Ladies and Gentlemen!

First of all, I would like to thank those who arranged this radio forum and asked me to appear before you. This is not only an honor for me, but also a great responsibility. At this rostrum I have been preceded by many respected politicians, among them presidents of the United States. Now the chance to be heard here, in Ohio - the very heart of the United States, has been given not only to me, Akezhan Kazhegeldin, economist and politician, but through me to all of Kazakhstan.

My country lies in the very center of Asia between Russia and China, between Siberia and the great deserts. Poets say that Kazakhstan is the very heart of Asia. For me, therefore, this appearance before the citizens of Ohio represents a conversation between two hearts, a true heart-to-heart talk.

American society needs first-hand knowledge about what is happening in the countries which were formerly partsof the Soviet Union. American corporations, working in Kazakhstan, may have knowledge and understanding of geological resources, but no more than that. I am sure that the oil companies which worked in Iran under Shah Pahlevi had the most detailed and accurate geophysical maps. But these maps could not have predicted that the Shah would be replaced by the Khomeini regime.

In many of the former Soviet republics one can clearly see the possibility or the actual threat of new anti-democratic regimes arising. They are not necessarily linked to religious extremism. And even less to Islam. The Serbian leader Milosevich is not an Islamic extremist. He is a Christian extremist, a nationalist. But that does not make him any less dangerous.

ABOUT KAZAKHSTAN

My country has been in existence as an independent state for only eight years. I am not surprised that not everyone can find it on a map. And yet in recent times American newspapers have been writing about Kazakhstan more frequently. So it is harder nowadays to miss Kazakhstan. Some may say that Kazakhstan is simply a splinter of the former Soviet empire. If so, it is a very large splinter. The largest if one does not count Russia. The territory of Kazakhstan covers 2.7 million square kilometers. This huge territory is inhabited by fifteen million people. This is a bit more than the population of the greater New York metropolitan area. I suspect that it will be a long time before we enter the international discussion of world overpopulation. Imagine the reaction of Japanese businessmen during a four-hour flight from Almaty, our southern capital, to Atray, the center of the oil production region in the western part of the country, when they are told by the stewardess that on their way they will pass over all of three towns. On the other hand, Kazakhstan businessmen are equally stunned when they find out the size of the assets of Japanese and American banks. The total annual state budget of Kazakhstan is somewhere in the area of six billion dollars. That sum passes through a New York bank during one week. And I am not specifically speaking of the Bank of New York.

THE RESOURCES OF DEMOCRACY

When I speak of money, I have no intention of asking for a donation of a certain number of millions to Kazakhstan. This in spite of the catastrophic lack of funds for everything and anything, from formula for the newborn to pensions for the aged. The envoys of the current president regularly come to Washington to ask for credits and donations.

But we, the opposition, expect a different kind of aid from America. You probably know the ancient saying that one can give a hungry man a fish or one can teach him how to fish. This holds true not only for Kazakhstan but for all other newly independent states. People in those countries do indeed need the means to exist, but what they need even more is the ability to earn these means within the framework of a unified world market.

God has not been ungenerous to Kazakhstan when He distributed natural resources. Oil is far from being our only treasure. Kazakhstan possesses deposits of almost all metals, including gold, aluminum, copper, titanium, uranium, zinc and others. All of these resources were being used in one form or another under the Soviet regime. Kazakhstan was then one of the key regions impacting on the growth of the military and industrial might of the Soviet Union.

When I entered the government in 1993 after having held the position of President of the Entrepreneurs' Union, I considered it my main task to attract foreign investment capital. I travelled the world meeting with businessmen and touting our mineral resources, our highly qualified labor force and engineers, and the possibility of unlimited new markets.

During the four years that I held the position of prime-minister we were able to attract to our country hundreds of Western, primarily American, companies. Their investments totalled 9 billion dollars. We not only managed to avoid defaulting on the multi-billion debt incurred by the previous regime, but we created gold and hard-currency reserves of a size remarkable for a country such as Kazakhstan.

But I have to confess that during my tenure I failed to achieve the most important goal - that of creating a sufficient reserve of democracy in our society. Parallel with the development of a liberalized economy an authoritarian and anti-democratic regime was emerging in Kazakhstan - the regime of President Nazarbaev.

And, unfortunately, I myself helped solidify it. As a young politician and, more accurately, a technocrat, I believed that everything would develop on its own as it should. Together with my reform-minded colleagues I thought that once a market economy was established, democracy would follow; once Western investments started coming, society would automatically become transparent; once a middle class had emerged and defined its interests, a multi-party system would appear.

