delegation's meetings
was extraordinary if not unprecedented. Ministers with whom
we had not met for two years "got the MFA memo" and received
us with beams. FM Meredov, who by all accounts has ascended
in relative political weight within the post-Niyazov
government, now correlates his personal standing with
Turkmenistan,s increased international interaction, in the
general assessment of Ashgabat's resident diplomats.

Irritants
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6. (C) And yet, despite the new emollience at the apex, old
barriers and problems persist unchanged below -- not
excluding in some cases the ministerial level. The Adams
delegation found the Education Minister, the Central Bank and
the Economy Ministry as unyielding or uninterested as ever in
U.S. offers of technical assistance. Our regional trips
reveal abundant local openness for programs, but make
crystal-clear that, as before, no step can be contemplated
without Ashgabat's go-ahead. Gumshoe harassment of USAID or
PD contractors has not abated. Breaking Meredov's promise to
the Charge last month, the MFA has refused visas to NY Times,
AP and BBC reporters.


7. (C) Berdimuhammedov can enforce a quick stop to all these
old bad habits, if he chooses. Our next question would be:
how much scope for fruitful program work does Turkmenistan
hold, and where? Local expertise and continuing policy
myopia -) privatization of farmland, for example, is not a
near-term option; budget transparency is out of sight -)
will constrain possibilities, let alone results.

Comment
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8. (C) Turkmenistan's current bar is set the lowest of any
nation where the U.S. might conceivably have hope for
progress in the first place. Even assuming the hopeful
auguries of Berdimuhammedov's behavior so far are borne out
in his deeds to come, we cannot expect heightened U.S.
engagement to achieve basic policy changes, or even
successfully implement major programs, in anything like the
near term. But if in the process of conferring over such
initiatives and our broadening relations we and
Turkmenistan's new regime gain the habit of unparanoid,
mutually comfortable, normal dialogue, that result will be in
itself an invaluable achievement, and the precondition for
still better future ones. End Comment.
BRUSH