Central Asia’s largest and richest country, Kazakhstan, will join the Abraham Accords which, sponsored by the White House, normalized relations between Muslim countries and Israel. The announcement came during a meeting this Thursday at the US presidential residence between Donald Trump and the leaders of five Central Asian countries, to seal a series of trade agreements – especially on rare earths – and strengthen relations with nations traditionally in Russia’s area of influence and with which China has established extensive ties over the past two decades.
In a message on his social network Truth, Trump announced that in the last few hours he had had a conversation with the Kazakh president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who was joined by telephone by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Kazakhstan is the first country in my second term to join the Abraham Accords, the first of many. This represents a big step in building bridges around the world,” the Republican writes. “We will soon announce a signing ceremony to make it official, and there will be many other countries who will want to join this Fortaleza club.”
In a statement, the Kazakh government confirmed its willingness to join these pacts and made clear that it is in the last stage of negotiations. “Our long-awaited entry into the agreements represents a natural and logical continuation of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy, based on dialogue, mutual respect and regional stability,” Astana noted.
This Central Asian country already has full diplomatic and economic relations with Israel, so the step is above all symbolic.
For the United States, Kazakhstan’s membership is particularly important to give new impetus to the agreements that Trump considers among the most important achievements of his first term, and to encourage other countries to join them after the Gaza ceasefire agreement enters into force.
Washington hopes that Saudi Arabia, the spiritual leader of Arab countries as custodian of Muslim holy sites and a major economic and diplomatic power in the Middle East, will agree to join these pacts. The war in Gaza derailed negotiations that President Joe Biden’s administration had undertaken.
Trump has been particularly insistent in convincing Riyadh, even though Saudi leaders have been reluctant until the path to the creation of a Palestinian state is established. Saudi Crown Prince and de facto leader of the country, Mohamed bin Salman, plans to travel to Washington to meet the American president on the 18th at the White House.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed normalization agreements with Israel in 2020. Morocco joined the initiative a few months later.
The leaders of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, as well as Kazakh Tokayev, attended Thursday’s meeting at the White House, which began with a closed-door meeting and continued with a gala dinner. It is the first time that the five have gathered in Washington to be received by an American president. In the past, their autocratic regimes had received harsh criticism from previous administrations for their human rights violations.
