Author Archives: admin

Iran’s defence minister travels to Azerbaijan

APRIL 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iranian defence minister Hossein Dehghan travelled to Baku for talks with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev in a ground-breaking diplomatic initiative.

The neighbours have been fierce regional rivals over the past few years and at times it has looked as if the rhetoric was going to lead to war.

But since President Hassan Rouhani came to power in Iran in 2013, relations have soothed. Perhaps, also, the diplomatic push by the United States and Iran to patch up their differences has helped.

Iranian news agencies quoted Mr Dehqan as saying: “The two countries enjoy common geopolitics and their common interests and threats have increased the necessity for the expansion of multilateral cooperation more than ever.”

But it’s not all that straight forward. Azerbaijan supports Saudi Arabia-led efforts in Yemen where its forces are leading a counter- attack against rebels backed by Iran, and Baku has also improved relations with Israel, Iran’s sworn enemy.

Still, realpolitik may prevail and the rivals could patch up their differences.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)

Azerbaijan’s court sentences activist

APRIL 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Baku sentenced Azerbaijani human rights activist Rasul Jafarov to 6-1/2 years in prison for tax evasion and embezzlement. Jafarov’s supporters say the charges are jumped up and the authorities are using the courts to crush opposition.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)

Kazakh mobile operator income drops in Q1

APRIL 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kcell, Kazakhstan’s largest mobile operator, said that Q1 income had fallen by 15% and its customer based had dropped by 3% because of an increase in competition.

Strikingly, Kcell’s CEO Arti Ots didn’t make an reference to the general economic downturn that has hit Kazakhstan in his comments on the Q1 results. This is important because most consumer orientated businesses in Kazakhstan have reported a drop in sales over the past few months.

“In the first quarter of 2015 we have seen continued growth in data services and increased revenue from handset sales driven by demand for smartphones,” he said. “Voice revenues have declined in the face of intensifying competitive pressure.”

Kcell is listed on the London stock exchange but controlled by TeliaSonera, a Nordic company.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)

Turkmenistan created new telecom company

APRIL 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s Ministry of Communications and its subsidiary, Turkmen Telecom, have created a new telecoms company called Ashgabat Shaher Telefon Ulgamy (ASTU).

ASTU, which means Ashgabat Urban Telephone Network, is tasked with improving the efficiency of the network and appears to be a part of Turkmenistan’s strategy to boost its telecoms networks.

“High-quality communication services, as well as high-speed channels to connect to broadband Internet and data transmission are ensured,” media quoted the government owned Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper as saying.

“Laying of transnational fibre-optic communication lines continues with the aim of expanding the interstate telephone traffic.”

The government-approved press release on the creation of the new company was the only information available.

Last month, the government also approved an ambitious plan to construct a fibre- optic line between the Caspian port of Turkmenbashi and Baku, Azerbaijan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)

Azerbaijan’s press freedom remains low

APRIL 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan is one of the top 10 most repressive states in the world for journalists, the New York-based lobby group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said. Azerbaijan is the only former Soviet state to feature on the list.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)

New hotels planned in Georgia

APRIL 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – US hotel company Carlson Rezidor, owner of the Radisson and Park Inn brands, said it plans to open another two hotels in Georgia. One of the hotels will be built in Tbilisi and the other in the mountainous Svaneti region.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)

German man produces Georgian wine

ASURETI/Georgia, APRIL 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Manfred Tikhonov moved from Berlin to Georgia in the early 2000s and for the last 11 years he’s been making wine in Asureti, a former German village 40km south east of Tbilisi. (April 22).

Tikhonov, 67, spends his days slowly restoring his German-style timber Fachwerk house, built in the 1870s, and making wine the Georgian way, in clay vessels (kvevri) buried in the ground.

He has learnt everything about wine from his neighbours and produces up to 2,000 litres of wine a year. “It’s not enough to make profit,” he said. “But I get a pension from Germany.”

Asureti has long winemaking traditions. Formerly known as Elisabethal, it was founded in the early 19th century, when Russian Tsar Alexander I invited Germans from Swabia, a region in the southwest of Germnay, to settle. Tikhonov said Asureti Swabians were producing red wine for the high rank officials in Tsarist Russia and then the Soviet Union, until they were deported to Kazakhstan in 1941 when Soviet leader Josef Stalin worried that they may side with the advancing Nazi armies in World War II.

Barely any of them returned. The only reminders of the past are shabby Fachwerk houses, ruins of an Evangelical Church and overgrown gravestones engraved with old Swabian.

“Maybe one day I will also be buried here,” said Tikhonov, closing the graveyard gates.

Later, at home, Tikhonov poured a glass of his 2013 red. He apologised as this was not his best wine. There had been no running water and he had not been able to clean the clay vessels for the new grapes that year.

It has been hard to adapt to the local way of living. “Everything goes slower than I want,” he said. But he is not sorry to have exchanged buzzing Berlin to a quiet life in Asureti. “Free- range cows, chicken and dogs remind me of my childhood in the East Germany sixty years ago. Time stands still, and I love it.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)

Tajikistan to build $100m theatre

APRIL 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -Tajik president Imomali Rakhmon plans to build Central Asia’s largest theatre for $100m, media reported. Mr Rakhmon is partial to grandiose projects. Earlier this year he ordered work to begin on a new city in the desert. Dushanbe boasts one of the world’s tallest flagpoles.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)

Azerbaijan’s will have to spend from oil fund

APRIL 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s government will have to dip into savings built up in its Oil Fund to prop up its ailing economy, economists have said.

They said the Azerbaijani government will not cut the state budget sufficiently despite a massive fall in the price of oil and gas.

“If the government does not cut budget spending the only real way to cover the deficit will be calling back State Oil Fund’s reserves abroad, or the government must have another big devaluation,” Samir Aliyev, an independent economist at the monthly Economic Forum magazine, told the Bulletin.

At Dec. 31 2014, the Oil Fund was worth around $37b.

The downturn in energy prices since last summer has hit Azerbaijan hard. It devalued its manat current by a third this year.

Rovshan Agayev, an independent economist, also told the Bulletin that even during the financial crisis of 2008 the government did not increase spending from the National Oil fund.

“This is a result of mismanagement of the state budget money for many years,” he said.

The independent MP Vahid Ahmedov told RFE/RL it was acceptable for the government to use cash from the fund, created in 1999, to prop up the economy.

“What was the Oil Fund is created for?” he said. “To save some money for the future generation and as well as to help the economy in crisis times.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)

Georgia legislation targets IS recruitment

APRIL 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a move designed to stop young Muslims heading off to Syria to fight for the radical group IS, Georgia plans to outlaw membership of any foreign group considered to be a terrorist organisation.

Current legislation does not deal with this issue and the authorities want more power to arrest both those people heading off to Syria to join IS and people who have returned to Georgia.

The focus in Georgia of IS recruitment is the Pankisi Gorge, on the border of Russia’s North Caucasus region.

Pankisi, which lies 2-1/2 hours drive from Tbilisi to the northeast, on the border with Chechnya, has a population of 10,000 and the majority of them are Kists, an Islamic ethnic group similar to Chechens.

Media reports have said that 20 to 80 men have headed out of the Pankisi Gorge to fight for IS in Syria.

Tbilisi rules with a light touch in the Pankisi Gorge which has a history of producing radical Muslim fighters dating back to the Chechen wars of the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Khaso Khangoshvili a member of the the Council of Elders, the 35-people body that de facto governs Pankisi, believes that the stricter laws will help.

“The new law will improve the situation, but the government should care more about the economy of our region,” he told the Bulletin.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)