MARCH 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov will fly to Seoul for talks with his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye on April 10, a meeting that will underline improved relations. South Korean companies, including LG and Hyundai, have won major contracts in Turkmenistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Keen to boost the government’s progressive credentials, Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili said he wanted the entire country to have access to high-speed internet by 2017. Currently around 40% of the country has high-speed internet, he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Tajikistan have detained two senior officials at the State Agency for Drugs Control on suspicion of bribe-taking, media reported. The detentions, underline just how entrenched corruption is in Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Without any irony, apparently, the authorities in Uzbekistan declared Islam Krimov the winner of a presidential election on Sunday with 90% of the vote.
This is the fourth consecutive presidential election that the 77-year-old Mr Karimov has won since the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991. It’s also the fourth consecutive election Western observers said was unfair. The other candidates, Western observers said, all supported Mr Karimov.
The reality is that the presidential election was a choreographed affair design to impose top-down stability over the country as it grapples with worsening economic conditions across the region.
It was also designed, at least in the short-term, to put an end to any chat of succession or replacing Mr Karimov. Last year his eldest daughter, Gulnara Karimova, who was once widely feared, lost her grip on power and is now under house arrest. Her closest associates are in prison, found guilty of various economic crimes.
The biggest question for Uzbekistan and Central Asia is how the Uzbek elite replace Mr Karimov. For years there has been speculation about his health and although he played a high-profile role in the election he disappeared from view just before campaigning began.
The next few years are vital for sorting out a smooth transition of power.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s Central Bank bought $11.4m worth of som to slow its devaluation, media reported, its third intervention in March. Kyrgyzstan, like other countries in the region, has been trying to manage a fall in the value of its currency.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia will update its definition of the term torture to meet international standards, the London-based media NGO Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said. The update, the IWPR reported, was aimed at cracking down on police torture.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
APRIL 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia used its control of gas supplies to Armenia to pressure the government into joining its Eurasian Economic Union, a parliamentary inquiry has said.
The inquiry said Russia increased gas prices to Armenia until it agreed to join the Eurasian Economic Union in 2013.
The findings are strong evidence that Russia uses its economic leverage over Central Asia and the South Caucasus for political gain.
Also in the past week, Russia approved a $1 billion development fund for Kyrgyzstan. This, again, appears linked to Kyrgyzstan’s entry to the Eurasian Economic Union later this year.
The West has long said the Kremlin’s aim in the region is to coerce governments into doing its bidding.
In Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, it has found vulnerable partners. Both are relatively poor with few natural resources. They both host Russian military bases and are reliant on Russian business and remittances from workers living in Russia for growth.
Importantly too, Gazprom owns the gas pipeline network in both Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. This has often been the choke point. Controlling a country’s gas supply gives Russia huge power.
There is one other major similarity between Armenia and Kyrgyzstan regarding membership of the Eurasian Economic Union. Bulletin correspondents in both countries report that most ordinary people, and also many of the politicians, don’t really want to join the group. Instead, they feel compelled to.
Belarus and Kazakhstan, both far larger economies, are also members of the EEU.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to Beijing, Kazakh PM Karim Massimov signed deals with his Chinese counterpart, Li Keqiang, worth $23.6b. The deals covered a range of industries from steel and glass production to oil refining and hydropower. China and Kazakhstan have increased cooperation in the past few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia has approved a law that will create a Russia-Kyrgyzstan development fund worth $1b, media reported. Kyrgyzstan has agreed to join the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union later this year and it is likely that the fund’s creation was linked to Kyrgyz membership of the group.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Worsening economic conditions in Tajikistan have even knocked the value of bribes in the notoriously corrupt country, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. It said that the value of bribes had halved over the past few months.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
