OCT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gerard Depardieu, the French actor who has taken Russian citizenship to pay less taxes, visited Baku on a trip organised by the ministry of culture. Media said he praised the rapid development of the city. Earlier this year Mr Depardieu made an advert celebrating Azerbaijani food.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov flew to Latvia for his first state visit to the EU since visiting Brussels nearly three years ago. Mr Karimov met his Latvian counterpart Andris Berzins to discuss bilateral relations and other issues.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s government has complained to Russia about the apparent mistreatment of one of its nationals by police in Moscow, media reported.
The complaint is important because it sets Azerbaijan at loggerheads, once again, with Russia over the sensitive topic of migrant workers.
Police in Moscow arrested Orhan Zeylanov, a 25-year-old migrant worker from Azerbaijan, on Oct. 15 for the apparent murder of a Russian man a few days earlier.
The murder was blamed for triggering a riot in a Moscow suburb, the worst anti-migrant violence for years.
TV footage from the arrest of Mr Zeylanov showed police kicking him. The TV commentator also referred to him as “the killer” before any formal court proceeding had started.
The row renews the debate over how migrant workers are treated in Russia.
It also, importantly, focuses attention on relations between Azerbaijan and Russia.
These have grown steadily more strained over the past few years. Azerbaijan has challenged Russia’s gas dominance and created an alternative energy supply route for EU states.
Azerbaijan has also become cosy with the United States. In short, its energy wealth has allowed it to act increasingly independently from Russia.
Compared to other former Soviet countries, remittances from workers in Russia make up only a small proportion of Azerbaijan’s economy, 3% according to the World Bank, but it is still important.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Utter the word Borat to a Kazakh diplomat and he or she may cringe.
It took years to purge the image of Kazakhstan — which wants to be seen as a modern, progressive country — from Borat, the boorish fictional character created by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for his 2006 film “Borat: Cultural learnings of America make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan”.
Now, though, it appears that the BBC has created another comedy to, potentially at least, poke more fun at the Central Asian republics.
The BBC will broadcast the first episode of its new three-part comedy on Oct. 23 called “Ambassadors”. It’s essentially a sideways, tongue-in-cheek look at the British diplomatic service and the challenges of a foreign posting in a little-known and far-away country.
The twist, for Central Asia at least, is that the fictional little-known and far-away country is called Tazbekistan. No prizes for guessing the mish-mash of republics it is based upon.
And there’s more. The pre-broadcasting blurb goes further. The plot is based around an incoming British ambassador’s attempts to get to grips with Tazbekistan’s idiosyncrasies. This includes being oil-rich and having a woeful human rights record.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will open an embassy in South Africa this year and an embassy in Ethiopia in 2014, marking a decisive diplomatic push into sub-Saharan Africa.
It’s a relatively natural link. Kazakhstan has built up its wealth through the extractive industries. Mining is also important to the economies of sub-Saharan Africa.
Over the last three years or so, Kazakhstan has steadily expanded its diplomatic missions across the world. It has opened up embassies in key emerging market countries such as Indonesia and Brazil and upgraded offices in long-established missions such as in London. It already has embassies in Cairo and Tripoli.
The push into South Africa fits this pattern. It is a growing economy with a large mining component. Establishing a mission in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, is more political, though. Addis Ababa is home to the African Union. By setting up a mission there, Kazakhstan hopes to earn influence within this political block.
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev plans to open the embassy in South Africa when he visits for the first time in December.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan skipped a meeting in Bishkek to discuss details of a dam Kyrgyzstan intends to build across the Naryn River, Kyrgyz media reported. Kyrgyzstan’s plans to build a dam upstream of Uzbekistan have strained already tense relations between the two countries.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov made his first state visit to the EU in nearly three years when he landed in Riga on Oct. 16.
Mr Karimov was officially in the Latvian capital to discuss bilateral relations and trade with Latvia’s president, Andris Berzins, as well as the withdrawal from Afghanistan of NATO forces. Latvia is a member of NATO and has supplied the US-led military alliance in Afghanistan with soldiers.
For Mr Karimov, though, there were other important reasons to visit Latvia. Until relatively recently, the EU had considered Uzbekistan a pariah state for various human rights abuses. European leaders are still wary of hosting Mr Karimov and he hadn’t been on a state visit to the EU since flying to Brussels in January 2011 to meet the EU and NATO chiefs.
An invitation to visit Latvia, an EU member since 2004, therefore carries more significance than it might normally. The publicity of a state visit to an EU member country would play well in the Uzbek press and television networks.
Latvia also takes over the EU presidency in 2015, so courting it now may be a clever strategy for Mr Karimov.
And then, of course, there is the small matter of a corruption investigation involving Sweden-based mobile operator TeliaSonera and payments allegedly made to Gulnara Karimova, Mr Karimov’s daughter, for a 3G licence in Uzbekistan in 2007. Investigators are looking into the role that a Latvian bank may have played in these alleged deals.
A useful trip to Latvia, then, for Mr Karimov.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 14 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia lifted a ban on fruit imports from Georgia, a further sign of improving relations. In 2006, Russia banned fruit from Georgia, officially because of poor hygiene. Most analysts, though, said the ban was in retaliation for the expulsion from Tbilisi of four soldiers for spying.
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(News report from Issue No. 156, published on Oct. 16 2013)
OCT. 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A train carrying 200 Tajik soldiers through Uzbekistan derailed, injuring dozens, media reported. The train had to pass through a sliver of Uzbek territory en route from Dushanbe to northern Tajikistan. Tajikistan blamed the Uzbek authorities for the accident, raising tension between the two neighbours.
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(News report from Issue No. 156, published on Oct. 16 2013)
OCT. 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hundreds of ethnic Russians in a suburb of Moscow rioted against migrant workers from the South Caucasus and Central Asia. The trigger for the violence was the alleged murder of a Russian man by an Azerbaijani. Remittances from migrant workers are vital to the economies of Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
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(News report from Issue No. 156, published on Oct. 16 2013)
