BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan.6
Trend:
Turkmenistan is following the events which have been taking place in recent days in Kazakhstan with concern, Trend reports referring to the Turkmen Foreign Ministry.
“Based on the centuries-old bonds of friendship and brotherhood, good-neighborly ties, and relations of strategic partnership, we are sincerely interested in the soonest normalization of the situation in Kazakhstan, in its further stable socio-political and socio-economic development,” the ministry said.
"We express our firm confidence that such qualities as wisdom, foresight, deep respect for the customs and traditions of ancestors, tolerance, which have been always characteristic for the ancient Kazakh people, will be a strong basis for solving all the issues, that have arisen, within the constitutional and legal frameworks and in accordance with international norms and rules," added the ministry.
Kazakhstan's government announced late Jan. 4 that it was restoring some price caps on liquefied petroleum gas, after the rare protests reached Almaty following a sharp rise in the price of the fuel at the start of the year.
Many Kazakhs have converted their cars to run on LPG, which is far cheaper than gasoline as a vehicle fuel in Kazakhstan because of price caps. But the government argued that the low price was unsustainable and lifted the caps on Jan. 1.
After the price of the fuel spiked, big demonstrations erupted on Jan. 2 in certain parts of the country. Public protests are illegal in the country unless their organizers file a notice in advance. Following the development of the situation, the government declared a state of emergency all over the country.