Foreign delegates at the "Islamic Education in Eastern Europe and Moslem States" convention insisted that their goal was strictly to foster culture ties. But politics hovered close to the surface.
The convention served as a forum for three separate Islamic factions from abroad to network with delegates from the former Soviet republics and lobby for their positions.
The Shiites of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan; the strict, but less anti-Western, Sunni Moslems of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates; and Turkey's more secular Sunnis all were represented.
"All three powers are trying to establish their influence on the territory of the former Soviet Union", said Boris Abdrakhinov, chief of information for the Moslem Center in Bashkiria, a Russian autonomous republic whose Moslem population numbers about 1. 5 million.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Moslem population within the five Central Asian republics, several Russian autonomous republics and other pockets within the former Soviet Union have shunned communism's atheist dogma and increasingly turned to Islam.
Iran and Turkey in particular have been active in promoting their models of a modern Islamic state among the newly freed republics.
The Turks have been stressing their economic success and the Iranians their faith. Both have had mixed success.
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