Ahmadi-Nejad In Central Asia.

On Aug. 14, Iranian President Ahmadi-Nejad began a tour of neighbouring states of Central Asia with a trip which began in Kabul and ended in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where he attended the summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) on Aug. 16. With deteriorating security in Afghanistan, openly admitted to by Karzai on his recent US trip, and rising Islamic militancy in the area and in China's western autonomous region of Xinjiang, the Shi'ite theocracy of Iran wants to be a key player on the SCO front, irrespective of China's recent misgivings about Iran's inclusion as a full member. In Kabul, Ahmadi-Nejad reiterated Iran's good-neighbourly policy, to the chagrin of President Bush who openly disagreed with Karzai's pro-Iran comments at their joint press conference in the US.

With their porous 936-km border, Iran and Afghanistan are grappling with a growing menace of drug traffic which exacts the lives of hundreds of Iranian law-enforcement agents annually. But while the US says Iran is sending arms to the Taliban who have regrouped in Pakistan and have stepped up their attacks on the Afghan government and NATO forces, Tehran claims it holds a strong card through its friendship with Karzai.

Turkmenistan's new President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is playing a balancing act between Iran and Russia, in contrast to his predecessor Sapamurat Niyazov who was aligned with Iran and signed a secret military pact. Considered a welcome departure from Niyazov's cultic politics, Berdimuhamedov is keen on not antagonising Moscow, tantalising it with offers of marketing his country's abundant gas resources through a pipeline to Russia. Turkmenistan has an agreement with Iran for the transit of its gas to Turkey and Europe.

Iran and Turkmenistan have similar perspectives on the hitherto inconclusive discussions on the division of the Caspian Sea. Iran is weary of any undue shift in Turkmenistan's foreign policy in Russia's favour at a delicate time when Iran-Russia relations have hit a new low as a result of the nuclear row and Moscow's appeasement of Washington's demand to link the fate of the Russian-made power plant in Bushehr to the nuclear crisis.

With President Vladimir Putin beginning to flex Russian military muscle on Georgia, and through a joint defence exercise with China which climaxed on Aug. 17, Iran is concerned about a new Russian militarism. Iran has just arrested two Chinese for photographing Iranian nuclear sites.

In Uzbekistan, Ahmadi-Nejad has worked on enhancing economic co-operation in part by improving the transportation corridor between the two countries. Trade between Iran and Uzbekistan in the first nine months of 2006 reached US$450m. About 70 joint ventures and representative offices of big Iranian firms are operating in the various sectors of the Uzbek economy. Tehran is soliciting Tashkent's support on Iran's nuclear programme. That is only one of several reasons Tehran, always considering Uzbekistan a regional middleweight, is keen on cultivating relations.

In Tajikistan, close to Iran's heart because of various cultural and historical connections, Tehran's aim is to build on the progress made as a result of a January visit to Tehran by Tajik President Imomali Rahmonov, which paved the way for an expansion of bilateral ties - e.g., agreements providing for Iranian assistance for several Tajik infrastructure projects, including construction of the Sangtuda-2 hydro-electric power plant and the Shahristan Tunnel. In view of continuing tensions between and among Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan over scarce water and arable land, Iran is acting as a mediator; it successfully brokered peace among the Tajik warring factions during the mid-1990s.

In Kazakhstan, Iran seeks to boost its oil and trade relations and to do so partly by arranging region-to-region relations through its Caspian provinces. Kazakhstan has an oil-swap agreement with Iran, whereby every year some 1.2m barrels of crude oil are exported from Aktau to Iran, which then ships an equivalent volume of crude through the Persian Gulf. Iran's oil companies are active in Kazakh E&P in the Caspian Sea. The two countries hope to expand their trade beyond the $2 bn reported for 2006.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has expressed support for Iran's nuclear programme and may even push aggressively for Iran's inclusion in the SCO, given Kazakhstan's relations with both China and Russia. But Astana is averse to SCO's evolution as a Warsaw Treaty-like organisation, which is why it has "sent a signal to Washington" by not allowing the Chinese soldiers participating in the joint exercise to travel to Russia through its territory.

In Kyrgyzstan, after a recent trip by Iran's finance minister promising a 50m ($66.67m) credit for joint development and industrial projects in Bishkek, Iran is looking to expand ties in all domains, as part of its broader Central Asian policy which includes ambitious plans for a "new Silk Road" connecting Iran and China through the region.

All five Central Asian states and Afghanistan are members of the regional Economic Co-operation Organisation (ECO), which has been a forum for trade and transport linkages among them. By more organically connecting Afghanistan to Central Asia within the scope of its regionalist approach, Iran hopes to get a geo-political dividend which may influence the SCO's approach towards it.

A boost to the hitherto neglected aspect of Ahmadi-Nejad's foreign policy, which has been more preoccupied with the volatile Persian Gulf and Iraq, his tour was to reinforce Iran's image as a pillar of co-operation and stability. This is indirectly to help Iran's Persian Gulf strategy, which has met resistance from Saudi Arabia (having boycotted a recent security meeting on Iraq held in Damascus).