Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has gotten a high-level welcome in the United Arab Emirates, 15 months after one of his chief rivals was killed in Dubai.
Kadyrov was pictured on the front page of the government daily Al Ittihad meeting the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on Sunday. The daily said the visit would promote “cooperation and friendship between the two countries.”
Kadyrov will spend four days in the U.A.E. and will meet businesspeople and officials, RIA-Novosti reported, citing a Russian diplomat in the country.
Kadyrov’s trip came about two weeks after Rosneft and U.A.E.-based Crescent Petroleum signed an accord to drill for gas in Sharjah as part of a broader partnership in the Middle East. Emirati investors are also interested in projects in Chechnya, said Mohammed Shakeel, an Abu Dhabi-based expert on the United Arab Emirates, the second-largest Arab economy.
“It’s a diplomatic visit, but behind the scenes there is economic deal making,” Shakeel said in a telephone interview. “As Chechen leader, appointed by Russian central authorities, Kadyrov would have had their blessing to come over and make things better.”
Kadyrov has spearheaded Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s campaign to rebuild infrastructure devastated by two secessionist wars since 1994.
“There is a lot of potential money to be made in reconstruction” by U.A.E. companies, Shakeel said. “Officially the authorities will express dissatisfaction at someone being assassinated on their territory, but this won’t be a hindrance to acting on a more forward-looking basis.”
Kadyrov’s rival, Sulim Yamadayev, was gunned down in an elite seafront housing complex in Dubai on March 28 last year. The emirate’s police subsequently said they had “strong evidence” that a cousin of Kadyrov's masterminded the killing and asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant for him.
Kadyrov denounced the accusations against his cousin, State Duma Deputy Adam Delimkhanov, as “provocative” and “totally unfounded.”
On April 12, a Dubai court sentenced an Iranian and a Tajik to life imprisonment for aiding and abetting the murder of Yamadayev. The Iranian was the trainer of racehorses owned by Kadyrov and kept in Dubai.
An appeal hearing for the two men is to be held Tuesday in Dubai, said a representative for the defense team, Zair Mohammed Zair. There are no plans to summon Kadyrov as a witness, he said.
“The president is not involved, the fact that he is here on an official visit shows he’s not accused in this case,” Zair said in a telephone interview.
Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s office said it didn’t know whether Kadyrov would meet with him and wasn’t aware of the Chechen president’s schedule.
(Bloomberg, MT)