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Politico, 01 Dec 2016

President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday the nation of Kazakhstan has accomplished a “miracle” under the leadership of strongman president Nursultan Nazarbayev, according to the Kazakh presidential press office.

Nazarbayev has been president of Kazakhstan since 1991, the year it separated from the Soviet Union, and was the first secretary of the country’s communist party for two years before that. He most recently won office in April 2015, with 91 percent of the vote in an election that international observers told The New York Times was marred by voter intimidation, ballot stuffing and restrictions on the freedoms of press and assembly.

According to a Kazakh readout of a phone call between Trump and Nazarbayev, the two congratulated one another and spoke of their shared desire to improve regional partnerships in Central Asia.

“U.S. president-elect brought congratulations to the Head of State on the 25th anniversary of Kazakhstan’s Independence,” the Kazakh presidential press office’s readout said. “D. Trump stressed that under the leadership of Nursultan Nazarbayev our country over the years of Independence had achieved fantastic success that can be called a ‘miracle.’”

In its own readout of the call, Trump’s transition team did not mention the Manhattan billionaire’s use of the word “miracle” to describe Kazakhstan. The two-sentence description said only that the leaders had congratulated one another and that they “addressed the importance of strengthening regional partnerships.”

President Barack Obama met with Nazarbayev in September 2015, when the two discussed nuclear nonproliferation, regional stability and economic development, according to a White House readout.

Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit organization that monitors conditions around the world, says on its website that “Kazakhstan heavily restricts freedom of assembly, speech, and religion, and torture remains a serious problem.”