Azerbaijan, Baku, July 17 / Trend , V.Zhavoronkova/
Washington's interest in the region of Central Asia will sharply fall when the United States leaves Afghanistan, European Expert on Central Asia Yuriy Fedorov believes.
The current U.S. administration considers Central Asia, above all, as a "strategic bloc" in operations in Afghanistan, through which one of the international coalition forces' supply channels passes, Fedorov said.
Currently the region is acquiring great importance for America, as the situation in the so-called 'tribe zone', located in the adjacent bordering regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, becomes more difficult, the expert believes.
Regarding the economy, the United States is interested in transporting oil from Kazakhstan and gas from Turkmenistan to European markets, bypassing Russian territory - and the United States has no other interests in this region, Fedorov believes.
"Moreover, when the United States decides to leave Afghanistan, although this point of view is not being looked into at the moment, Washington's interest in Central Asia will fall to a minimum," Research Fellow of the Russian and Eurasian Program of the Chatham House British Royal Institute of International Affairs, Fedorov wrote to Trend in an email.
One would be a seriously overestimating in supposing the United States seeks to form its own influences in Central Asia, the expert believes.
"Rather, the United States is interested in Central Asia becoming, in the future, an area of severe conflicts of Russia and China's interests, cutting off Russian and Chinese resources from other regions, in which the United States has real long-term interests," Fedorov said.
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