As nuclear tensions simmered between India and Pakistan, Chance flew to the centralAsiancountry of Kazakhstan to interview the Pakistani president, General Pervais Musharraf.
The centralAsiancountry has taken the step of adopting a democratic constitution after the United States ousted the ruling Taliban two years ago and helped form a new government.
In the valley, politicians dream of an independent country linked to old CentralAsian trading routes, looking anywhere but south over the mountains to Delhi.
But the country has no big natural resources aside from water 40% of all CentralAsian water originates in Kirgizstan's mountains and it is too small a market and too remote a place geographically to accrue much advantage from foreign trade.
Though the country is small and remote, and lacks the energy reserves of some of the other CentralAsian republics, events there are being watched with interest.
India's central bank instructed the country's lenders to stop processing current-account transactions with Iran using the Asian Clearing Union, and told Indian firms they couldn't use the mechanism to pay for oil or gas imports.