Kazakhstan appoints Arabic-speaking Foreign minister

Kazakhstan appointed a new foreign minister on Monday to strengthen ties with other Muslim states, part of a cabinet reshuffle only days after veteran President Nursultan Nazarbayev won a landslide election victory. Nazarbayev, embarking on his third decade in office, also appointed the head of Kazakhstan's sovereign wealth fund as minister for the $147 billion economy and replaced the agriculture minister with an experienced farm-sector bureaucrat.
Nazarbayev said the appointment of Arabic speaker Yerzhan Kazykhanov as foreign minister would "raise Kazakhstan's authority in the Islamic world" in the year that the country chairs the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Oil-rich Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest economy, is a predominantly Muslim country of 16.4 million people.