MARCH 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Three Kazakhs and a Ukrainian opera singer born in Kazakhstan died in the Germanwings plane crash, the Kazakh foreign ministry said. The plane, carrying 150 people, crashed in the French Alps (March 24). It was flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia will give Armenia $47m as a sweetener for joining the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), media reported. Armenia joined the EEU on Jan. 1 but has yet to fully embrace it. Armenia’s president, Serzh Saargsyan, ducked out of a meeting of EEU heads of state last week.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan increased its export of electricity to Afghanistan by 58% in January and February, Tajik media reported quoting the national statistics agency. Electricity is seen as an important commodity produced by Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Have we just witnessed Central Asia’s first inter-presidential bromance?
At the inauguration of a new school, Kyrgyzstan’s president Almazbek Atambayev shared some flattering, perhaps even flirtatious, remarks towards his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev.
“I’ve often thought that if instead of Akayev and Bakiyev we had had Nursultan Nazarbayev as our president, everything would have been different,” he said at the opening of a school funded by Kazakhstan.
Mr Atambayev was referencing Akayev and Bakiyev, two former presidents of Kyrgyzstan who were both overthrown in two different revolutions and who are labelled as corrupt and untrustworthy, a sharp contrast to the apparently benign and generous Mr Nazarbayev.
Mr Atambayev showered Mr Nazarbayev with more praise.
“Every time I meet with Nursultan Nazarbayev I am convinced that he is not only the elder of the people of Kazakhstan, but also the Kyrgyz,” he said.
Small and relatively impoverished compared to its northern neighbour, Kyrgyzstan needs to keep Kazakhstan sweet.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state energy company, said it will ask the Central Bank for a 1b manat ($925m) loan to build an oil, gas and petrochemicals plant. This is important because last year SOCAR delayed construction of the $16.5b plant because its funds had dried up.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s president launched construction of a new city to be built in a desert in the north of the country, media reported. The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said the project is designed to generated jobs in the region and that the city would be home to 250,000 people.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Jahangir Hajiyev, chairman of the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), resigned for health reasons. IBA is the biggest bank in Azerbaijan and has close ties to the government. Emil Mustafayev, a deputy chairman, was appointed interim chairman.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia will build a hydropower station with a $250m loan from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) which will boost electricity production in winter and allow it to export power to neighbouring Turkey. Demand for power in Georgia is increasing.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a public speech, President Ilham Aliyev blamed the international community for launching an anti-Azerbaijan campaign ahead of the European Games this summer.
This is important because analysts have been saying that Mr Aliyev has increasingly turned his back on the West. The United States and the EU have been increasingly vocal critics of his clampdown on civic society.
“This campaign, in fact, has never been stopped, but in the run-up to important international events this campaign becomes even uglier,” he said.
“We were faced with it three years ago in 2012, on the eve of the Eurovision contest. We are seeing it today, on the eve of the European Games. This is a well-coordinated anti-Azerbaijani campaign managed from one or several centres.”
The inaugural European Games, set to be staged in Baku in June, is a sensitive issue for Mr Aliyev.
He desperately wants to showcase Azerbaijan and to gloss over its more unsightly aspects such as a stalling economy and criticism over its human rights record.
According to the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Azerbaijan is spending $4b on the European Games.
In his speech Mr Aliyev stated that the main reason for the campaign is the current strength of the country. “
“It is also natural that the stronger Azerbaijan gets, the more pressure it comes under. Our independent policy is not to everyone’s liking though,” he said.
Erkin Gadirli of the ReAl oppositional movement said in an interview to Berlin-based Meydan TV that Mr Aliyev’s speech showed that he was increasingly paranoid about criticism in the international media.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prosecutors in France have charged Jean-Francois Etienne des Rosaies, an ex-presidential adviser, with corruption over a 2010 deal to sell 295 trains and 45 helicopters to Kazakhstan, AFP reported. Media said he was the fourth person to be charged in connection with the deal.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
