Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Dueling Despots
One despot is the subject of well-deserved protests, official hysteria, and comparisons to Hitler. The other one (described at length in my previous post) is wooed by the US Secretary of State:
American officials, striving to weaken the grip of Gazprom, Russia's state-owned energy monopoly, in energy-rich Central Asia, are forcefully wooing the president of Turkmenistan on his first visit to the United States.That'll teach him to respect his people's rights and liberties! Way to go, Condi! You couldn't possibly have given us a better demonstration of the negotiability of US principles.
The president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, in the first trip by a Turkmen leader to the United States since 1998, went to New York to attend activities Wednesday related to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. He met Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the United Nations.
U.S. officials say they want Berdymukhammedov to come away with the understanding that he has other options for developing extensive natural gas deposits and for shipping the fuel to market.
