Warnings from the Caspian Summit

On October 16, 2007, Russian president Vladimir Putin met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran.

At a summit of the five nations that border the inland Caspian Sea (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan), Putin said none of the nations' territory should be used by any outside countries for use of military force against any nation in the region. It was am obvious reference to long-standing rumors that the U.S. has planned to use Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, as a staging ground for any possible military action against Iran.

Putin, whose trip to Tehran is the first by a Kremlin leader since World War II, also warned that energy pipeline projects crossing the Caspian could only be implemented if all five nations that border the Caspian support them. The legal status of the Caspian — believed to contain the world's third-largest energy reserves — has been uncertain since the 1991 Soviet collapse, leading to tension and conflicting claims to seabed oil deposits. Iran, which shared the Caspian's resources with the Soviet Union, insists that each coastal nation receive an equal portion of the seabed. Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan want the division based on the length of each nation's shoreline, giving Iran a smaller share.

Putin's visit took place despite warnings of a possible assassination plot and amid hopes that personal diplomacy could help offer a solution to an international standoff on Iran's nuclear program. Putin's trip was thrown into doubt when the Kremlin said Sunday that he had been informed by Russian intelligence services that suicide attackers might try to kill him in Tehran, but he ignored the warning.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini dismissed reports about the purported assassination plot as disinformation spread by adversaries hoping to damage the good relations between Russia and Iran.

Putin has warned the U.S. and other nations against trying to coerce Iran into reining in its nuclear program and insists peaceful dialogue is the only way to deal with Iranian defiance of a U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend uranium enrichment.

Iran's rejection of the council's demand and its previous clandestine atomic work has fed suspicions in the U.S. and other countries that Tehran is working to enrich uranium to a purity usable in nuclear weapons. Iran insists it is only wants less enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors that would generate electricity. Putin's visit to Tehran is being closely watched for any possible shifts in Russia's carefully hedged stance in the nuclear standoff.

Even though Russia has shielded Tehran from a U.S. push for a third round of U.N. sanctions, Iran has voiced annoyance about Moscow's delays in building a nuclear power plant in the southern port of Bushehr under a $1 billion contract.

Moscow also has ignored Iranian demands to ship fuel for the plant, saying it would be delivered only six months before the Bushehr plant goes on line. The launch date has been delayed indefinitely amid the payment dispute. Any sign by Putin that Russia could quickly complete the power plant would embolden Iran and further cloud Russia's relations with the West.

Kazakhstan: Elections in 2012

Nursultan Abishuly (Abishevich) Nazarbayev was born on July 6, 1940 in Chemolgan, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union has served as the President of Kazakhstan since the Fall of the Soviet Union and the nation's independence in 1991.

In 1984 Nazarbayev became the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, working under Dinmukhamed Kunayev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan He served as First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party from 1989 to 1991. While previously having atheistic views in the Soviet era, Nazarbayev has exerted effort to highlight his Muslim heritage by going on hajj, supporting mosque renovations, and at the same time attempting to combat Islamic terrorism in Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan's president is elected by the people and serves for at most two five-year terms. Term limits were removed for the incumbent Nursultan Nazarbayev on May 18, 2007, when parliament also voted to reduce the term length from seven to five years. This, however, does not come into effect until the next Kazakh election in 2012.

Nazarbayev has been called one of "ultimate oligarchs" of the post-Soviet Central Asian states. He is believed to have transferred at least $1 billion worth of oil revenues to his private bank accounts in other countries and his family controls many other key enterprises in Kazakhstan. He is also said to have benefitted financially from his "special relations" with Kazakh-Israeli billionaire Alexander Mashkevich, who, as of 2004, was believed to control as much as one-fourth of Kazakhstan's economy.