SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – After meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin at his villa outside Moscow, Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan said that Russia had agreed to give Armenia a loan of $200m to modernise its military. Russia is one of Armenia’s most important allies and keeps a large military base in the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran’s Khazar Exploration and Pro- duction Co. (KEPCO), a subsidiary of National Iranian Oil Company, met with officials from the Azerbaijani state oil and gas company SOCAR in Tehran to discuss how best to work together to explore and exploit oil fields in the Caspian Sea. Iran has has begun to re-integrate into the global community.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to Tehran, Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev said he wanted Iran to join the Russia and China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Mr Atambayev held meetings with his Iranian counter-part Hassan Rouhani to persuade Iran, which is set to become a major regional partner once Western sanctions are removed, to invest in infrastructure projects in Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenian PM Hovik Abrahamyan wants to allow citizens of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) to travel to Armenia without a passport, media reported. He said only 20% of Russians have passports, a major drag on potential tourist numbers, and suggested that they could travel to Armenia on internal passports.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Norway’s foreign minister Boerge Brende visited Georgia to meet with President Giorgi Margvelshvili and PM Irakli Garibashili. In Tbilisi Mr Brende underlined Norway’s support for Georgia’s territorial integrity. Importantly for Georgia, Norway is a NATO country.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, condemned Azerbaijan’s crackdown on media, the latest high profile institution to criticise Baku. On Sept. 1, a court in Baku jailed journalist Khadija Ismayilova for various financial crimes.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 9 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Foreign direct investments, so vital for Georgia’s economy, jumped by 81% in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2014, the statistics agency said.
The data showed that Georgia attracted investments worth $355m between April and June 2015, up from 196m in 2014 and also up from the 175m in the first quarter of this year.
But foreign investment inflows to Georgia have been volatile over the past few years. In the second half of last year, for example, Georgia attracted investment of over $1.2b although it has damped this year.
Geostat didn’t give a reason for the increase in foreign investment although it said that the single largest investor in the second quarter of the year was Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
AUG. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov visited Kabul and signed a series of deals with his Afghan counterparts, highlighting just how important he views improved relations between Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
The bilateral deals were not particularly ground-breaking — two leaders agreed to share financial data more readily as well as improve improve cooperation in the energy and tech sectors — but the trip itself was important.
Although he is beginning to travel more and more, Mr Berdymukhamedov is not a particularly keen traveller so a high- profile meeting with Afghan president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani in Kabul is eye-catching.
Mr Berdymukhamedov is worried about the northward march of the Taliban and stability in general in the country.
Earlier this year, reports surfaced which said that Turkmen soldiershadpositioned themselves inside Afghan territory after a series of attacks on their border posts by the Taliban.
Afghanistan is also now a partner in the so-called TAPI gas pipeline project which is planned to run from fields in the east of Turkmenistan to India.
Without stability in Afghanistan and a strong central government the project is likely to remain just a pipe dream.
Expect more Kabul-bound trips by Mr Berdymukhamedov.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 1/3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Highlighting just how important China has become to Central Asia, four out of five of the region’s leaders travelled to Beijing to watch a military parade designed to mark the 70th anniversary of China’s victory over Japan in World War II.
Trips to Beijing have become a regular part of the diplomatic land- scape for the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. China now regards the region almost as its personal backyard, seemingly striking bilateral deals and agreements through the Shanghai Cooperation OrganisatPion (SCO) at will.
And this week appears to have been no different. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev flew to Beijing a few days early to sign off on a handful of deals. On his website, akorda.kz, Mr Nazarbayev said that the deals, spanning a range of sectors, had been worth $23b.
“We have actively cooperated with China for more than 20 years, mainly in the energy sector and in extracting other raw materials,” he said.
“Yesterday during our constructive talks with President Xi Jinping we agreed to create 45 joint facilities, and agreements were signed on 25 of them worth a total of $23b.”
The details of these deals were vague but they covered a range of sectors from tourism to hydropower.
Mr Nazarbayev also congratulated Chinese President Xi on winning the 2022 Winter Olympic Games for Beijing in July ahead of Almaty.
Following on a few days behind him were the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Only Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan’s president, was missing. Also present were other leaders from neighbouring countries including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye.
With an economic downturn linked to Russia and a collapse in the price of oil, China has become an even more important driver of economic development in Central Asia and the SouthCaucasus.
At the end of last month, Kyrgyzstan officially opened a new power line funded by China that will improve electricity transit from the south of the country, where its hydro- power stations are sited, to the north and when Uzbekistan’s president Islam Karimov flew into Beijing its official media said bilateral trade had tripled in six years to around $5b.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary-General and Georgian Prime Minister Irakly Garibashvili opened a NATO training base outside Tbilisi, a move that Russia has said it would interpret as antagonistic. Georgia wants to join NATO but, although relations have become closer, NATO has rebuffed its membership so far.
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(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
