FEB. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iranian president Hassan Rouhani will fly to Ashgabat to meet with Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, media reported quoting a senior Iranian official as saying. Reports didn’t give a precise date for the visit, although it is expected at the end of February or in March.
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The falling rouble has persuaded up to half of St Petersburg’s Central Asian casual work force to return home, the AFP news agency reported.
St Petersburg’s deputy governor, Igor Albin, reportedly said that 50% of the snow sweepers, normally from Central Asia, had left the city.
AFP’s correspondent in St Petersburg directly quoted the head of a snow sweeping company who gave similar insight, although with a lower percentage heading home.
“Almost 30% of the workers who left to spend New Year’s as usual with their families in Uzbekistan or Tajikistan have not come back,” he said.
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are most vulnerable to this trend. Tajikistan holds the dubious position as the country that is most reliant on remittances. These make up about 50% of its total GDP.
The Tajik Central Bank has tried to prop up its currency against the falling Russian rouble although it has warned that inflation is creeping up.
In Dushanbe, an immigration official told AFP that only half the number of Tajiks were leaving to take jobs abroad this year, compared to the same period in 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A car plant factory in Uzbekistan has started producing parts for cars in Brazil, media reported. UzSungwoo is an Uzbek-Korean joint venture. It was set up to produce parts for GM’s plant in Uzbekistan. Demand has dropped at the GM plant because of an economic crisis, possibly triggering UzSungwoo to sell to Brazil.
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The EU’s special envoy for human rights, Stavros Lambrinidis, flew to Azerbaijan for a visit that is expected to culminate in a critical evaluation of the Azerbaijani government. Human rights groups urged Mr Stavros to use his trip to pressure the authorities into releasing various prisoners.
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
MARCH 18 2015 (The Bulletin) – Turkmenistan has offered to host talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, Pakistan’s Express Tribune newspaper reported. Sapar Berdiniyazov, a senior Turkmen diplomat, said: “If the Afghan parties ask us, Turkmenistan is available as a venue for the talks.” If Ashagbat did ever host peace talks it would significantly raise its international profile.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian energy company LukOil said that along with a consortium headed by South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering it had won a contract to build a gas processing plant in the Kandym region of south Uzbekistan. LukOil did not say how much the project would cost but it did say that it was its largest investment in Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The French authorities have seized properties worth millions of euros belonging to Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, media reported. One of the properties was an estate near Paris which had its own opera house. Ms Karimova, once a potential presidential successor, is under house arrest in Tashkent.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
>>Criticism comes after Russia cuts Turkmen gas imports>>
FEB. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan has criticised Russia as an unreliable gas partner, hinting that it was moving away from its traditional energy alliance with Moscow and was instead looking for new clients and markets.
Ties between Turkmenistan and Russia have been increasingly strained and, perhaps, the Kremlin’s shadow boxing with the West in eastern Ukraine persuaded it to issue the harshly worded statement and speed up its search for new clients.
“Gazprom and its affiliates periodically violate agreements at interstate, intergovernmental and interdepartmental level, leading to the view that unfortunately the major energy company is an unstable partner,” the AFP news agency reported quoting an article on the website of Turkmenistan’s oil and gas ministry.
Earlier this year, Gazprom said that it was cutting imports of gas from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan by up to two-thirds.
Like other countries in the region, Turkmenistan has been trying to deal with the fallout from the decline in the value of the rouble and also the fall in energy prices. President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has ordered his energy executives to search for more clients.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Oil output in Azerbaijan rose for the first time in a year, Reuters quoted an Azerbaijani official as saying. The official, who declined to be named, said the increase was due to a rise in production at the ACG fields operated by BP.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
FEB. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland is due to travel to Yerevan and Baku over the next few days to discuss their relations with Washington and how to reduce rising tension along the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Ms Nuland’s trip is part of a wider South Caucasus mission.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
