OCT. 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Accusations that Azerbaijan is helping Israel spy on Iran are nonsense, Rafael Harpaz, the Israeli ambassador in Baku, was quoted as saying. Israel and Azerbaijan have grown increasingly close over the last few years. Iran has also accused Azerbaijan of acting as a launch site for Israeli drones.
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(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)
OCT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan appointed its first ambassador to Poland. Toyly Atayev, already the Turkmen ambassador in Berlin, will cover both Germany and Poland. The decision to appoint an official ambassador to Poland, even if he is based in Berlin, perhaps shows that Turkmenistan is eager to boost its diplomatic reach.
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(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a show of mutual support, Russian president Vladimir Putin travelled to Atyrau in west Kazakhstan after a meeting of Caspian Sea littoral states in Russia to meet with Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Russia is looking for allies over its stand-off with the West over intervention in Ukraine.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Japan has signed a deal to help build local infrastructure projects in Azerbaijan such as improving basic drinking water access in villages, media reported. This may show that Japan is trying to increase its participation in the South Caucasus.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to Yerevan, Greece’s president Karolos Papoulias and Armenia’s president Serzh Sargsyan agreed to expand economic relations.
The statement was short on detail and mainly forgettable, if it wasn’t for the timing. The visit by President Papoulias to Armenia comes less than a month after Greece’s parliament agreed to make denial of the alleged genocide by Ottoman Turks against the Armenians a crime.
For Armenia, persuading Greece to take this line was a major success. Some countries, such as France, do formally recognise the Armenian genocide but Greece is only the third country to make it illegal to deny that the genocide took place.
Switzerland and Slovakia have also made it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide. France is considering a similar law.
Turkey denies genocide and says instead that Armenians died in fighting between the two sides towards the end of the First World War.
Relations between Armenia and Turkey and are still strained and the border between the two neighbours is closed.
Of course, relations between Turkey and Greece are also strained making a deal between Armenia and Greece natural.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to Ashgabat, the head of the Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev met with Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, media reported. The visit was rare for a senior Azerbaijani official and, perhaps, indicates the improved relations between the two Caspian Sea states.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Despite a World Bank report tentatively giving backing to Tajikistan’s Rogun Dam, Uzbekistan foreign minister Abdulaziz Kamilov used a speech at the UN to underline his country’s continued opposition to the project. Increased tension between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan over the dam is an important issue to monitor.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev hinted at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he may not be as enamoured with green energy as he has suggested.
This is important because Kazakhstan’s government has spent time and money promoting itself as a standard bearer for Green Energy, including devoting much of the sales pitch of its centrepiece event EXPO-2017 in Astana to it.
“I personally do not believe in alternative energy, such as wind, and solar,” media quoted Mr Nazarbayev as saying after meeting Mr Putin in Atyrau on the Caspian Sea coast.
“I think the shale euphoria also does not make much sense. Oil and gas are our main horses and we do not need to be afraid that they are fossil fuels.”
This view may not be that surprising, afterall the economies of both Kazakhstan and Russia are based on oil and gas exports.
Even so, Kazakhstan has given the impression it wants to move on from its reliance on oil and gas for its wealth.
Throughout Kazakhstan’s cities advertise EXPO-2017 with posters carrying the slogan ‘The Energy of the Future’ against a background of a green valley filled with wind turbines and solar panels.
Kazakhstan’s future energy policy is further complicated because it has agreed a deal with Russia to build a new nuclear power station.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is having to play a precarious balancing game to keep competing interests in and around Ukraine happy, Kazakh foreign minister Erlan Idrissov said in an interview with Reuters in New York.
Mr Idrissov was in the United States to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry to reaffirm the two countries’ friendly ties.
The complexity of Kazakhstan’s position is not just down to its geographically position but also because of its membership of the Kremlin-led Customs Union.
“We as a matter of principle support an independent, sovereign, forward-looking, advancing politically and economically Ukraine. That is the core of our policy towards Ukraine,” Mr Idrissov said in the interview.
“We take no sides.”
The United States and the EU have imposed economic sanctions on Russia which has slowed its economy and triggered a knock-on effect on neighbouring Central Asia. Russian economic growth powers Central Asian economies.
Mr Idrissov underlined the impact of sanctions on Kazakhstan. “The crisis prevents the entire area from focusing on economic development and delivering well-being to the population,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
SEPT. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – There is only one natural resource Tajikistan is indisputably rich in. Water.
With the fresh water reservoirs close to Tehran running low, Iran is trying to work out how to import Tajikistan’s spare water, opening up a tantalising export prospect for Central Asia’s poorest country.
Iranian officials have previously touted the idea of pumping water from Tajikistan to Iran.
According to RFE/RL’s Tajik service, as of 2004 Tehran was prepared to invest $3b in an ambitious pipeline to send water from Tajikistan’s Lake Sarez to Khorasan province in Iran.
The pipeline, which could transit a billion cubic metres of water annually, would also have to travel at least 500 km across Afghanistan.
It’s expensive but when Iranian officials visited Dushanbe they again brought up the prospect, Bloomberg quoted Iran’s Mehr news agency as reporting.
With Iran’s liquidity hampered by UN sanctions, it is no surprise that now that the talk is of a water for oil swap. Tajikistan depends mostly on Russia for its petrol supplies.
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(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
