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 Kerry is touring ex-Soviet Central Asia to underline Washington's
continued commitment to the energy-rich region amid a drawdown in
U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a more assertive Russia and the
emergence of the Islamic State militant threat.
Of the five ex-Soviet Central Asian states, only Kazakhstan, a vast
steppe nation of 18 million people with big international
investments in its oil and gas sectors, has emerged as stable and
prosperous, though it brooks no democratic opposition.
Nazarbayev, a former provincial communist boss, has ruled Kazakhstan
with an iron grip since 1989, two years before the demise of the
Soviet Union. He has displayed a knack for complex geopolitical
maneuvering and has built good ties both with neighboring Russia and
China and with the United States and European Union.
Kerry was expected to press Nazarbayev in private over his crackdown
on political dissent and Kazakhstan's human rights record but to
avoid any public criticism.
"President (Barack) Obama is very appreciative of your leadership on
the (nuclear) non-proliferation issue, for countering violent
extremism, cooperation vis-a-vis Afghanistan and counter-Daesh
(Islamic State)," Kerry said.
"We have a very strong set of security interests."
Nazarbayev was the first leader to renounce nuclear weapons that had
been part of the Soviet Union's arsenal. He has earned further favor
with the Obama administration by establishing a nuclear weapons-free
zone in Central Asia and advocating further nuclear arms reductions
around the world.
Nazarbayev told Kerry Kazakhstan valued its economic ties with the
United States, which he said was the largest foreign investor with
about 500 companies operating in the country.
U.S. companies have plowed some $21 billion of investments into
Kazakhstan since it won independence from Moscow in 1991 and
bilateral trade stood at $2.4 billion in 2014.
"We'd like to continue this cooperation," Nazarbayev said.
ROLE MODEL?
The Obama administration believes Kazakhstan can be a regional role
model if it undertakes genuine political reforms, though Nazarbayev
- who won re-election in April with more than 90 percent of the vote
- has shown little interest in that.
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"The key area with Kazakhstan is that they do have the potential to
play a leadership role in the region," said a senior U.S. official
traveling with Kerry.
Nazarbayev justifies his tight hold on power by saying it provides
stability in an ethnically diverse country whose population includes
Kazakhs, Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars and ethnic Germans and has
averted the shocks that have led to turmoil in some other former
Soviet nations.
Some U.S. officials have expressed concern that Nazarbayev is too
close to Russia's President Vladimir Putin, but say they also
understand the pressures Nazarbayev faces in dealing with his giant
northern neighbor.
The senior official traveling with Kerry said Kazakhstan, like other
Central Asian countries, "does not want to have an adversarial or
confrontational relationship with Russia, nor would we want them
to."
Kerry is the first U.S. secretary of state to visit all five Central
Asian countries on a single trip. On Sunday he met Uzbek President
Islam Karimov, who is often criticized in the West for heading a
repressive government.
U.S. relations with Kazakhstan are much stronger and broader. Obama
met Nazarbayev in New York in late September on the sidelines of the
United Nations General Assembly and on Monday Kerry was due to
deliver a Central Asia policy speech at Nazarbayev University in the
Kazakh capital Astana.
(Additional reporting by Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty; Editing by Jason
Bush and Gareth Jones)
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