Tag Archives: international relations

UN chief challenges Kyrgyzstan on 2010 fighting

JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a stopover in Bishkek as part of a wider tour of Central Asia and its capitals, UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon said Kyrgyzstan should hold an impartial investigation into the death of 400 people during fighting in the south of the country in 2010.

Most of the people killed during fighting around the city of Osh in south Kyrgyzstan in 2010 were Uzbek.

“Kyrgyzstan has ambitious plans to promote interethnic harmony and to protect the rights of all, including minorities,” Reuters quoted Mr Ban as saying at a press conference in the city.

“But it’s important for these policies to be put into practice. Root causes must be addressed fully and impartially investigated and prosecuted.”

The inference is clear. Any Kyrgyz investigations since 2010 have been skewed to clear ethnic Kyrgyz of blame for the fighting which drove thousands of ethnic Uzbeks over the border into Uzbekistan.

Although lying inside Kyrgyzstan’s borders, Osh and the surrounding towns and cities have always been heavily populated by ethnic Uzbeks.

Human rights groups have accused Kyrgyzstan of a cover up over how the fighting in 2010 started by convicting local Uzbek leaders for starting the fighting.

Relations between the two communities living around Osh continued to be strained and the peace fragile.

Mr Ban was visiting Bishkek as part of a Central Asia tour, his second since 2010.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Tajikistan will receive EU funding

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At the fourth EU-Tajikistan Cooperation Committee in Brussels, the European delegation confirmed it had earmarked 251m euro for Tajikistan over the next five years to improve rural areas. The EU said the aid was more necessary now because of the drop in remittances.

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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

CSTO force to be sent to Tajikistan

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia would be prepared to send a rapid reaction force to defend Tajikistan’s southern border from Taliban incursions, Russian media quoted General Nikolai Bordyuzha as saying. General Bordyuzha is head of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), an FSU intergovernmental military group.

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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Kazakhstan competes talks with WTO

JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – After 20 years of negotiations, Kazakhstan has completed talks with the World Trade Organisation and should join the group by the end of the year. The WTO said that although there had been issues around Kazakhstan’s bilateral agreements and its membership of the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union, a deal had been struck.

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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Kyrgyz health minister worries

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Doctors and other health workers will leave Kyrgyzstan for better paid jobs in Kazakhstan and Russia now that the country has joined the Kremlin- led Eurasian Economic Union, media quoted Kyrgyz health minister Talantbek Batyraliyev as saying. Kyrgyzstan’s health service is already in a precarious states.

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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Kazakhstan to produce defence kit

JUNE 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Kazakh agricultural equipment manufacturer is in negotiations with a Turkish company to buy the licence to manufacture its armoured vehicles. Kazakhstan has previously said that it wants to improve and strengthen its defence sector manufacturing base.

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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Pakistani PM talks CASA in Tajikistan

JUNE 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif flew to Dushanbe for talks with Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon, his first visit to Tajikistan since the neighbours agreed an electricity supply deal earlier this year.

At this meeting the two leaders agreed to speed up building the infrastructure needed for Tajikistan to send electricity generated from its hydropower stations to Pakistan under the CASA-1000 deal.

Importantly they agreed to improve communication and links.

This is important. International organisations as well as Western states have supported the CASA-1000 deal. They want electricity sent to Pakistan improved as well as cash flowing into Tajikistan’s economy.

They also want to encourage deeper relations between countries, including between Tajikistan and Pakistan.

Azerbaijan orders OSCE to close office in Baku

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Azerbaijan ordered the OSCE to close its office in Baku and barred Amnesty from visiting the city, triggering fresh criticism of its civil rights record shortly before President Ilham Aliyev opens the inaugural European Games.

Azerbaijan and the West have been locked in an acrimonious row over civil rights which has threatened to damage their fragile relationship.

Now the OSCE, as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe is more commonly known, said that the Azerbaijani authorities had ordered it to close its Baku office.

“The government of Azerbaijan has notified the OSCE of its intention to close the organisation’s office in Baku,” AFP quoted the spokesman for the OSCE Baku office, Rashad Huseynov, as saying.

This takes relations between Europe and Azerbaijan to a new low. Among other roles, the OSCE is Europe’s democracy watchdog. It evaluates elections against European democratic standards.

Azerbaijan already has form, though. At the end of last year it raided and closed the office of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

London-based Amnesty also said it had cancelled a trip to Baku after the Azerbaijani authorities said that its delegation was not welcome to visit until after the European Games.

It’s a delicate relationship between Europe and Azerbaijan. While it may not like Azerbaijan’s attitude towards dissenters, Europe wants to buy its gas.

For Mr Aliyev, these are frustrating times.

He wants to increase the profile of Azerbaijan through sport and had hoped that the European Games, set to open on June 12, would act as the perfect launch.

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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Kazakh President said: China fears unfounded

MAY 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an interview with TV channel Russia-24, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev said fears that China has excessive influence over Kazakhstan were unfounded. Mr Nazarbayev also said Kazakhstan and China were about to sign more bilateral deals. China has extended its foothold across Central Asia in the last decade.

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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)

Armenia ants close EU deal

MAY 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s deputy economy minister, Garegin Melkonyan, said that although Armenia was a member of the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union, it wanted a deal with the EU that was as close as possible to an Association Agreement.

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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)