Page 66 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine December 2023

66 I Eurasia bne December 2023
David Cameron, appointed November 13 as the UK's new foreign secretary, already has a busy Central Asia in-tray. / UK Government, cc-by-sa 3.0
UK engagement with Central Asia “lacks seriousness” says report by British MPs
bne IntelIiNews
The UK’s high-level ministerial engagement with Central Asia’s governments is persistently inadequate and is interpreted by partners as demonstrating “a lack
of seriousness” from the British government, according to a report from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament released on November 10.
The report, entitled “Countries
at crossroads: UK engagement in Central Asia”, calls for “high-level, consistent diplomatic engagement” with Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, “whilst ensuring that the UK financial services cannot be used as a conduit for illicit finance flows from the region. This is of increasing importance as these five
www.bne.eu
countries become a setting for a great power competition.”
Deepening the engagement both bilaterally and as a regional group is “a geopolitical imperative”, said the committee, calling on the British prime minister and secretaries of state to engage with all five countries over the next three years.
Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Alicia Kearns MP, said: “Sandwiched between Russia and China, Central Asian countries are courted by both powers. For too long, the UK has neglected to engage with Central Asian states. Instead, the FCDO has played whack-a-mole – easily distracted by crises elsewhere – and provided no consistent offer to Central Asia.”
In recent months, Central Asia’s leaders have had meetings with US President Joe Biden in New York and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, while last week French President Emmanuel Macron visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
A press release summarising the report’s findings also turned to how the report finds that the UK is “a leading enabler for corrupt Central Asian elites and a key node for capital flight out of the region.”
It added: “The Committee says that the continuance of an underenforced financial crime prosecution system
in the UK constitutes an undeclared interference in the form of facilitation of kleptocratic autocracies.