We were wrong. Even while still in the position of prime-minister I began to notice that foreign investors would frequently find themselves in conflict with local administrations and would always lose in the end.

The courts and media controlled by local officials invariably took the side of their bosses. Foreign investors and ambassadors applied to me and in each specific case I was forced to use my authority as prime-minister.

Our own businessmen found themselves in an even worse situation. They became hostages to the officials. They did not have embassies on their side, and their complaints were not being heard by the international arbitration board in Stockholm. Without the administration's patronage they were unable to conduct their business.

At the same time more and more positions in government were being occupied by the President's relatives. Other positions went to nephews, to fellow-villagers and former colleagues in the Communist Party.

Combining business holdings, obtained without investment or qualifications, with power, they created a unique sort of capitalism profiting an oligarchy determined by clan and family ties. It was futile to expect of these people either democratic views or even professional managerial conduct.

At this point I left the government and dedicated myself to political activity. I became the head of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs of Kazakhstan and later the chairman of the Republican National Party of Kazakhstan. These organizations formed an opposition to President Nazarbaev, and I personally was forced to leave my country and seek temporary asylum in Western Europe.

AMERICAN AID

I recently read in the New York Times a commentary by Tina Rosenberg on the work of one of the specialists of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace dealing with the effectiveness of America's "export of democracy". I have not as yet seen the book myself, but I noted the following figure: Seven hundred nineteen million dollars were spent last year on US government support of democracy in other countries.

Thomas Caroters attempted to estimate the effect of such investment in democracy. This is an extremely important question. In the case of Kazakhstan, I see how often such aid is being used by anti-democratic forces for their own purposes. I will give you an example: The International Financial Corporation -opened the printing house "Franklin" in Almaty. At first it printed a number of newspapers expressing different viewpoints, among them "Karavan", the most widely read and independent of the newspapers of Kazakhstan.

However, just before last year's presidential elections the authorities forced the owner to sell the newspaper together with the printing house to a relative of President Nazarbaev. Since then the facility has printed nothing but pro-government publications, and the opposition has been forced to print its materials a thousand miles away in Russia and ship them secretly into Kazakhstan.

As you know, barely a month ago parliamentary elections were held in Kazakhstan.They were carried out with massive violations of voting procedures and false vote counts. As a result, the majority of the seats in parliament went to the candidates of the powers that be and to government officials. This happened in spite of the fact that sociological polling and the monitoring of voting precincts on election day indicated that the opposition candidates were in the lead across the country.

It is not surprising that all this falsification was carried out and later covered up by the Central Electoral Commission. The Commission was created and is controlled by President Nazarbaev. It is, therefore, understandable that local electoral commissions composed of government employees and controlled by local administrators and governors added fake ballots and issued false election returns.

What is amazing is the fact that on the eve of the elections international organizations conducted serious work of "educating" the members of these electoral commissions. Dozens of experts from Western Europe and the United States lectured on the subject of how ballots must be handled and counted correctly and honestly. Members of the Central Electoral Commission went abroad for training. Instructions and methodological materials were printed, seminars conducted. I do no know how much all of this cost, but I suspect that millions were spent. We, the citizens of Kazakhstan, watched all this as a performance of the theater-of-the-absurd.

Why were all these efforts and funds, among them those of the American taxpayers, expended in vain? As recently as in January of this year, these very same electoral commissions had falsified the results of the presidential elections. The free press had been annihilated and many members of the opposition had been denied their civil rights. I was one of them.

The Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe, a number of Congressional committees and the Administration of President Clinton have condemned those elections as incompatible with democratic norms. The authorities of Kazakhstan never intended to hold honest elections or to admit opposition candidates to parliament. Could the Administration and the agencies involved in foreign aid have deemed it possible that, having falsified the presidential election, Nursultan Nazarbaev would allow honest parliamentary elections? That is hard to believe.

THE SECRET STRATEGY OF DICTATORS

It seems to me that after the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union, the West was caught in a trap set by crafty post-Soviet leaders. These people have learned the lesson of history, they have understood that one cannot openly reject democratic principles. They determined that it is much better to verbally acknowledge common human values, to proclaim them loudly at every turn, to promise to stop all violations of human rights, and - most of all - to abstain from polemics with the West.

Then one can pay yearly visits to Washington, make speeches before members of the various think tanks about progress towards democracy, and acquire the reputation of being "our man". And meanwhile in one's own country one can destroy the free press, quash the opposition, and prevent any possibility of a transfer of power by constitutional means.

