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Saturday May 26th 2007, 9:13 am

Read about the human rights situation in Turkmenistan in Fading Hopes by Sian Glaessner, Central Asia Now’s latest piece of analysis.

On Monday, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev signed constitutional amendments allowing himself to become president for life. Whilst the reforms expand the country’s parliament and cut the presidential term from seven to five years, a development welcomed by the US, all term limits were waived in the case of Nazarbayev himself.

Meanwhile, Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, Rakhat Aliyev, was charged with the abduction of two senior bank managers; Aliyev denies any involvement.

In a widely reported development, Turkmen national television announced that visa restrictions would be eased for foreign tourists visiting its Caspian coast. New rights and tax breaks for foreign investors will create a free economic zone there. However, Ferghana.ru reports tough border controls linked to political purges under Berdymuhammedov: specifically last week’s dismissal of Akmurad Rejepov, head of the presidential guard, and Agajan Passyev, the first deputy minister of national security. Christian organisation Forum 18 this week alleges renewed persecution of Turkmen religious groups.

Kyrgyz-US relations deteriorated as Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev of Kyrgyzstan said that his country would not permit the use of the Manas US air base for strikes inside Iran or Iraq. Parliamentarians were said to have urged the government to remove the air base altogether, though Atambayev said that it would be difficult to opt out of Kyrgyzstan’s ‘very tricky’ agreement with the US. No formal attempt to renege on the agreement has been made. Meanwhile, the widow of a Kyrgyz citizen shot dead by an American soldier at the base called her US$55,000 compensation payment a ‘humiliation’. Analysis on EurasiaNet links anti-western feeling in Kyrgyzstan with the presence of the base.

Atambayev also announced this week that he had suffered a deliberate poisoning on May 11th, linking the attempt on his life with a controversial decision to nationalise the Krystall semiconductor plant. The security services are to investigate.

More positive news comes from this week’s Second International Conference on Lake Sarez Problems: the UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) website reports that the area surrounding the Tajik lake is now well-prepared for floods. As part of the country’s crackdown on Islamic militants, a Tajik court handed long prison sentences to two men accused of being members of a banned Islamic militant group.

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