Berlin today is culturally diverse and cosmopolitan not unlike Astana and to say more, Germany takes interest in the Eurasian idea of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who on the first day of the visit attended the opening of the Eurasian Club of Berlin, which aims to become a permanent institution of the Kazakh-German partnership, pursuing a closer integration in the Eurasian context.

The content of this visit points to the development of political, trade and economic, cultural and humanitarian cooperation between Kazakhstan and Germany. In the two days of the visit the President intends to be in more than a dozen meetings with German top officials, leading political figures, businessmen. It is planned to sign several important documents.

First came the talks with Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Guido Westerwelle, in which the parties stated dynamic development of cooperation, discussed a wide range of cooperation issues both in bilateral and Kazakhstan-EU format.

It was Germany that initiated the EU strategy for Central Asia, and Kazakhstan is the only country in the region that adopted and successfully implemented a state program "Path to Europe". Berlin supports the draft agreement on an expanded partnership between the EU and Kazakhstan, the only Central Asian nation to come to this plane of dialogue with the European Union.

As for Kazakh-German bilateral cooperation, it is best illustrated by the motto "Partnership for the Future", adopted by Astana and Berlin in 2008. Since that time bilateral contacts have noticeably grown and official visits of President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Germany in February 2009 and a year later of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Kazakhstan gave a new stimulus to them. December 1-2, 2010, Angela Merkel visited Astana for the OSCE Summit.

The top-level negotiations stepped up the economic relations. In 2010 alone a number of interdepartmental agreements and commercial contracts were signed worth more than EUR 2 billion subsequent to the talks between Nursultan Nazarbayev and Angela Merkel. That resulted in growth in mutual trade that as of 2011 makes $ 3.6 billion, 22% up year-on-year. The total amount of German investments in Kazakhstan is $ 1.1 billion.

The cooperation potential has yet to be fully tapped, for which German-Kazakh Society and the German-Kazakh Business Council are working, and the Eurasian Club of Berlin, opening yesterday in a ceremony, attended by N.Nazarbayev adds to this list of the interaction tools.

Ahead of this ceremony Nursultan Nazarbayev met with former Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister of Germany Hans-Dietrich Genscher in the German Council on Foreign Relations. H. Genscher is the honorary chairman of the Kazakh-German Society and supports developing comprehensive cooperation with Kazakhstan. He was a first European foreign minister who visited Kazakhstan at the dawn of its Independence and made a significant contribution to the development of bilateral cooperation.

One of these days it will be exactly 20 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Kazakhstan and Germany, on which Nursultan Nazarbayev congratulated the audience at the opening of the Eurasian Club of Berlin.

The President flashed back to the challenges and achievements of the country in all these years, referred to Kazakhstan’s foreign policy initiatives, prioritizing countering the global financial and economic crisis, construction of effective financial architecture. The latter is relevant to Germany, working to exit from the debt crisis in Europe and stabilization of the single European currency.

Kazakhstan’s position in this respect is cooperation on a global scale, integration cooperation in Eurasia – the continent that accounts for two thirds of the world's population and more than half of world production. For fragmentation of the Eurasian space the regional cooperation potential cannot be tapped efficiently, which reduces resistance of national economies to global threats.

Given that, President Nursultan Nazarbayev urged to expand business, social and cultural ties, develop transport and communication infrastructure, mutual trade and investment, energy partnership, innovation and educational exchanges. Kazakhstan has been and remains a supporter of the integration processes, as evidenced by the established Common Economic Space (CES) that will gradually evolve into the Eurasian Economic Union. Our country also notes auspicious conditions for pooling together the CES and EU economic potentials.

The Eurasian Club of Berlin is a very handy project for this end, a new dialogue venue on expert level. Its co-chairs and organizers are to be the Kazakh Embassy in Germany and the Berthold Beitz Center under the German Council on Foreign Policy.

Vladimir Kuriatov

KP special correspondent

Photo: Sergey Bondarenko, Bolatbek Otarbaev