Category Archives: Uncategorised

Kazakh president to visit Japan

AUG. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will visit Japan in November, foreign minister Yerlan Idrissov told Interfax after meeting a Japanese parliamentary delegation in Astana. The Japanese and Kazakh sides also discussed joint industrial projects for the next two years. Mr Nazarbayev has been eager to woo potential foreign investors, especially during this economic downturn.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Comment: Uzbekistan’s quiet handover of power

SEPT. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After years of jostling, the real battle for power in a post-Karimov Uzbekistan has started.

President Islam Karimov, who has ruled since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has died after suffering a stroke. Officially this means that the Speaker of the Senate, Nigmatulla Yuldashev, will take over for three months. Long-term, though, the picture is more complicated.

Uzbekistan has been in the throes of a proxy war over succession for two years, ever since Karimov’s eldest daughter Gulnara Karimova was placed under house arrest and her closest associates imprisoned for financial crimes. She had been seen as Karimov’s natural, if unpopular, heir-apparent.

Her fall from grace left PM Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Rustam Azimov, the finance minister, as the front runners for the top job.

The orchestrator-in-chief, it was assumed, was Rustam Inoyatov, the Uzbek secret police chief, who popped up in a rare photo during a visit to China in 2014. Reports from Uzbekistan, a notoriously repressive and reclusive regime, have suggested that he has been keeping a lid as best as possible on warring factions within the elite.

Certainly, Karimov appears to have played a reduced role in organising his succession since 2014. It is doubtful he ever wanted to place Gulnara, the daughter he doted over, under house arrest.

Gulnara’s sister, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, has been the most vocal senior Uzbek over Karimov’s illness but she has little support and lives in Europe and has previously shown no interest in power.

So, it’s likely the Uzbek regime will agree on an insider to take over from Karimov, either one of the front-runners or – and perhaps this is more likely – an obscure bureaucrat who comes with neither a power base nor an agenda. A compromise figure acceptable to Uzbekistan’s power-groups.

This method has been tried and tested with relative success in Central Asia previously with the handover of power to Kurbangbuly Berdymukhamedov, an obscure former dentist, in Turkmenistan when Saparmurat Niyazov died suddenly in 2006. Berdymukhamedov has opened up Turkmenistan’s economy and made it a major source of gas to China. He has also built up a fairly serious personality cult.

Uzbekistan is a more complicated country than Turkmenistan but the power brokers inside the Uzbek government trying to work out their post-Karimov game plan do have a Turkmen blueprint to work from.

They may well choose to follow it.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Kazmunaigas to stop takeover efforts on KMG EP

AUG. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After a failed takeover offer, Kazmunaigas will not make a new offer for its London-traded subsidiary KMG EP, Sauat Mynbayev, managing director of Kazmunaigas said. Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company owns 63% of KMG EP, its exploration and production subsidiary. In July, Kazmunaigas had offered $9/GDR to KMG EP minority shareholders, but minority shareholders rejected the offer, dealing a blow to the Kazakh energy company’s prestige.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Azerbaijan halts currency trades

SEPT. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Banks in Azerbaijan’s capital have stopped selling foreign currency as demand soared after the Azerbaijani manat started to depreciate, triggering memories of the currency’s double devaluation last year.

The news will be disappointing to Central Banks across the Central Asia and South Caucasus region who had hoped to have moved away from the currency crises of 2014 and 2015.

According to sources in Baku, the manat traded at 1.68/$1, 5% lower than last month. They said that many Azerbaijanis now fear that another crisis is around the corner and have tried to hoard foreign currency. Bloomberg reported that 15 banks in Baku and the city’s international airport had stopped selling US dollars, a sign that demand had surpassed availability.

Azerbaijan’s economy is particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of oil prices, which have collapsed since 2014, and it is set to shrink this year for the first time since the mid-1990s.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Kyrgyz president snubs predecessor

AUG. 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Former Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva walked out of a speech being delivered by the current President Almazbek Atambayev, her protege and successor, after he criticised her for approving a constitution which he has said is flawed. The rare public putdown of Ms Otunbayeva, who ruled as an interim president after a revolution in 2010 until 2011, was delivered at a ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union. Kyrgyzstan is to hold a referendum later this year on tweaks to the constitution which Mr Atambayev is said are essential.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Russia sparks diplomatic row with Armenia

AUG. 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Russian foreign ministry complained to both Armenia and the US over the brief detention of its citizen, Sergei Mironov, in Armenia at the request of the US. Mr Mironov, 30, on the US wanted list for money laundering and illegal arms export, was arrested in Armenia on Aug. 26. The Armenian court refused to bring him to trial and released him days later. On Aug. 31, Mr Mironov fled to Russia. The episode risks straining relations between Armenia and Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Azerbaijan’s oil shipments to Russia fall

SEPT. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company SOCAR shipped 729,000 tonnes of oil through Russia’s pipeline network in Jan.-Aug. 2016, a 22% fall compared to the same period last year. The fall is mostly due to a halt in shipments via the Baku-Novorossyisk pipeline in the Jan.-Feb. 2016, while the countries were negotiating a new deal. Monthly shipments are now back at the same levels as last year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Kyrgyz court jails opposition leader

AUG. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Kyrgyz court sentenced opposition figure and IS sympathiser Nurlan Mutoyev to seven years in jail after he was found guilty of terrorism and inciting ethnic hatred. In May, Mutoyev was arrested after a rally in Bishkek. He stands for the establishment of the strict Islamic Shari’a law in Kyrgyzstan. His arrest was triggered by his open support for the IS group during the rally.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Kazakhstan expects GDP to grow

SEPT. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s GDP will grow marginally by 0.5% in 2016 and move back to a steadier growth pattern in 2017, Kuandyk Bishimbayev, minister of economy said. Mr Bishimbayev said that Kazakhstan’s GDP will grow by 1.9% in 2017. He also said that, with the expected start-up of the Kashagan oil project, oil production will jump 13.5% to 84m tonnes/year in 2017, back to 2013 levels. This should bode well for the economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Suicide bomber hits Chinese embassy in Bishkek

BISHKEK, AUG. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — An unidentified suicide bomber drove a car through the Chinese embassy gates in southern Bishkek, blowing up the front of the diplomatic compound and injuring three Kyrgyz workers, in what analysts have described as the first terror attack on a Chinese diplomatic post in Central Asia.

China’s foreign ministry urged an investigation and suspended visa services for Kyrgyz nationals seeking to enter China. In a statement Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, urged the Kyrgyz government to quickly track down the perpetrators of the attack.

“(I) asked the Kyrgyz side to find out the truth as soon as possible, punish those responsible and avoid a reoccurrence of such attacks,” he said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Some analysts said that Kyrgyzstan’s small community of Uyghurs, which call for independence for China’s western Xinjiang region may have been behind the attack.

Others said that the radical IS group, which has strengthened its recruiting network in the region, were behind the attack.

China has followed the US over the past few years and has increasingly pulled its embassies out of busy city centres towards suburban sites which can fit a larger premises and can be more easily protected.

In 2010, the Chinese embassy in Bishkek was expanded and moved to one of these new style compounds built on the edge of the city.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)