Turkmenistan's President &to=http://english.pravda.ru/cis/2002/08/08/34059.html' target=_blank>Saparmurat Niyazov on Friday appointed a new oil and gas minister and ordered him to learn English in six months or be sacked.
Niyazov, who rules the Central Asian nation with an iron fist, told the new minister, former oil ministry official Gurbanmurad Atayev, that English was essential to the post, given the number of foreign delegations interested in Turkmenistan's vast natural gas wealth.
"If you can't get around without a translator, then you can't be minister. You need to argue, decide, know. Therefore, if you want to study on your own, learn at home at nights so that you know the language," Niyazov said in comments on state-run television.
Niyazov, who speaks Russian and Turkmen but whose grasp of English was not immediately known, has banned all opposition and controls all branches of government and the media. Golden statues and busts of the president are scattered across the country, and his portrait is on every bank note and coin.
In Monday, he ordered construction of a university to be named after his book "Rukhnama," which is held as a sacred text in this ex-Soviet republic and is mandatory reading for every Turkmen at schools and workplaces.
Also Friday, Niyazov said &to=http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/92/373/15348_turkmenistan.html' target=_blank>Turkmenistan would move to price its gas exports at world market levels by 2007.
How gas exports from energy-rich former Soviet nations are priced has become a heated topic, with Ukraine and Russia at loggerheads over Russia's demand for a fourfold increase in prices.
Ukraine's ambassador to Turkmenistan, Viktor Maiko, was in Ashgabat on Thursday, trying to persuade Turkmen officials not to raise gas export prices to Ukraine by nearly 30 percent, reports AP.
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