By empty (4/16/2002 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The commander of Russia's Space Troops, Lieutenant General Anatolii Perminov, was in Kazakhstan with a group of generals on 16 April to inspect equipment and personnel at the Baikonur cosmodrome. Perminov said Moscow plans to transfer its military space program from Baikonur to Plesetsk within eight to 10 years, although it will continue to use the Kazakh facility for launching civilian spacecraft and commercial satellites. At present, all of Russia's manned spacecraft and more than half its military satellites are launched from Baikonur, which Russia leases from Kazakhstan for $115 million per year.

By empty (4/16/2002 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Opposition leaders from western Kazakhstan's oil-producing regions announced they have created an organization called the People's Oil Fund in order to monitor the government's financial activities. The move follows Prime Minister Imanghali Tasmaghambetov's admission earlier this month that President Nursultan Nazarbaev created a secret foreign bank account in 1996 containing some $1 billion that the Kazakh government received from selling a stake in the Tengiz oil field, although he denied that any of the money was for Nazarbaev's personal use. The founders of the People's Oil Fund said they hope to promote transparency in the government and to expose any other secret hoards of public money held by "high-ranking bureaucrats in Astana.

By empty (4/16/2002 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Addressing Central Asia's sixth regional forum on nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and export control, which opened in Tashkent on 15 April, John Schlosser, an official at the State Department's Nonproliferation Bureau, announced that Washington will be distributing $30 million in assistance among Central Asian states to combat WMD trafficking. An additional $20 million is earmarked solely for Uzbekistan to help it strengthen its borders, Schlosser said, noting that eight attempts to smuggle radioactive material out of Central Asia were thwarted last year. He was addressing some 100 export-control officials from the region at a four-day conference titled "Barriers Against Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Proliferation, And Terrorism," co-sponsored by the U.