OSCE CENTRAL ASIAN MISSION HEADS STRIVING TO

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 USOSCE 000015

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/20/2020
TAGS: OSCE PTER PREL ZK AF KZ KG TI TX UZ
SUBJECT: OSCE CENTRAL ASIAN MISSION HEADS STRIVING TO
ENHANCE EFFECTIVENESS AND COOPERATION

Classified By: CDA Carol Fuller for Reasons 1.4(b) and (d)

SUMMARY
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1. (SBU) In a series of meetings on January 12 and 13 with
OSCE Heads of Mission from four Central Asian States
(Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan),all
four struck similar themes on Afghanistan, radicalization,
border security, and Kazakhstan's proposal for a summit. On
Afghanistan, each highlighted the difficulties their host
governments encountered in working with Afghans due to
corruption and/or general disorganization and the need for
someone to oversee and coordinate future OSCE joint training
proposals. Several agreed on the need for an OSCE focal
point located inside Afghanistan to handle coordination.
Most agreed there are evident worrying trends towards
radicalization in Central Asia, although the depth of the
problem remains unknown. There was agreement, however, that
a role exists for the OSCE in combating radicalization and
extremism in the region. All called for increased
programming on border security. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
HoMs agreed that elections were largely a s
ham in their countries, but saw value in having OSCE election
observers there nonetheless. On a summit, all saw it as
likely or certain their host countries would agree to a
Summit in Astana - including Uzbekistan. End summary.

TAJIKISTAN
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2. (SBU) Ambassador Ivar Vikki of Norway has been Head of
Mission (HoM) in Tajikistan for four months. Following on
his four years as HoM at the OSCE Center in Kazakhstan, Vikki
said he was stunned by the depth of poverty in Tajikistan and
the levels of violence against women. He cited a growing
trend towards increased incidents of polygamy as one worrying
sign towards radicalization. Vikki described his contacts
with the government of Tajikistan as very good and said the
GOT was supportive of the Center's work. Vikki said Tajik
NGOs are active on gender, environmental and small business
issues, but less so on political matters. On elections,
Vikki said it was regrettable that Tajikistan took none of
ODIHR's recommendations, but, in response to a question, said
that he did not think it was because there had been too many.
He said the upcoming election was almost a non-issue, about
which he has heard very little in-country. He said the area
to focus on with elections is the counting process and the
medi
a's handling of the election. However, he said he did not
expect much from the election. Vikki said the areas of
border management training and demining were still in need of
more work. While a great deal of demining activity was being
done in the south of Tajikistan, he said one of the more
serious obstacles was that people working on the border were
often shot at and frequently killed by Uzbek border guards.
Overall, Vikki said he thought things were moving backwards
in Tajikistan.


3. (SBU) On Afghanistan, Vikki said the Afghans failed to
provide sufficient detail on their nominees to the Tajiks
when planning joint training programs. He also said
corruption at the Tajik Embassy in Kabul, as well as
excessive bureaucracy, were ongoing obstacles to Afghan's
obtaining visas for joint training. He suggested having a
person in Kabul to "influence" these issues and suggested the
person should be from Kazakhstan (Note: Kazakhstan's
Ambassador to the OSCE told us January 19 that they intend to
appoint one of their Embassy officers in Kabul as an OSCE
focal point for activities related to Afghanistan). Finally,
he said Afghan in-fighting about who should be selected for
training was also a problem.

TURKMENISTAN
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4. (SBU) Ambassador Arsim Zekolli of Macedonia has been HoM
in Ashgabat for eleven months. Zekolli told CDA Fuller that
he was approached by the head of the Border Services in
Turkmenistan on December 30 saying Turkmenistan was ready to
do a year-long training program for their border officers in
both the desert and the mountain regions of the country.
(NOTE: Privately, Zekolli told poloff that he negotiated the
right to personally select one of the three leads for this
project whom he wants to be an American. "Get me someone
good," he said. End note.) He said night patrolling and
Mountain area border training was where the Turkmen most
wanted training. On the continuing problem with students not
being permitted to leave the country, Zekolli said now was
the time to start increasing pressure on the GOT. Asked
about radicalization, Zekolli said there is little evidence
of this in Turkmenistan, however there is an increase in the
number of persons attending mosques and an effort by the GOT
to increase a
sense of nationalistic conservatism which he described as the

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basis for radicalization. The Turkmen, he said, are not
interested in anti-radicalization training because it would
be an admission that they have a problem.


