Category Archives: Uncategorised

Georgia’s lari falls to 16-year low vs dollar

APRIL 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s lari currency dropped to a 16-year low against the US dollar despite efforts by the Central Bank to prevent the fall.

The Central Bank said it had sold off another $40m of its reserves to prop up the lari. This was the fifth intervention of $40m this year by the Central Bank despite an earlier pledge by its head, Georgy Kadagidze, not to sell its reserves to defend its value.

Even so, the lari fell to 2.3 against the US dollar its lowest level since 1999. Since November, the lari has lost around a third of its value.

A fall in the price of oil and a drop in the value of the Russian rouble have hit the economies of Central Asia and the South Caucasus hard.

Georgia has reported a 27% drop in exports in the first quarter of 2015 compared to a year earlier and has cut its projected GDP growth to 2% from an earlier estimate of 5%. Remittances from Russia have fallen by around 20%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Muslims complain in Tajikistan

APRIL 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Devout Muslims in Tajikistan say officials are waging a campaign designed to intimidate and humiliate them by shaving off their beards and limiting access to the annual Haj to Mecca, the AFP news agency reported. Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon has steadily cracked down on Islam.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Azerbaijan restricts people’s right to travel

APRIL 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Milli Majlis, the Azerbaijani Parliament approved an amendment to the Criminal Code which will punish citizens for not notifying the government within a month when they receive citizenship for another country.

Opposition members criticised the new law for imposing repressive legislation designed to increase the government’s control of its people.

Under the new law, citizens will be fined between 3,000 and 5,000 manat ($2,800-$4,750) or receive 360 to 480 hours of public service for not notifying the Azerbaijani authorities that they have taken a second nationality.

Azerbaijan already outlaws dual nationality but the existing laws did not contain a penalty.

Lawyer Muzaffar Baxishov of the Legal State Research Foundation, an Azerbaijani NGO told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the government wants to create obstacles for its critics.

“People will have to inform the government about new citizenship, otherwise they will be involved in a criminal case,” he said.

The US and the EU have both heavily criticised Azerbaijan for crushing dissent over the past few years. Many of Azerbaijan’s opposition groups gather emotional and financial support from outside the country. The government has already moved to restrict its citizens’ travel.

Under regulation introduced in January, Azerbaijanis now have to inform their embassies that they are residing in a country, even if temporarily. Previously, Azerbaijani citizens only had to tell embassies if they intended to stay in a country permanently.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

US gives military aid to Georgia

APRIL 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US will give Georgia $20m to update its military, media reported. The cash comes at a sensitive time with Russia and the US increasingly at odds with each other over Ukraine. NATO has also said that it plans to set up a training base in Georgia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Turkmenistan launches satellite into space

APRIL 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan successfully launched its first telecommunications satellite, raising the country’s international status and handing President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov a nice PR boost.

The satellite, known as TurkmenAlem52E, the launch to will beam television services 1.2b people across the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Europe for the next 15 years, reports said.

Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between France’s Thales and Italy’s Finmeccanica, built the satellite which was launched into space by a private company called SpaceX.

A Turkmen government website said that Mr Berdymukahmedov watched the launch at the Cape Canaveral Air Force base in Florida via a video-link from Ashgabat.

As usual emphasised the website Turkmenistan’s neutrality, a constant theme that the country plays to whenever it can in international affairs.

“As a neutral country, our country acts on the international scene with peace-loving and humanist initiatives consistently following the principles of good-neighbourliness, friendship and brotherhood,” the website said.

Presumably, as well as boosting Turkmenistan’s international standing, the satellite will also generate an income.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Kyrgyz PM resigns after failure to end gold row

APRIL 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Djoomart Otorbayev resigned as Kyrgyzstan’s PM after barely a year in office.

The 59-year-old former international economist was the fourth Kyrgyz PM to resign since constitutional reform shifted power from the president to parliament in 2010.

Earlier this month the Kyrgyz government appeared to change tack significantly and argue for a great number of directors on the Centerra Gold board rather than the creation of a new company, with a 50:50 ownership, to run Kumtor.

His resignation was linked to the failure to secure a permanent solution to the ongoing row with Canada’s Centerra Gold over ownership of the Kumtor gold mine in east Kyrgyzstan — the country’s single biggest industrial asset.

“I think my decision to resign will allow the majority coalition to choose a more decisive prime minister,” Kyrgyz media quoted Mr Otorbayev as saying.

Kyrgyzstan owns 32.7% of Centerra Gold, which is listed in Toronto, and has been looking to boost its influence over the mine.

Importantly, Mr Otorbayev’s resignation highlights the unstable nature of Kyrgyz politics and also the dominance of the Kumtor ownership issue.

The three-party majority coalition now has 15 days to nominate a new PM for parliament.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Armenia remembers 1915

APRIL 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia officially marked the 100th anniversary of the killing of thousands of its countrymen by Ottoman Turks, an event it wants recognised as a genocide.

On the eve of the ceremony in Yerevan, Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, joined a growing list of countries calling the death of up to 1.5m Armenians a genocide.

“What happened in the middle of the First World War in the Ottoman Empire under the eyes of the world was a genocide,” media quoted Bundestag Presi- dent Norbert Lammert as saying at the debate on the issue.

The issue is sensitive in Germany as historians have said Nazi leader Adolf Hitler used the killings of the Armenians in the east of modern-day Turkey as evidence the world would turn a blind eye to his plans to kill Jews in Europe.

Presiding over the sombre ceremony in Yerevan, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said: “Recognition of the genocide is a triumph of human conscience and justice over intolerance and hatred.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande were among the foreign dignitaries to attend the service.

The US sent a delegation but President Barack Obama has pointedly steered away from describing the deaths as a genocide.

Turkey has denied the genocide. It says Armenians died in the chaos around the final days of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said that he feels Armenia’s pain over the killings but he is quick to criticise descriptions of the deaths as a genocide.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Azerbaijan’s jailed reporter wins award

APRIL 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Increasing pressure on Azerbaijan over its treatment of journalists, the Swedish National Press Club gave its Freedom of Speech Award to imprisoned Azerbaijani reporter Khadija Ismayilova. The award was set up in 2006 after the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Lukashenko visits Georgia for the first time

APRIL 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko visited Georgia for the first time on April 23-24.

Officially, this visit, initiated by Minsk, was to strengthen Georgian-Belarusian relations. The parties signed 15 different agreements and declared that they want to boost bilateral trade from $65m/year to $200m/year.

But analysts think that this visit was planned to improve Lukashenko’s position at home, in Moscow and amongst western European leaders before the upcoming presidential elections in Belarus in November.

During his visit, Lukashenko once again expressed his support for Georgia’s territorial integrity. He also called for a better dialogue between the Kremlin and Tbilisi, and expressed hopes that Belarus, Georgia and Russia can someday live as “one family like before”.

The director of Georgian Institute of Politics Kornely Kakachia said Mr Lukashenko’s visit had some positive implications for Georgia because he expressed support for Georgia’s territorial integrity over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“But on the other hand, Lukashenko is a side player and does not have big influence on Moscow-Tbilisi relations,” he said. “Also, the president of Belarus is not the best company for Georgia to be seen with by the West.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Turkmens celebrate horses

APRIL 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan celebrated one of its biggest holidays of the year on the Day of the Horse, an important symbol for the country that celebrates horsemanship as a key skill and sign of manhood. Not the retiring type, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov also accepted a new title of the People’s Horse Breeder.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)