SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s ministry of defence accused Armenian backed forces in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh of killing three Azerbaijani soldiers. The accusation marks another escalation in tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing civilians last week.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan prosecutor-general Zakir Garalov accused a handful NGOs of straying outside the boundaries of their work permits and cooperating with journalists. Mr Garalov didn’t name the NGOs but the accusations could be interpreted as a warning ahead of a crackdown.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said it would send an election monitoring team to Azerbaijan despite concerns over its human rights record.
There had been a growing expectation that PACE might follow its bigger European vote monitoring team at the OSCE’s ODHIR and cancel its planned mission to cover parliamentary elections on Nov. 1 in Azerbaijan.
But PACE has a softer reputation than ODIHR and has, in the past, been accused of turning a blind eye to Azerbaijan’s crackdowns on civil society. This year, though, it has vocally challenged the Azerbaijani president to improve human rights.
And Anne Brasseur, head of the Strasbourg-based assembly, confirmed that PACE would send a mission as part of its commitment to monitor democracy in the former Soviet Union.
“We decided to maintain the mission to Azerbaijan knowing that the human rights situation is not really good,” media quote Ms Brasseur as saying.
“We are going to observe several elections — elections in Ukraine, in Turkey, in Belarus, in Kyrgyzstan, and we are also going up observe the elections in Azerbaijan.”
Earlier this month ODIHR pulled out of covering Azerbaijan’s election after, it said, the government had halved its quota of observers. Its withdrawal pushed Europe-Azerbaijan relations — strained over the imprisonment of Azerbaijani activists and journalists — to a new low.
And without the ODHIR’s presence, Ms Brasseur said, Europe would not be able to make a full analysis on veracity of the Nov. 1 election. ODHIR had wanted to send 30 long- term monitors and 350 short-monitors to cover the election. By contrast, PACE’s deployment is far smaller.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian state-owned company Gazprom started supplying natural gas to Azerbaijan. Initial volumes stand at 6m cubic metres per day, the contract between the two parties envisages a maximum yearly supply of 2b cubic metres. Azerbaijan said the contract was struck because of economic growth and an increase in domestic consumption.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s oil production fell by 3.1% between January and August this year compared to the same period in 2014, a source at the state’s Statistics Committee told Reuters, more bad news for the government as it tries to work out a strategy to deal with a regional economic downturn.
Oil exports are the mainstay of the Azerbaijan economy, and a collapse in oil prices over the past year has hit it hard.
It has cut government projects, slashed the value of its currency by a third and warned of low growth rates for the next couple of years.
Alongside the decline in revenue earned from exports, Azerbaijan is also dealing with a drop in production. This drop is mainly linked to a slowdown in production at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) fields which are operated by BP.
The source told Reuters that Azerbaijan had produced 22.1m tonnes of oil in the first eight months of the year compared to 22.8m tonnes in 2014.
BP has tried to increase outflows from ACG over the past couple of years but without success, drawing criticism from Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In an effort to prop up the tourism industry, Abulfas Garayev, Azerbaijan’s minister of culture and tourism forced a number of hotels to reduce prices, local media reported. Baku invested heavily in new hotels ahead of hosting the European Games earlier this year. “Artificially inflated prices were reduced after a ministerial inspection. Prices have been reduced by about 10-15%,” media quoted Mr Garayev as saying.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said that police had raided the home of journalist Islam Shikhali, one of its freelance contributors based in Baku. The West has criticised Azerbaijan for pressuring media. RFE/RL has closed its office in Baku.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Highlighting Azerbaijan’s enhanced role in the global energy system, foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov said in a speech at the UN General Assembly in New York that the country had become a “crucial player” in the system. Europe wants to increase imports of gas from Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Pressure is building on Azerbaijan’s Central Bank to allow its manat currency to decline gently rather than prop it up by spending billions of its US dollar reserves. Vahid Ahmadov, an MP and deputy head of parliament’s economy committee, questioned the current US dollar peg for the manat. The CBank devalued the manat by a third in Feb.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Baku Steel Company (BSC) will invest in Iran, Mehdi Karbasian, the Iranian deputy minister of industry told the Trend news agency. Last week, Mr Karbasian visited Azerbaijan’s capital Baku and said BSC, a privately owned company, is particularly interested in two Iranian projects.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
