Human rights will be a priority in the EU’s relations with Central Asia, a senior EU envoy said on Thursday.
The announcement came on the heels of an Amnesty International appeal for the EU to insist on the human rights provisions outlined in its Central Asia strategy adopted last year.
“We have agreed that an essential part of the strategy we have developed together is a structured dialogue on human rights,” Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said at a news conference in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat.
Slovenia currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
The remarks were made after a rare meeting in Ashgabat between EU officials and the foreign ministers of the five former Soviet Central Asian states — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Human-rights group Amnesty International welcomed the announcement, but noted it had come a long time after the EU’s adoption last year of a five-year Central Asia strategy.
“We are pleased the EU are now saying human rights are at the heart of the relationship, but that should have been the case for the last 10 months as well,” said David Nichols, executive officer for foreign policy at Amnesty International’s EU office in Brussels.
Rupel also met separately with Turkmen President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov and discussed prospects for the EU investment in the Turkmen energy sector.
Berdymukhamedov expressed interest in diversifying routes for the export of Turkmenistan’s abundant energy resources to the world market.
All Central Asian natural gas exports currently flow through Russia, which has sought to cement its grip on energy supplies to Europe.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who met separately with Berdymukhamedov on Thursday, welcomed his pledge to supply France and other EU nations with natural gas.
“We are interested in diversifying sources of energy supplies for France and Europe as a whole,” Kouchner said.
The EU and the US have strongly backed the prospective Nabucco pipeline, which would deliver Turkmen and other Central Asian and Caspian gas westward, bypassing Russia.
The project, however, has been slowed by high costs and uncertainty over the Central Asian sources of supply.
Moscow also dealt a heavy blow to Nabucco last fall after reaching a deal with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan for those countries’ Caspian Sea gas supplies to flow through Russia.
Despite the deal, Berdymukhamedov and other Central Asian leaders have voiced interest in routes that bypass Russia, suggesting that new battles over the region’s energy routes were ahead.
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