THE NEW GREAT GAME IN ASIA

Editorial of the Times, Internet Times-Fax edition, 2 January 1996, p.8

Central Asia has again emerged as a battleground among big powers engaged in an old geopolitical game. Western experts believe that the largely untapped oil and natural gas riches of the Caspian Sea countries could make that region the Persian Gulf of the next century.

The object of the revived game is to befriend leaders of the former Soviet republics controlling the oil, while neutralizing Russian suspicions and devising secure alternative pipeline routes to world markets.

Russia has historic and legal claims to the Caspian Sea and has insisted that it must be a party to any agreement on sharing oil and natural gas riches. Moscow's claims go back to the 19th century, when czarist armies conquered these Islamic emirates in an expansionist drive that Victorian England saw as a threat to its rule in India.

This resulting rivalry in Central Asia, Kipling’s Great Game, continued as a shadowy duel even after the Bolsheviks took over the czarist empire. In theory, everybody could benefit in the revived game by agreeing to split the winnings. Western and Japanese capital is essential to developing Caspian fields. China and India would seem a likely lucrative market for Caspian oil.

Washington is right to support a pipeline route that is not subject to unilateral Russian control. But a hard-pressed Russia has some claim to a share of Caspian oil wealth and historic reasons for worrying about hostile hands on pipeline taps.

A compact that addressed those concerns, while equitably sharing profits among the Caspian states and foreign investors, could make all a winner in this complicated game.

Editorial Of The Times [placed as graphic insert in middle of right hand column with text wrapped around it]