Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

The Uzbekistan incident took place right after Uzbekistan withdrew from Bush’s GUUAM. I was looking at the BTC pipeline as the catalyst but GUUAM could be more relevant.
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Uzbekistan has formally withdrawn from GUUAM, a regional grouping of states that also comprises Georgia and Ukraine. Political analysts say the move confirms a geopolitical turn by Uzbek leader Islam Karimov away from the United States towards Russia.
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"This [GUUAM] alliance lies "strategically at the hub of the Caspian oil and gas wealth, with Moldava and the Ukraine offering [pipeline] export routes to the West.

"Dominated by Anglo-American oil interests, the formation of GUUAM ultimately purports to exclude Russia from the oil and gas deposits in the Caspian area, as well as isolating Moscow politically [my emphasis-LC]."

"In the context of GUUAM and the SRS, Washington has encouraged the formation of pro-US client states strategically located along oil pipeline routes. The latter are to be "protected" by NATO under GUUAM and various other military cooperation agreements. The hidden agenda is to eventually cut the Russians off altogether from the Caspian oil and gas fields [my emphasis-LC].

"With a view to weakening Moscow's control over Caspian oil, several alternative pipeline routes have been envisaged. The Baku-Supsa pipeline—inaugurated in 1999 during the War in Yugoslavia and protected military by GUUAM—totally bypasses Russian territory. The oil is transported by pipeline from Baku to the Georgian port of Supsa, where it is shipped by tanker to the Pivdenny terminal near Odessa in the Ukraine. Both Georgia and Ukraine are part of the GUUAM military alliance. This Pivdenny terminal has been financed—in agreement with the (neo-fascist) government of President Leonid Kuchna—by Western loans."
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