5. (SBU) On Afghanistan, Zekolli said there needs to be much
better coordination with Kabul. "They send names like
'Mohammed from Kandahar,'" he said with exasperation. He
suggested hiring someone to handle coordination and proffered
the name of the current Polish Ambassador to Afghanistan as a
person who would be good for the position. Zekolli said the
Turkmen feel like they are wasting their time with the
Afghans and fear that many just want to escape their country
which is why the GOT will no longer allow training for
Afghans in Ashgabat.

UZBEKISTAN
--------------

6. (SBU) Ambassador Istvan Venczel from Hungary, Project
Coordinator in Uzbekistan, told CDA Fuller that the greatest
problem facing his office is its status. However, he said
that despite being "downgraded" to a Project Coordinator's
Office in 2006, they had actually been able to increase the
number of projects across all three dimensions. He said
that, through the projects, the Office is still able to have
real influence in Uzbekistan. He explained that the Uzbek
President personally has to sign off on virtually everything,
resulting in long administrative delays. Venczel said the
Office is not allowed to do any monitoring or political
reporting. Asked about whether he or his staff had been able
to visit imprisoned journalist Dilmurod Sayyid whose wife and
daughter were recently killed in a car crash, Venczel said he
was not permitted to visit any prisoners despite having
requested the opportunity to do so.


7. (SBU) CDA Fuller asked Venczel about the "forward
movement" ODIHR Director Ambassador Lenarcic spoke about at
the end of 2009. "Last year, yes, but this year, we have seen
nothing positive," he replied. He expressed hope, however,
that Uzbekistan might sign onto the International Convention
on the Prohibition of Torture, if pressed. Venczel said it
was good that ODIHR sent a small election support team to
Uzbekistan in December, given the public statements by
Lenarcic that ODIHR wanted to work with the country.


8. (SBU) Adding that the Uzbeks want to control the Office
more and more, he said that if the GOU tries to limit the
Office even further, it would be worth having a discussion
about the value of keeping the office open. He said it was
not worth keeping the office simply to please the host
country. On a proposed training program to counter violent
extremism leading to terrorism sponsored by the OSCE's Action
against Terrorism Unit (ATU),Venczel said the government
would support the project if it was run under the aegis of
the Project Coordinator's Office, even if the ATU is the
implementer, because the government is increasingly confident
in the ability of the Office to implement projects. .


9. (SBU) On Afghanistan, he said that the Uzbeks, unlike
other Central Asians, do not want the OSCE working inside the
country and that they simply echo Russian claims that the
OSCE has no mandate to do so. Nonetheless, he said, the GOU
knows that it needs the international presence in
Afghanistan. Finally, despite continued Uzbek claims to
oppose an OSCE Summit in Astana, he said the personal
relationship between the Kazakhstani President and the Uzbek
President was nowhere near as bad (note: we are unsure as to
his rationale for this assertion) as between the Uzbek and
Tajiks and the Uzbeks might ultimately accede to having a
summit.

KYRGYZSTAN
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10. (SBU) In CDA Fuller's meeting with HoM from the OSCE
Center in Bishkek, Ambassador Andrew Tessoriere of the UK
said the recent claims about the OSCE Academy in Bishkek
being shut down by the government were overblown. The
Academy won't close, he said. Nonetheless, the Academy may
need to make substantive changes to its academic program to
bring it more in line with standardized requirements - "none
of which we meet." Tessoriere explained that Kyrgyzstan - as
well as other Central Asian states - was responding to the
plethora of unregulated academic institutions that popped up
post independence. He said the effects of this may be felt
by pS as the possible requirement that the Academy hire
additional local-hire instructors and implement other
measures to satisfy the government could be costly. He added
that the Kazakhstanis apparently told the Kyrgyz "not to mess
with" the Academy. Tessoriere said that despite some rumors
in Vienna to the contrary, the Russians have no problem with
Academy Director D
r. Maxim Ryabkov, a Russian national contracted by the

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Academy and not seconded or selected by the RF.


