FEB. 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek authorities have unveiled a plan to build a 130km railway line over a mountain pass between Tashkent and their cities in the Ferghana Valley that will cut out the Soviet-built route through Tajikistan, media reported. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have an increasingly fractious relationship.
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(News report from Issue No. 124, published on Feb. 15 2013)
FEB. 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov signed a deal with his visiting Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yanukovich, to resume gas exports to Ukraine. Ukraine had imported gas from Turkmenistan until a few years ago when it switched to Russia. Now it wants to diversify its imports and include Turkmen gas.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 124, published on Feb. 15 2013)
FEB. 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov signed a deal with his visiting Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yanukovich, to resume gas exports to Ukraine. Ukraine had imported gas from Turkmenistan until a few years ago when it switched to Russia. Now it wants to diversify its imports and include Turkmen gas.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 124, published on Feb. 15 2013)
FEB. 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh officials confirmed that the next round of talks between Iran and the group of six — the US, Russia, the UK, France, China and the EU — over the Iranian nuclear programme will take place in Almaty on Feb. 26. The decision to hold the talks in Kazakhstan is a major diplomatic victory for Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 123, published on Feb. 8 2013)
FEB. 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh officials confirmed that the next round of talks between Iran and the group of six — the US, Russia, the UK, France, China and the EU — over the Iranian nuclear programme will take place in Almaty on Feb. 26. The decision to hold the talks in Kazakhstan is a major diplomatic victory for Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
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(News report from Issue No. 123, published on Feb. 8 2013)
JAN. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – The foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia met in Paris to discuss a solution to their dispute over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. While little substantial progress was made at the one-day meeting, foreign mediators consider getting Azerbaijan and Armenia to sit across a table as positive.
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(News report from Issue No. 122, published on Feb. 1 2013)
JAN. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – It may, at times, feel slow, but Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is opening up Turkmenistan. Media reported that he has instructed one of his ministers to study entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for Turkmenistan, which has a reputation for being one of the most closed and repressive countries in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 121, published on Jan. 25 2013)
JAN. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia and Iran continued to move closer together, at least economically, after they announced a joint economic zone, media reported. The proposed economic zone would lie around their border area. Surrounded by arch-enemies Azerbaijan and Turkey, Armenia has been looking for friendly neighbours.
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(News report from Issue No. 121, published on Jan. 25 2013)
JAN. 24 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has issued an official protest note to Armenia after it emerged that dozens of ethnic Armenians who had fled a civil war in Syria were resettling in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, media reported. An estimated 6,000 ethnic Armenians who had been living mainly in Aleppo have fled to Yerevan.
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(News report from Issue No. 121, published on Jan. 25 2013)
JAN. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Over the past decade, it’s become an increasingly familiar story. At almost every budget, the Azerbaijani authorities have boosted spending on weapons and other military hardware.
This year, though, the jump in military spending was more significant than normal.
According to media reports, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said that military spending would hit $3.7b in 2013, up from 3b in 2012. A decade ago, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) estimated that Azerbaijan spent roughly $414m on its defence budget.
And Azerbaijan is not short of neighbours it considers to be problematic.
Azerbaijan’s military shopping spree is aimed mainly at Armenia. The two countries are still officially at war over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. A 1994 ceasefire keeps the peace around Nagorno-Karabakh but shootouts and death puncture this peace every week.
Azerbaijan’s relations with Iran have worsened considerably over the past 18 months too.
There have been a number of reported shootouts on their border. In Baku, the Azerbaijani authorities have arrested several people accused of being Iranian agents. The Iranians have also arrested several Azerbaijanis in Iran.
The Azerbaijani authorities are unlikely to relax their policy of rearmament any time soon.
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(News report from Issue No. 120, published on Jan. 18 2013)
