Medvedev holds Kazakhstan talks

Mr Medvedev is looking to maintain Russia's influence in Kazakhstan

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has held talks with the president of Kazakhstan, during the first stop on his maiden foreign trip.

Mr Medvedev met the president of the oil-rich Central Asian state, Nursultan Nazarbayev, in the capital, Astana.

His next stop, on Friday, is China, where he will hold talks with President Hu Jintao and other leaders.

Analysts say Mr Medvedev's choice to head to the East rather than West shows where Russia's foreign priorities lie.

'Highest priority'

The BBC's Russia analyst, Steven Eke, says Mr Medvedev is looking to maintain Russia's influence in Kazakhstan.

During talks in the Kazakh capital he urged the government to keep exporting most of its oil through Russian pipelines.

Mr Nazarbayev said relations with Russia remained the highest prority in the country's foreign policy.

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"Kazakhstan and Russia have the most comprehensive bilateral legal base which can be imagined in relations between the two neighbouring sovereign states," he said.

The country, central Asia's biggest oil producer, is gradually trying to break Russia's stranglehold over Kazakh energy export routes.

But Russia wants Kazakhstan to sign up to a long-term deal to export oil through the pipeline leading from Baku, Azerbaijan, to the Russian port of Novorossiysk.

Russia has been prompted to look eastwards because of what it perceives as Western attempts to limit its diplomatic ambitions, analysts say.

The start of talks on a strategic partnership pact between Russia and the EU, for example, has been blocked for two years because of political disputes between EU member states and their giant neighbour.