11. (SBU) On the relationship between the Kyrgyz and the
Kazakhstanis, Tessoriere said it was almost as good as it
gets. On the increasing dangers faced by journalists in
Kyrgyzstan, Tessoriere said he received a disappointing
response from the Minister of Interior who sees the incidents
as equivalent to other crime in the country. He said
throughout Central Asia, the security services cooperate very
closely - and often at the expense of human rights.


12. (SBU) In the area of combating radicalization or radical
Islam, Tessoriere said the Center needs more assistance,
including a possible second US secondment who might have more
background on extremism and radicalization than the current
U.S. secondee working extensively and productively on police
issues. The truth is, he said, we have no idea how wide or
how deep radicalization is in Central Asia, but this is
something the OSCE could do well.


13. (SBU) Tessoriere said he hoped to get the government to
revisit the controversial law on religion and the Center was
presently advising on a draft law on religious instruction.
He said the government owned 555 community-based crime
prevention centers across Kyrgyzstan that were currently
being under-utilized and which he wanted to see turned into
555 OSCE conflict prevention or conflict resolution centers
to address a wide range of issues from radicalization to
water issues, among others. He said the proposal would
likely meet stiff opposition from the Ministry of Interior,
however. Tessoriere said many experts on Central Asia claim
the governments there are too strong to ever have a radical
group take control as with the Taliban in Afghanistan. He
noted he had been a student in Iran in 1976, when people said
the Shah was too strong to ever lose control.


14. (SBU) On Afghanistan, Tessoriere said there is broad
willingness to have Afghans trained in Central Asia,
including Bishkek, and even some pride over the fact. He
stressed, however, the need for someone to coordinate OSCE
work inside Afghanistan and said he would in fact like to be
that person. With an extensive background in Afghanistan and
continuing close ties to President Karzai and others in the
government, he could be the person best suited to do so. "I
know the Taliban, and I know what they would want in a deal,"
he said. He said there were currently too many proposals in
Central Asia for how to deal with Afghanistan - where
everyone is competing to be involved, but there is no space
for them to do so. The Uzbeks want the six plus three. The
Tajiks say they should lead because of their common language,
while the Kazakhs say they are a natural due to their role as
CiO of the OSCE. He added, however, that the Bishkek
Initiative held no sway with the international community and
said the upcomin
g London Donors' Conference should be taking place in the
region; and since neither Pakistan nor Iran were appropriate,
he suggested somewhere in Central Asia. "As it is, it is yet
another meeting at the western end of the pike." Finally,
Tessoriere said the OSCE Center's Police Reform program might
have applicability in Afghanistan. Although it is often
difficult to get people to go to Afghanistan, the Central
Asians are usually willing to do so, he said.


15. (C) COMMENT. Each OSCE Mission in Central Asia operates
with a unique set of constraints and circumstances, but these
meetings also demonstrated a degree of commonality of
concerns. All the Mission heads share our goal of actively
seeking out ways to better anchor Afghanistan in Central Asia
through the development, wherever possible, of concrete
assistance projects aimed in part at fostering enhanced
regional cooperation. They agreed that an OSCE focal point
inside Afghanistan is needed to facilitate coordination of
OSCE project training in the region (Note: something we
understand the Kazakhstanis intend to locate within their
Embassy in Kabul). All the Mission heads also agreed that
whatever the national differences in the region, Kazakhstan's
Chairmanship of the OSCE this year will likely be a signal
development in how the Central Asians view the OSCE and the
role it can play in promoting and shaping substantial
dialogue on relevant issues. The United States, particularly
our Embassies in Central
Asia, should continue to see these OSCE Field Presences as
significant tools for constructing a more cooperative and
constructive Central Asia.
FULLER