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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ASTANA 000715 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR SCA/CEN, SCA/PPD, EUR/RUS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL PROP SOCI KPAO RS KZ
SUBJECT:  KAZAKHSTAN'S EIGHTH EURASIAN MEDIA FORUM: 
OUT-TAKES 
 
¶1.  (U) Sensitive but unclassified.  Not for public Internet. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Dr. (sic) Dariga Nazarbayeva organized (or at least 
it was organized in her name), the Eighth Eurasian Media 
Forum, April 23-24, in Almaty, co-sponsored by CNN and "The 
International Herald Tribune," with support from EuroNews and 
a large number of other international media, media-related, 
and other businesses.  U.S. participants included Republican 
National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, former U.S. 
Congressman and NBC news analyst Harold Ford, former USUN 
Ambassador (and former Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq) 
Zalmay Khalilzad, and several other lesser but probably 
worthy lights. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Those who had attended previous years' events noted 
this eighth iteration was significantly scaled back because 
of the global financial crisis.  Still, the usual MC presided 
-- Riz Khan, former CNN correspondent currently with 
Al-Jazeera (English).  His opening monologue each day 
employed many U.S.-specific political-commentary jokes, but 
left most of the audience scratching their heads, especially 
once his shtick went through translation into Russian, 
because English-Russian word-play jokes notoriously fall flat 
in translation. 
 
¶4.  (SBU) President Nazarbayev was originally scheduled to 
give the welcome speech, but the final schedule distributed 
at the last minute noted the welcome speech would be 
delivered "on behalf of President Nazarbayev."  The deliverer 
was State Secretary Kanat Saudabayev, reputedly one of 
Nazarbayev's closest confidants.  Saudabayev's speech had 
very little, if anything, to do with international media. 
Instead, it was a well-reasoned message in support of 
international non-proliferation, clearly a nod to the United 
States and other Western partners, both to support the Obama 
Administration's non-proliferation priorities and to burnish 
President Nazarbayev's global non-proliferation credentials 
in his alleged effort to be considered for the Nobel Peace 
Prize.  We talked to Saudabayev's speech writer later who, 
somewhat sheepishly, confirmed both these goals. 
 
¶5.  (SBU) When Dariga Nazrabayeva subsequently took the stage 
for her welcome comments, she grimly "thanked the President 
of Kazakhstan for his words."  The back-story here is that 
Q, once the golden girl for the future leadership, has been 
sidelined politically because of her (former) marriage to 
Rakhat Aliyev, who is now Nazarbayev's mortal enemy-supremo. 
(Besides that, she tumbled this year out of the Forbes' list 
of international billionaires.)  In the medieval-khan, 
blood-feud-to-the-death battle between Nazarbayev and Aliyev, 
Nazarbayev decreed that Dariga had to divorce Rakhat Aliyev, 
even though she is said to have more than a soft spot for her 
former husband, and, some say, might even bolt to the other 
side -- except that Nazarbayev has taken up her first son, 
his namesake, as a new favorite.  Even more intriguing, word 
on the street is that Nazarbayev is now not averse to letting 
it be known that Dariga is "only" his step-daughter, being 
the off-spring of his official wife from a previous liaison. 
The real facts are hard to determine because both sides -- 
Nazarbayev and Aliyev, with Dariga caught in the middle -- 
have engaged international public relations firms to do 
battle against each other.  And yet Dariga is not without her 
friends.  At the Media Forum, two female members of 
parliament hovered around her like mother hens, including 
former Minister of Justice Baliyeva, who was recently demoted 
to be a member of parliament. 
 
¶6.  (SBU)  Back to the Media Forum.  As usual at such events, 
the initial presentations in each session were generally 
reasonable and innocuous -- but not all.  Both for the 
record, and for a degree of amusement, certain statements 
 
ASTANA 00000715  002 OF 003 
 
 
follow.  Without doubt, the most outrageous panel participant 
was Igor Panarin, described as a "doctor of geopolitical 
analysis and member of the faculty of the Diplomatic Academy 
of the Russian Foreign Ministry."  He alleged the following: 
 
-- Since the U.S. Administration of President Bill Clinton, 
there has been no difference between the U.S. political 
parties.  The secret plan is in place and is being 
implemented by the permanent foreign policy cabal of 
Washington to dominate the world. 
 
