Nathan Cooper will travel to Mongolia

State Rep. Nathan Cooper didn't take much time to rest following the end of the 2007 session of the Missouri legislature.

By midday Saturday after the Friday adjournment, Cooper was waiting in the airport in St. Louis for the first flight of a trip that will land him in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, for two weeks as part of a Bellwether Forum program on democracy.

Bellwether Forum, a Houston-based conservative not-for-profit organization, promotes its international seminars as a place where the skills of politics are taught to people in emerging democracies.

"It is about the entirety of the political process from getting elected to governing," said Cooper, a Cape Girardeau Republican making his third overseas trip for the group.

The Bellwether Forum is going to the landlocked Asian nation at the invitation of former prime minister Tsakhiagiyn Elbegdorj. The political situation in Mongolia is evolving as the country adapts to democracy following 70 years of communist rule. Mongolia was a client state of the former Soviet Union and when communism collapsed in Moscow, a similar collapse followed quickly in Mongolia.

While there have been some street protests following the transition from one ruling coalition to another in recent years, politics have been relatively peaceful. The forums will include sessions with members of the ruling party and trips to the countryside, where traditional nomadic lifestyles have been little changed for centuries.

"When you have a former prime minister who is working with the current government, in an emerging democracy that is a tremendous statement of how far they have come and how quickly," Cooper said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

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