At the same time, these leaders, trying to preempt criticism, are asking the West for help in building democracy. They say that because of long years of Soviet dictatorship, their citizens are unable to absorb such concepts as equality before the law, freedom of speech, political competition and the division of power.

Thus in April of this year, President Nazarbaev during his appearance at the Carnegie Endowment asserted in all seriousness that America had needed two hundred years to build its democracy and that ,therefore, no demands in that respect could be made on Kazakhstan.

Had I been present at that meeting, I would have anwered my president by saying: "Had American presidents allowed themselves to rig elections and prolong their terms in office at will, even five hundred years would not have been enough for building democracy in the United States."

It is hard to say how many American consultants have visited Kazakhstan and how many proposals and memorandums they have written for the government.All of them were qualified experts, all of them believed that the government was just waiting for their recommendations to make one more step toward genuine democracy. But none of these recommendations are implemented if they go contrary to the preservation of power by the new "nomenklatura".

You must realize that the elective nature of local government has beein abolished in Kazakhstan. All regional governors and local mayors are appointed by the President. There is a Ministry of Information and Social Concensus which controls the media and printing. What kind of recommendations can one give to these institutions? All this reminds one of a discourse between a cannibal and dieticians. The members of the rubber-stamp parliament have frequently visited Washington on the invitation of their colleagues, the US legislators. They pretended to admire the perfection of the American system of division of power and then returned home to vote for granting President Nararbaev additional powers and authority and extending his term of office from five to seven years. There is a Russian proverb "The oats were of no profit to the horse". I think it fits the situation.

A year ago a ban was placed on the publication of my book "The Right to Chose", which exposed the true nature of the current regime. More than three hundred thousand copies published in the Kazakh language were destroyed. For the last two years the authorities have been denying registration to the newspaper "Respublika". During the presidential elections twelve opposition papers and two radio stations were closed down. Three printing houses were confiscated and have not been returned to their owners. Quite recently the owner of the independent radio station RIK was forced to leave for Canada.

I was outraged when I heard the testimony of Kazakhstan's ambassador to Washington Nurgaliev at the hearings before the Congressional Committee on Cooperation and Security in Europe. He was trying to convince Congress that democracy was indeed evolving in Kazakhstan, that it was becoming an accomplished fact. As proof thereof he cited the cooperation of his government with international organizations and American consultants.

And this at a time when it is clear to any objective observer that Kazakhstan is moving swiftly away from democracy and mutating towards a classic dictatorship. What is encouraging is that US legislators do not allow themselves to be duped by such litanies of "good deeds" and continue to condemn the anti-democrtic practices of the current regime.

Does this mean that the United States should abandon their efforts to export democracy to post-Soviet states? Not at all! But it would be useful to analyze the correlation between cost and effect.

When viewed from that perspective, the most effective aid turns out to be that which is given not to governmental bodies, but to specific opposition groups, to independent newspapers,to intellectuals, to unofficial trade unions. It is such aid that proved to be decisive in Poland. A simple Xerox machine in the hands of "Solidarity" proved to be a more poweful weapon than the guns and clubs of the secret police.

But one must remember that the new dictators are extremely resourceful. For the benefit of the West they create a large number of seemingly non-governmental and quite democratic organizations: "pocket" trade-unions, environmental movements, women's movements, fake political parties.

It would seem, that a foreigner would be incapable of telling a genuine human rights advocate from a false one, a real democratic movement from a fictional one. But in actuality, it is all quite simple: There is only one criterium and it is well known to your journalists and diplomats who work in Kazakhstan: Does this or that opposition group allow itself to criticize the President?

All the "pocket" dissidents and fictional opponents are permitted to severely criticize and expose regional governors and even government ministers, but will never dare to point out that, if corruption has pervaded the highest levels of government, the President is obviously aiding and abetting it. Once you identify the "uppel limit of criticism", you can determine whether the organization in question is really independent of the goverment and the secret police.

THE VOICE OF AMERICA MUST BE TRULY HEARD

The credit for the fact that the Soviet Union crumbled of its own accord without anybody coming to its defense belongs to a greater degree to the radios "Liberty" and "Voice of America" than to the Pentagon and the CIA. I hope that the workers of those two venerable agencies will not feel offended.

But it is precisely from those broadcasts that I myself gained my basic understanding of a free society and of a market economy. At that time the broadcasts were being heavily jammed, but we listened anyway. We did so because man has, among other instincts, the very basic instinct, the unquenchable desire to know the truth. The great Russian writer and the great dissident of the Soviet era, Nobel Prize Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn proclaimed that "God is to be found in truth, not in might".It is because of this that Brezhnev feared him more than any other of his enemies.

