KAZAKHSTAN LOOKING WESTWARD.

Opening the new session of Kazakhstan’s parliament yesterday, President Nursultan Nazarbayev urged it as a matter of high priority to "correct" the country’s customs and tax legislation in order to increase incentives to foreign investment. Nazarbayev announced that foreign investment in Kazakhstan exceeded $1.5 billion as of August 1996. (Interfax, September 2) Shortly before the parliament’s opening, Nazarbayev called for switching the written Kazakh language from the Cyrillic to the Latin script, and for a national program to train English-language teachers in order to introduce English as a mandatory subject beginning in elementary school. (Kazakh television, August 21)

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