President Dmitri Medvedev is apparently building strong momentum in his foreign policy activities, exploiting one success to achieve another.
Messrs Aliyev, Berdimukhamedov, et al., who fancy themselves as “enlightened monarchs,” have to be convinced that beneath Medvedev’s ‘liberalism’ is the same total determination to keep power, and then the gas business will go smoothly.
Nobody expects any surprises from the G8 gathering, since the tradition of these summits puts style before substance. Medvedev’s Caspian trip, on the other hand, was devoted to the exclusively presidential business, gas trade, and so should have closed at least a few tantalizingly open issues.
