Cranston to Drum Up U.S. Support for Kyrgyzstan

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), just back from his last trip abroad as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, says he will spend his retirement promoting U.S. support for an unlikely recipient--the government of Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic in a remote corner of Central Asia.

“I am determined to do what I can to help him,” Cranston said of Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev.

Cranston visited Kyrgyzstan and two other central Asian republics, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, last month. In a detailed report to the Senate, he described Kyrgyzstan as the only functioning democracy among the predominantly Muslim Asian states that have gained independence in the ruins of the Soviet Union.

Cranston cited human rights difficulties in each of the other republics. And in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, two republics that refused even to let him visit, the repression of opposition is even worse, he said.

“In Kyrgyzstan, basic freedoms are protected by law and in practice,” Cranston said. “There is a free press that is more hampered by a newsprint shortage and the lack of a journalistic tradition than by any government restriction. The government critics with whom we met had many complaints but praised Akayev for his commitment to human rights and no one said they had been harassed.”

Cranston, 78, did not run for reelection after he was reprimanded by the Senate for his involvement in the “Keating Five” affair and was found to have prostate cancer. He has served 24 years in Congress.

Although he has not previously been recognized as an expert on Central Asia, the veteran member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been involved in foreign policy for most of his adult life.

In retirement, he said, he plans to be associated with the U.S. branch of the Moscow-based think tank run by former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.