The meetings in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, are to open a new chapter in the relations between the EU and the states of Central Asia and are expected to culminate in a Central Asia strategy to be adopted at the June EU leaders' summit.

"EU enlargement has brought us closer to Central Asia and the time is ripe for a more intensive engagement with the Central Asian countries," the European Commission said in a statement.

On the agenda of the two-day meeting are security, economic and trade issues, education, democratic development, rule of law and human rights, energy and the environment as well as broader regional issues such as the security situation in Afghanistan and Iran. The EU has pledged to more than double assistance to the region between 2007 and 2013 to roughly $1 billion, a sum that will be used to fight poverty, improve infrastructure, build new oil and gas pipelines and train border and security forces.

"The strategic importance of this region to the EU has visibly grown," Andrea Schmitz, Central Asia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International Wednesday in a telephone interview. "This trip is aimed at sounding out where cooperation can be intensified."

A region rich in energy resources, Central Asia, so far largely ignored by global politics, has won added clout in Brussels with the emergence of the energy-security debate in Europe in late 2005.

The EU, particularly Germany, hopes that the Central Asian states can diversify Europe's oil and gas imports.

Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, has made it his personal goal to push the dialogue with the Central Asian states; German companies are eager to explore the untapped economic potential of these states, and the government in Berlin -- holder of the current EU presidency -- in turn hopes to transfer democratic values to the region. It is Steinmeier's second visit to the region in a few months, after he had traveled there in November to sound out options for the EU strategy.

Kazakhstan, according to Schmitz the region's most economically developed country, has the greatest potential to be a valuable trade partner for the West, observers say.

Germany also hopes that the countries present become a defending line against militant Islamism and help stabilize the greater region that includes Afghanistan, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said earlier this week.

"The region ... in the past has made great contributions to the stabilization of the greater region (and) also helped stop and even push back the spread of militant Islamism," Jaeger said.

The EU also hopes the region's states could boost regional security by introducing tighter border controls to measurably reduce the problem of drug trafficking. But Schmitz said such plans would be hampered by endemic corruption in these states.

Uzbekistan plays an especially delicate role in the region, experts say. The EU still upholds sanctions against Uzbekistan after government troops opened fire on a crowd in the eastern city of Andijan, killing some 800 people according to estimates by human-rights groups (187 -- mostly terrorists -- according to official statements). The sanctions, which include travel bans against Uzbek politicians, were slightly eased late last year and are up for review in May.

"Uzbekistan is a difficult partner," Schmitz said. "On the one hand, the German armed forces use Termez military base in Uzbekistan to support their ISAF troops in Afghanistan, so there is military cooperation. But on the other hand, the Uzbek government is a highly repressive one. For the EU, this is a delicate balancing act."

How delicate became clear Wednesday afternoon, when the first reports of the talks surfaced.

In a Wednesday news conference skipped by the foreign minister of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan's foreign minister, Vladimir Norov, made clear that his government didn't want the EU to "meddle with our domestic affairs." Uzbekistan, Norov added, was 3,700 miles away from Brussels, so there was no need for the EU to behave like a "teacher" speaking down to his pupils.

The sharp remarks came after the EU troika had dared to criticize the country's human-rights shortcomings, which include a crackdown on press freedom ever since journalists reported the Andijan massacre. EU leaders had been willing to talk about easing or even dropping the sanctions in exchange for speeding up democratic reforms and helping to clear up the Andijan incident, yet Tashkent has been unwilling to give way. Steinmeier also failed to get Tashkent's agreement to let Red Cross staff into the country's prisons.

Germany, however, wants to continue the dialogue with Uzbekistan. Berlin feels giving up on the country would be a grave mistake, said Alexander Rahr, a political expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

"Germany has repeatedly tried to uphold and foster this dialogue with Uzbekistan," Rahr said. "It sees the danger that all the remaining secular forces in Uzbekistan could disappear and give way to an Islamic government."

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