OCT. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev will visit Qatar, Britain and France over the next two weeks, according to his official website akorda.kz. Qatar is one of Kazakhstan’s main partners in financial and infrastructure cooperation. Mr Nazarbayev has cultivated close ties with Britain and France.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s President Giorgi Margvelashvili flew to Israel for an official visit, further proof that relations between the two countries are improving after a shaky spell under former President Mikheil Saakashvili. Israel and Georgia last month opened a factory outside Tbilisi that will produce aviation parts.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Former Armenian PM Tigran Sargsyan will take over as chairman of the Eurasian Economic Commission on Feb. 1, an appointment that highlights Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence over the group.
The Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) announced Mr Sargsyan’s appointment after a meeting in Astana. Mr Sargsyan succeeds Russian Viktor Khristenko.
According to media, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said of Mr Sargsyan’s appointment: “His candidacy is supported by the Russian President as they worked together some time ago.”
The Eurasian Economic Commission runs the EEU — which also includes Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as its members — on a day-to-day basis, and Mr Sargsyan’s appointment should, at first sight, give Armenia more influence over the trade bloc.
The reality is different, though. The EEU is a Russian project and Mr Lukashenko’s words show just how influential Mr Putin is over the group. Without his support, Mr Sargsyan could not have been appointed as chairman.
Since April 2014, Mr Sargsyan has been the Armenian ambassador to the United States. He had been PM between 2008-14 but quit abruptly after his government’s reforms to the state pension programme proved unpopular.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 23 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Japanese PM Shinzo Abe began a tour of the five Central Asian Stans designed to boost links with the region.
The trip started in Turkmenistan, where Mr Abe signed deals worth over $18b in the chemical and power sectors.
This was the first official visit by a Japanese PM to Turkmenistan, proof of the country’s growing status as a global energy exporter.
Stopovers in Dushanbe and Bishkek will also mark the first official visits to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan for a Japanese leader.
Central Asia has been attracting high-profile interest from Asian leaders over the past few years. In 2013, China’s President Xi Jinping completed a similar Grand Tour of the region and this year Indian PM Narendra Modi also visited all five Stans.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Perhaps with potential gas supplies to Europe in mind, Turkmenistan opened a shop in Tbilisi selling various national produce. Turkmenistan is exploring the potential of supplying the EU with gas. Georgia hosts a gas pipeline running west from the Caspian Sea.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia is in talks with Russia’s Gazprom to import gas, Georgian energy minister Kakha Kaladze told media, highlighting the improved relations between the two neighbours. Georgia currently exports nearly all its gas from Azerbaijan although it hosts a pipeline pumping gas from Russia to Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)
OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Astana where he signed a deal with Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev to jointly explore and develop the north Caspian Sea for hydrocarbon reserves.
The deal, signed before a meeting of leaders from the former Soviet Union, came roughly a week after Kazakhstan also hosted Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. He signed deals with Mr Nazarbayev to increase cooperation in energy and aerospace. The timings of the two leaders’ visits to Astana highlights just how pressured the diplomatic space that Kazakhstan has to operate in is. It needs to keep relations with both Ukraine and Russia, who are locked in a proxy war in eastern Ukraine, sweet.
“We have big plans on joint oil production in the Caspian Sea,” Mr Putin said after signing the deal.
Kazakhstan and Russia also signed a deal for the Russian military to test missiles that would spread debris over a patch of Kazakhstan.
A week earlier, Mr Poroshenko had been in town talking up ties with Kazakhstan. This week, Kazakhstan’s ministry of defence said that it had signed a deal with Ukraine to boost cooperation in aviation.
Mr Nazarbayev has previously touted Kazakhstan as the ideal place for trying to thrash out a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. There has been no formal move to hand this role to Kazakhstan but but leaders do apparently appear relaxed about flying to Astana in quick succession.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)
OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s deputy minister of defence, General Yuri Borisov, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was in talks with Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon to station soldiers on the Tajik-Afghan border to fight off any potential threat from the Taliban. Russia and Central Asian leaders have grown increasingly wary of the push north of the Taliban.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)
OCT. 7 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — The Hague based International Criminal Court (ICC) said that it wanted to start investigating alleged war crimes committed during a 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia.
One of the ICC’s prosecutors, Fatou Bensouda, has lodged a potential case with the court and is waiting for authorisation on whether to launch an official investigation. If a full investigation is initiated and charges brought against either Russian or Georgian officials, the case will likely worsen relations between the two neighbours.
“On the basis of the information available, Prosecutor Bensouda has concluded that there is a reasonable basis to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court have been committed in Georgia in the context of the armed conflict of August 2008,” the ICC said in a statement.
“She will shortly submit a request to the Pre-Trial Chamber for authorisation to open an investigation into this Situation.”
During the five day war in August 2008 that focused on the Georgian rebel region of South Ossetia, human rights groups alleged that both sides fired cluster bombs.
They also said that forces linked to Russia had burned houses belonging to Georgian farmers.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Trade between Azerbaijan and Iran is growing, media quoted a senior official in its eastern province as saying, and it will continue to increase as Iran strengthens ties with Russia. Iran views Azerbaijan, increasingly, as a gateway to Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
