Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev called Friday for a rare summit of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe heads of state to be held this year in Astana, nearly 11 years after the previous such high-level gathering.
Nazarbayev, whose energy-rich state became, on Jan. 1, the first former Soviet republic to chair the 56-member OSCE, used an annual address to the nation to push for the meeting.
"Many OSCE member states supported the ... proposal to hold a summit in Astana this year," Nazarbayev said during a lengthy televised address delivered once in Russian and once in the Kazakh language.
"I suggested that we discuss at the summit the topical issues of security in the OSCE area of responsibility, the situation in Afghanistan and questions of tolerance."
The OSCE, a trans-Atlantic security and democracy body which includes the U.S., Russia and many EU countries, has not held a heads of state summit since 1999 when it met in Istanbul.
If Nazarbayev is able to sell the idea of such a summit in 2010, it could bring with it a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama, the first visit to Central Asia by a U.S. president, which would be a point of prestige for Kazakhstan.
Nazarbayev, a former Communist party boss who has ruled Kazakhstan since its independence from the Soviet Union, pushed for the gathering to be held during what he described as "the most difficult period in modern history."
Kazakhstan, a sprawling Central Asian state bordering Russia and China, came under serious criticism over its record on human rights and democracy as it prepared to take over the rotating chairmanship.
Astana was granted the chairmanship in the hopes that it would serve as an impetus for reform, an idea that critics of the country have derided as wishful thinking.