This is why, when I meet with members of Congress and the Administration in Washington, I ask them again and again not to cut down on broadcasts to the former Soviet republics, but to create broadcast services for each of the new states of Central Asia. My people need information as much as they need bread.

You cannot imagine to what length my fellow-citizens will go to obtain truthful information. Because of the difference is time zones, they watch Russian TV broadcasts deep into the night trying to find out what is really happening in Kazakhstan. Early in October the New York Times published an article about the fact that the Swiss police had frozen the personal bank account of President Nazarbaev in the amount of eighty five million dollars. As soon as reports about this event began to be broadcast by Russian televsion stations, all Russian TV channels were blocked for three days in Kazakhstan.

I am sure that you find it hard to believe. But this is indeed so. Try to imagine it. Try to imagine how hard it is for people to live not only in poverty but surrounded by lies. Help people in all post-Soviet states to turn from mere populations into civic societies. The broadcasts of the Voice of America and of Radio Liberty must not be curtailed.

Full-fledged programs for each of these states in its own language must be created.One should not economize on truth and freedom of information. The United States, as the last of the superpowers, bear the responsibility for maintaining not only peace but truth. I repeat the words of Solzhenitsyn: "God is to be found in truth, not in might".

THE THREAT TO THE WEST

No one can say that Kazakhstan and other states of Central Asia are being ingnored by American diplomats and non-governmental experts. But this is so mainly because of their oil and the question of its delivery to Western markets. The bloody conflict in Chechnya and the armed religious movements in these countries are viewed merely as arguments pro or con for one or the other route the future gigantic pipeline might take.

I am convinced that world history is driven not by oil, but by blood. The danger of terrorist movements lies not in the fact that they may hinder the building of this or that pipeline, but in the fact that they disrupt and destroy human lives. Remember Bosnia and Kosovo. There is no oil in the Balkans, but the threat to peace which arose there forced the United States and NATO to send their troops.

If after the passing of Tito the West had not abandoned Yugoslavia to the tender mercies of Milosevich, if the democratic movements there had received support in the nineteen eighties, the dissolution of that state would not have been as tragic and prolonged. If a radio "Free Serbia" had begun broadcasting early enough, Milosevich would have left the scene five years ago. Instead, just as the presidents of some of the CIS countries, among them President Nazarbaev, had done, he placed his daughter at the head of state television and radio. The Serbian people became the victims of nationalist lies and have suffered for it.

Nationalism and religious extremism are the two main threats to a happy and prosperous future. Do they threaten Kazakhstan? To a great extent they do, unless the opposition forces and world opinion counter them with a democratic alternative. Otherwise no strong-hand tactics, not dictatorial regime will stand up to that threat.

Conversely, dictatorship and the corruption it breeds is likely to lead to an explosion of religious, and particularly Islamic, fanaticism. In a poor country where the ruling elite cynically robs the people and deprives them of the opportunity to express their aspirations, the emergence of religious extremism becomes unavoidable.

The average person sees that he or she cannot change anything, becomes desperate and ready to do anything. And at this moment a preacher inevitably appears saying that God will bless your protest and forgive any bloodshed. All that remains is to find the weapons, and that is not difficult in our world today.

So wherein lies the true source of religious extremism - in religion or in dictatorship which pushes people towards violence? The answer is self-evident. Leaders of some CIS regimes find it useful to have a few extremist Islamic groups handy to frighten the West.

They tell you: "Only dictatorship can stop Islamic terror. If you do not support me, your oil pipelines will suffer". This is a lie. This is a total reversal of cause and effect. The longer dictatorial clan-based regimes remain in power, the greater will the influence of religious fanatics become, and the more blood will be spilled eventually.

For Kazakhstan the threat of national and religious extremism is especially great. In our country there are as many Kazakhs as non-Kazakhs, as many Muslims as there are Orthodox Christians. If the danger of religious extremism arises in the predominently Kazakh south, the Russian population which is concentrated in the north will turn to Russia for aid. The oil-rich western part of the country will proclaim its own interests. In that case the "balkanization" of Kazakhstan will become inevitable.

It pains me to say all this. I am asking you to help my country avoid this fate. There is no other way to achieve this than to help the people of Kazakhstan to secure those freedoms which were initially promised by the Constitution but which were then stolen: the freedom of speech, the freedom of forming political organizations, the freedom to chose one's representatives in the governing bodies. And, I beg, do not help dictators stay in power.