Turkmen President Set for Key Talks in Romania and Uzbekistan

Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov is planning to visit both Romania for discussions on a major gas pipeline project and Uzbekistan for talks on common use of water resources.

Reports in the state media said the visits were expected in May but did not give detailed information about the exact nature of talks. NBCA experts say energy exports and water sharing are important issues in Turkmenistan’s economic and foreign policy.

The pipeline project known as Nabucco, which is favoured by western countries, would bypass Russia, running from Azerbaijan via Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Austria, and possibly on to Germany.

Nabucco would mainly carry natural gas from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Russia, currently the main buyer of Turkmenistan’s gas, opposes the project.

European demand for gas is expected to increase significantly over the next 20 years, and Nabucco is seen as a way of accessing new sources and avoiding reliance on Russia. Its completion is scheduled for 2013. Cost estimates range between 7.3 and 12 billion US dollars.

Turkmenistan entered into talks on a European export route for gas in 2007 when Berdymuhammedov was elected as president and he began talking about diversifying the country’s energy export routes.

Previous discussions on bilateral energy cooperation took place two years ago in 2009 when the Romanian president traveled to Turkmenistan and invited his Turkmen counterpart for further discussions.

At that time, the Romanian leadership expressed its willingness to participate in any ventures related to the European gas export project, saying that it is prepared to contribute equipment for exploration and the transportation of gas.

Berdymuhammedov’s meetings in Uzbekistan will touch on Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan’s common approach to how Central Asia's transnational waterways should be used. Both countries object to anything that might reduce the flow of transnational rivers - the Amu Darya and Syr Darya - and have called for proper assessments to be carried out first.

Uzbekistan has long been concerned about plans by neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to build more dams on the rivers, fearing that this would starve it of vital irrigation water. The Uzbek economy depends on cotton, and the country is one of the world's largest exporters.

Like its neighbour, Turkmenistan - a largely desert state - is dependent on water from the Amu Darya and earns significant export revenues from cotton.

The shared use of transitional waterways is an issue where the interests of Turkmen and Uzbek leaders fully coincide, according to Annadurdy Khadjiev, a Turkmen economist based in Bulgaria.

Their common approach has been a result of a period of improved bilateral ties that has marked the presidency of Berdymuhammedov, elected in 2007. It replaced previous troubled relations between the neighbouring countries.

This article was produced as part of IWPR's News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.