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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kyrgyzstan
Index
Kyrgyzstan's foreign policy has been controlled by two
considerations--first, that the country is too small and too poor to be
economically viable without considerable outside assistance, and second,
that it lies in a volatile corner of the globe, vulnerable to a number of
unpleasant possibilities. These two considerations have influenced
substantially the international position taken by Kyrgyzstan, especially
toward the developed nations and its immediate neighbors.
Akayev and his ministers have traveled the globe tirelessly since
independence, seeking relations and partners. In the first four years of
independence, Akayev visited the United States, Turkey, Switzerland,
Japan, Singapore, and Israel. His emissaries have also been to Iran,
Lebanon, and South Africa, and his prime minister made a trip through most
of Europe. One consequence of these travels is that Kyrgyzstan is
recognized by 120 nations and has diplomatic relations with sixty-one of
them. The United States embassy opened in Bishkek in February 1992, and a
Kyrgyzstani embassy was established in Washington later that year.
Kyrgyzstan is a member of most major international bodies, including the
UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE--see
Glossary), the World Bank, the IMF, and the EBRD. It has also joined the
Asian Development Bank, the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO--see
Glossary), and the Islamic Bank.
Akayev has stressed repeatedly that the principle behind his search for
contacts is strict neutrality; Kyrgyzstan is a small, relatively
resource-poor, remote nation more likely to seek help from the world
community than to contribute to it. Especially in the first months of
independence, Akayev stressed Kyrgyzstan's intellectual and political
potential, hoping to attract the world community to take risks in an
isolated experiment in democracy. Akayev referred to making his nation an
Asian Switzerland, transformed by a combination of international finance
and the light, clean industry, mostly electronic, that he expected to
spring up from conversion of the Soviet-era defense industries. Largely
because of Akayev's reputation and personality, Kyrgyzstan has become the
largest per capita recipient of foreign aid in the CIS (see Foreign
Investment, this ch.).
However, the decay of the domestic economy and increasing
dissatisfaction among constituents have made the Akayev government
distinctly less optimistic about the degree to which it can rely upon the
distant world community. At the same time, political and social
developments in the republic's immediate area have directed the republic's
attention increasingly to foreign policy concerns much closer to home.
Data as of March 1996
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