OCT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a speech to potential foreign investors, Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili underlined the economic importance of the Baku- Tbilisi-Kars railway, due to launch next year, to Georgia. The railway will supposedly give industry and business across the region a boost.
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(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – At least 19 people have died this year during Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. Human rights campaigners have long accused the Uzbek authorities of forcing people to work in cotton fields during the harvest.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s General Prosecutor arrested four current and one former senior military officials for corruption. The officers are accused of organising a sham tender for military procurements. The arrests will be a blow to Georgia aspires to join NATO.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A group of Iranian MPs visited Georgia for talks with their Georgian counterparts, media reported, highlighting the increasingly close relations between the two countries. Georgia has become a popular destination for Iranians looking to set up businesses as a way around sanctions imposed by the West.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s president, Serzh Sargsyan, described talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh as “constructive, useful and sincere”, media reported.This is the most upbeat assessment of the talks hosted by French president Francois Hollande.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s GDP has fallen by 0.8% this year compared to 2014, the World Bank said, more evidence that economies closely-linked to Russia are suffering from sanctions imposed by the West.
The World Bank said that a fall in remittances from Tajik workers in Russia had translated into weaker domestic demand for goods.
“A Russian slowdown affects Tajikistan largely through the remittances channel,” the World Bank wrote in its report.
“A slackening in remittances weighs heavily on household demand, notably demand for services and housing construction.”
This is particularly worrying for Western countries which are counting on a strong and stable Tajikistan to act as a bulwark against any movement by the Taliban northwards into Central Asia from Afghanistan.
Most of the former Soviet Union has been hit by Western sanctions imposed on Russia because of its alleged intervention in the Ukraine civil war but the World Bank also said that a generally weak global demand for industrial goods was impacting Tajikistan too.
It said that industrial growth had fallen to 3% from 7% a year earlier because of low global industrial demand and falling cotton and aluminium prices.
These sentiments mirror the Tajik Central Bank. Both also predicted that inflation would gradually become an increased concern in Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev has said inflation will increase in Kyrgyzstan when it joins the Customs Union, which is morphing into the Eurasian Economic Union next year. He also said the country no alternative to joining the Russia-led economic bloc, highlighting the Kremlin’s tightened grip over Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in France agreed to extradite the ex-chairman of Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank Mukhtar Ablyazov to either Russia or Ukraine to face charges he stole billions of dollars.
Prosecutors in Russia have accused Ablyazov of a $5b fraud and Ukraine wants to try him for stealing $400m.
Human rights advocates had argued that Ablyazov wouldn’t face a fair trial if he was extradited and that he may also be sent on to Kazakhstan where he is wanted on various charges including trying to incite a revolution.
The court in Lyon effectively overturned a previous decision by the Supreme Court in Paris that rejected Ablyazov’s extradition. It did, though, specify that neither Ukraine nor Russia were allowed to send him on to Kazakhstan.
Even so, for Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, Ablyazov’s extradition to either Ukraine or Russia is a major success and partially underlines his personal clout.
Relations between Kazakhstan and France have developed markedly over the past few years. Some have said that under former French President Nikolas Sarkozy the relationship became too cosy and a court in France is currently investigating allegations of bribes paid by French executives to secure a major helicopter deal.
Ablyazov had been a minister under Nazarbayev but increasingly positioned himself as an opposition leader. He fled to London in 2009 and fought the Kazakh government in a major legal case over funds. He was found guilty of contempt of court in London but absconded to the French Riviera where he was captured in 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia has denied that it has given permission for a commercial flight between Yerevan and Simferopol, the capital of Crimea.
As reported by the Bulletin last week, Grozny Avia, a Chechen airline, has floated plans to fly between the two cities twice a week. If the flight route did materialise it would be the first air route into Crimea, other than from Russia, since Russian forces annexed the Ukrainian province earlier this year.
News of the planned flight angered the Ukrainian government. It has also been suggested that Armenia had been coaxed into allowing the flight to appease Russia. Armenia needs Russian economic support to keep its finances in order and Russian military support to balance the threat posed by Azerbaijan which wants to re-take the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia-back rebels.
But Armenia’s civil aviation authority has said that an earlier statement from Crimea’s transport minister about the planned flight was simply wrong.
“The Head Department of Civil Aviation did not receive, and therefore has not examine, a bid for operation of direct flights from Yerevan to Simferopol,” media quoted spokesman Ruben Grdzelyan as saying.
This is not a categorical no, then. It does suggest that this issue may have further to run.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s oil production will drop by 2.5% next year because of the continued slump in output from BP’s Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil fields, Reuters reported quoting a source close to the government. ACG is currently Azerbaijan’s largest oil producing field. BP has promised to maintain output but without success.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