-- The collapse of the "five totalitarian bankers of Wall 
Street" (sic) marks the beginning of the destruction of 
Imperial America and the equal destruction of global U.S.-led 
capitalism. 
 
-- September 8, 2008 (the Russian invasion of Georgia), was a 
glorious date in world history, because it marked the 
beginning of the spiritual reintegration of the former Soviet 
peoples. 
 
-- The U.S. dollar will collapse and disappear by August 
2009, opening the way for a global currency the following 
year that will be based on the currencies of Russia, China, 
Japan, and maybe the European Union.  Further, within a few 
years the United States will likely disintegrate into a loose 
 commonwealth of mutually antagonistic regional powers. 
Proof for this is the recent call by the Governor of Texas to 
secede his state from the Union, as well as percentages in 
Vermont and North Caroline who favor secession. 
 
NOTE:  Chairman of Kazakhstan's National Bank, Grigoriy 
Marchenko, well known for not suffering fools gladly, raked 
his fingers through his hair, ostentatiously rubbed his neck, 
and stared at the ceiling during Ponarin's wild-eyed 
presentation.  END NOTE. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Relatively less loony, and rational more often than 
not, was Gaidar Djemal, Chairman of the Islamic Committee of 
Russia.  Still, he had his colorful moments: 
 
-- The defeat of the Soviet Union didn't fully satisfy the 
people of the world, including in Europe.  They want the 
"Final Solution" against the Homeland (rodina).  There is now 
a great vacuum because American Imperialism has failed. 
Russia is re-emerging as the great world power that will 
organize and lead "the lesser nations." 
 
-- When we speak of the nuclear problem in Iran, we should 
not forget the attitude of the United States.  Obama, like 
Bush, still supports regime change in Tehran.  The U.S. 
nuclear concern is nothing more than a pretense to 
restructure Iranian politics against Russia's interests. 
Obama is not concerned about nuclear weapons in Iran -- he 
wants to achieve the final destruction of Russia. 
 
-- Obama has turned the initial Russian liberal-democratic 
joy about his election into bitter ashes in their mouths. 
He's signaled they don't matter to him.  They now understand 
his cynical rejection of the forces of Russian democracy in 
favor of the final humiliation -- the thorough disarmament of 
Great Russia. 
 
¶8.  (SBU) Lest it appear we are dumping only on Russian 
participants in the Eurasian Media Forum, Alexander Rahr, 
Program Director for Russia/Eurasia of the German Council on 
Foreign Relations, said, "I have no doubt that Obama has a 
secret agreement with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 
(SCO) for the SCO to step into Afghanistan as soon as NATO 
fails.  The goal will appear to be to empower Russia and 
China to be the power arbiters of Eurasia, but the real goal 
 
ASTANA 00000715  003 OF 003 
 
 
will be to bog them down in the 'graveyard of empires.'" 
 
¶9.  (SBU) Finally, we want to take note of an older 
Kazakhstani intellectual who rose to thunder an impassioned, 
grandly self-important, extraordinarily repetitive 
intervention (until he was cut off by the Chinese moderator), 
demanding to know:  "Why are we wasting time with all these 
different points of view when we should be developing 
instructions for the journalists here so that they know what 
to publish tomorrow!" 
 
¶10.  (SBU) COMMENT:  We want to acknowledge that the public 
goals of the Eurasian Media Forum -- to bring together 
leaders and thinkers to promote international understanding 
-- are laudable.  At the same time, we acknowledge that we, 
like Grigoriy Marchenko, don't suffer fools gladly.  Maybe 
all international fora are subject to a degree of 
public-intellectual ideological posturing.  This one, 
however, seems to have had more than its fair share of fools. 
 On the other hand, it was an interesting exposure to public 
opinion.  END COMMENT. 
HOAGLAND