Naveen And Olmert

This comes a couple of weeks late because of the pressing situation in and around Pakistan. The Kazakh government hosted the annual Eurasia Media Forum in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan.

This media forum is fascinating mainly because it is not a western [read 'British-American'] take on international issues. The Kazakh forum approaches the issues from a wider, internationalist perspective. This means, for example, that the war in Georgia last year was debated from both the Russian and the western angles instead of just the Georgian perspective that was heavily promoted by the American and the British media.

So it was refreshing to watch Naveen Naqvi, a Pakistani journalist who works for Dawn News, give a tough time to the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as she interviewed him via a satellite link. At least twice Mr. Olmert paused, appeared at a loss for words, and repeated twice smilingly, 'You are a smart, you are smart.'

Mr. Olmert couldn't stop himself from trying to soften Naveen by appealing to her ego. He kept sending subtle flirty signals and at one point expressed the desire to meet Naveen and have tea with her. But the beautiful and tough Pakistani lady wouldn't budge. Click below to see a clip of the event from my cell phone. The quality is not good but the entire Naveen-Olmert interaction will be posted at the PakNationalists Channel on Youtube very soon.

The debate over Georgia was itself very fascinating. Alexey Nikolov [pictured on this page with me and the Leonardo DiCaprio lookalike] who is the deputy editor of Russia Today television network, handed to me a DVD that showed how footage of Russian tanks filmed by one of his cameramen was used out of context by CNN as evidence that Russian forces were invading Georgia.

I was invited to speak as a panelist on media and blogs. But fun started when a senior official from OSCE, which is kind of an offshoot of NATO countries in Eurasia, began his remarks with a pressure tactic against the host government. The Rep almost condemned a bill that the Kazakh parliament is debating on regulating political blogging. My response turned the whole session into a trial of western interference in other nation's domestic issues. My argument was simple: The Americans and the Brits [The Am-Brits] destabilized Pakistan through interference in our local politics. They shouldn't be allowed to do the same to Kazakhstan. [Click here to check out clips from the session. The sound quality is low and the full version will be posted soon.]

The Leorardo DiCaprio lookalike [real name Ruslan Zhemkov] is a close aide to Dr. Dariga Nazarbayeva, the daughter of the Kazakh president and a stateswoman in her own right. Zalmay Khalilzad and Richard Holbrooke both call him Leonardo during their frequent trips to Kazakhstan. Those frequent trips are in themselves an interesting subject of a new column I'll be writing shortly.

I leave you here with a photo with Dr. Dariga Nazabayeva, daughter of the President, and Alex Kogen, a journalist from Israel.