Top U.S. officials should visit CA region more often - Jeffrey Mankoff
As earlier reported, the CSIS made a presentation of two reports on evaluation of development of the Central Asian countries in Astana. The reports contain recommendations for the U.S. Department of State regarding development of interaction with the Central Asian countries as well a comprehensive evaluation of the region's development level to date. "For the first time we decided to recommend the U.S. National Security Council to create a position for Eurasia affairs because the CA region is in one flow with Russia and European countries. Today CA closely integrates with other Eurasian countries and it would be better for us to accept it as a centre of these processes, but not as a separate part of a large territory. The second recommendation is to concentrate more on trade and investments in Central Asia. Taking into consideration the war in Afghanistan, security issues has remained the main area of relations. But now we need to pay more attention to economic approaches, such as how to attract more investments from the U.S. and other countries to the region, how to develop economies and help build more prospering society in each country of the region, Mankoff said and added that prioritizing Central Asia in the U.S. foreign policy can help in this issue. "It would be useful, if high-ranking U.S. officials could visit the Central Asian region more often. As you may know, the U.S. President has not visited this region since the Soviet Union's collapse. The U.S. Secretary of State's visit to CA is also a rare event. If we want the CA to have more priority for the U.S. policy, we should reflect this priority. For this, the top officials of the U.S. should come to CA countries more often," Mankoff noted.
