Talking to journalists in Astana on September 20, deputy foreign minister Mukhtar Tleuberdin said, that Kazakhstan, as a country setting example of peaceful coexistence of as many as 40 confessions for other nations, had every moral right to hold the Congress of World Religions. The congress, scheduled for September 22-24, will mark, as the deputy foreign minister stressed, a significant event in enforcing the international standing of Kazakhstan. The most highlighted point of this event is the open dialogue between as different world religions as Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. Ambitious as it may appear, Kazakhstan’s unrelenting drive to play a mediator between warring sides, irreconcilable religious factions, be it in India and Pakistan, or in Central Asia and beyond, is motivated by a sober calculation, necessitated by both economic and geopolitical interests. A huge melting pot of all imaginable confessions and sects, Kazakhstan is watching armed conflicts in various places of the world with growing alarm. Although the mainstream confessions in Kazakhstan are Islam and the Russian Orthodox Church, western missionaries are expanding their activities with amazing speed. At the same time, the leadership is keen on mending its relations with the OSCE, which were somewhat overclouded by the government crackdown on Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan party leaders, and other western humanitarian institutions on the one hand, as well as with financially strong Islamic countries in the Arab world and Southeast Asia on the other. Events on the eve of the Congress of World Religions were symbolic in this respect. On September 12 the King of Malaysia paid a visit to Kazakhstan. Apart from agreements reached on economic cooperation, the sides issued a communiqué which underlines the importance of a dialogue between civilizations, cultures and religious organizations. Just three weeks before the opening of the Congress of World Religions, Almaty played host to the annual meeting of the Council of managers of the Islamic Bank of Development, one of the major investors to Kazakh economy. Since its admittance into the membership of the Islamic Bank of Development, Kazakhstan received $90 million of investment to develop its oil transport infrastructure, and small and medium businesses. This year’s meeting in Almaty was highly productive for Kazakhstan. The Islamic Bank’s officials signed an agreement promising $9,4 dollars on beneficial terms for the construction of water supply systems in Karagandy region in central Kazakhstan. Adilbek Zhaksybekov, who chaired the Almaty meeting of the Islamic Bank of Development, did not miss the occasion to propose the acceptance of Uzbekistan into the Islamic Bank as the 55th member-country. His proposal was approved. Will the gesture of goodwill be duly appreciated by Uzbekistan? Controversies between the two neighbors have run too deep to be settled so soon. Official sources say there have been sixteen shooting incidents in the last two years along the Kazakh-Uzbek border which led to loss of human lives. Observers in Kazakhstan believe that attempts of Uzbek security forces to eradicate the extremist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was not successful enough to eliminate the threat of renewed acts of terrorists. According to some media reports, militants from that organization are regrouping their forces in the areas bordering with South Kazakhstan. The signs of the revival of religious extremist forces in that region became apparent this summer, when a group of young men, belonging to Hizb-ut-Tahrir movement were arrested for distributing books justifying the attacks against “infidels”. Officials in Kazakhstan have on many occasions called the public to draw a borderline between terrorists and true followers of Islam. This line of policy produced positive responses from other Muslim countries. Kazakhstan also remained cool to the repeated Chinese attempts to get Kazakhstan’s backing in its crusade against what they call “Uighur extremism”. Indeed, for a country with a fairly large Uighur population being involved in that conflict would mean an ethnic unrest in the already inflammable southern regions. The tolerance of Kazakhs to non-Muslims, according to the zealots of Islam, may drive a nail into the coffin of national identity. They assert that Islam represents a core of the spiritual renaissance of Kazakhs. They grumble when they see government members shake hands with Catholics, hug Buddhists and embrace Judaists during official ceremonies. But tolerance and unprejudiced approach to religious issues is the only reasonable policy for Kazakhstan. And precisely that policy makes Kazakhstan a suitable place to hold the Conference of World Religions.