Rwanda and Turkmenistan on Monday, July 14 announced the formal establishment of diplomatic relations, marking the beginning of a new chapter in bilateral cooperation and mutual engagement. The official signing ceremony of the two governments joint communiqué took place on Monday at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. It was signed by Ambassador Martin Ngoga, Rwanda’s Permanent Representative to the UN, and Ambassador Aksoltan Ataeva, the Turkmen Permanent Representative. Following the ceremony, Ambassador Ngoga expressed appreciation to his Turkmen counterpart, stating that he looked forward to stronger bilateral relations between the two nations. Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to working closely within the United Nations framework to address shared global challenges, including active participation in the upcoming Third United Nations Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs), to be held in Awaza, Turkmenistan. Turkmenstan is a landlocked country in Central Asia. The former Soviet state is bordered by Kazakhstan, another country with whom Rwanda has relations, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran and the Caspian Sea. Serdar Berdimuhamedow is the current president of Turkmenistan, the third in the history of the country since it gained independence with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The country's capital and the largest city is called Ashgabat. Its population is estimated to be over 7 million. The official language is Turkmen and more than 95 per cent of the Turkmen population is Muslim; just about one per cent is Christian.
