SEPT. 14/15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, visited Georgia for talks with the Georgian leadership and with the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church Patriach Ilia II. Archbishop Mamberti’s trip was the first by a Vatican foreign minister for 11 years. Pope John Paul II visited Georgia in 1999.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)
CHOLPON-ATA/Kyrgyzstan, SEPT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In front of a packed hippodrome in this provincial town of shores of the mountain-ringed Lake Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan A beat Kyrgyzstan B to win gold in the main event of Kok-Boru at this inaugural Nomadic Games.
Amid the enthusiastic roars of local Kyrgyz, foreign diplomats cheered on half-heartedly between snipes about graft and the hippodrome’s overloaded portaloos.
While the World Nomadic Games was designed to unite all countries of the Turkic-speaking world, it retained a very local flavour throughout, with the hosts cruising to victory in the medal table — the majority of the competitors were Kyrgyz — and poor planning abounding. None of the presidents of the competing states — Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — showed up as hoped before the games began.
The Kok-Boru on July 14 was spectacular, however. Exhibition games of Kok-Boru, a polo-like game played with a dried goat carcass, are common at tourist-focussed festivals throughout the country. This one was far more competitive, with the captain of Kyrgyzstan’s A team sporting a battle-inflicted gash across his forehead as he lead his team to victory over the B team.
Russia’s federal Altai Republic and Turkey claimed silver and bronze in the event respectively. Following a reported disagreement over the rules of Kok-Boru — or Kokpar to the Kazakhs — neighbouring Kazakhstan refused to send a team.
Also on Sept. 14, to the chuckles of local spectators, horses belonging to former Prime Minister Omurbek Babanov claimed the bronze and silver medals for the 2.5 km flat race. Babanov’s weakness for stallions is legendary.
He was jettisoned from the government amid rumours he had accepted a racehorse a bribe for securing a foreign investment for a Turkish businessmen in 2013.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)
SEPT. 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a meeting in Ashgabat, the Turkmen and Iranian defence ministers, declared that they would boost cooperation between the two countries. Perhaps most important when considering Turkmenistan-Iran military cooperation is the issue of the Caspian Sea which they border.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.16 2014)
SEPT. 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s state energy company SOCAR is expected to complete the deal to buy the Greek state gas operator DESFA by the end of this month, SOCAR head Rovnag Abdullayev said. SOCAR agreed to buy a 66% stake in DESFA in 2013. The EU is currently considering it.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)
SEPT. 4-5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – NATO took, yet another, tentative step towards admitting Georgia to its club at its conference in Cardiff.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish head of the US-led military group, said that a substantive package had been drawn up to help aspiring members join.
“Each aspirant has work to do in different areas and we will give them support they need,” he said. “We agreed on substantive package of measures for Georgia that will help Georgia advance in its preparations towards membership of NATO.”
This is good news for Georgia, and probably as good as it could realistically have expected. Ukraine is another country that wants to join NATO, as well as Australia, a more easy country for NATO to accept.
The 28-member NATO also agreed to boost Georgia’s military defences.
Georgia fought a brief war with Russia in 2008 and is dealing with two frozen conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The problem for the NATO member states is that they want to show a strong face against Russian aggression in the former Soviet Union but they also want to avoid inheriting a load of problems that could well drag them into somebody else’s war.
All-in-all, the NATO summit probably lived up to expectations from Georgia.
“We will have very important steps taken in regard of NATO standards by the next summit (in Poland in 2016),” said Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili.
It remains to be seen if Mr Margvelashvili is being realistic or just optimistic.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – China pledged to invest $16m in Kyrgyzstan’s, a move to shore up its support in Bishkek, media reported. Much of the cash will be used to build officers’ quarters in Bishkek. China has invested heavily in militaries around Central Asia over the past few years.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s military has chosen 20 soldiers to travel to Haiti, Western Sahara, Ivory Coast and Liberia on UN missions, media reported. These are the first UN missions that Kazakhstan has supported. They are designed to support its candidature to win a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Chuck Hagel, the US defence secretary, flew into Tbilisi for a high profile visit to pledge support for Georgia and its NATO ambitions. Mr Hagel’s trip was designed as much to send a message to Russia as it was to bolster Georgian morale. He also discussed selling US Blackhawk helicopters to Georgia.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan may be about to play an unforeseen, but important, role in Ukraine’s civil war.
Virtually unnoticed by the media, Ukraine’s coal and energy minister, Yuriy Proban, visited Baku for an unofficial meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart. He was, basically, asking for help from Azerbaijan.
Ukraine’s economy is a mess. It had been reliant on coal mining from the Donbass region but with the civil war centred on Donbass, it is now limping along.
It had also earned a substantial fee for being a transit country for oil and gas supplies from Russia to Europe. That too has dried up, meaning that it both has to generate cash from elsewhere and also buy in oil and petrol.
According to analysts, only about 20% of Ukraine’s refining capacity is currently in use.
And this where Azerbaijan, could in theory, come in.
Mr Probin said that he was in Baku partially to ask for Azerbaijan to halp make up the shortfall.
“We could quite quickly increase the processed amounts if Azerbaijan has the available resources,” Russian news agency ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying, referring to the volumes of refined oil produced in Ukraine.
For Azerbaijan, there are two main issues to consider before potentially increasing supplies to Ukraine. Firstly, how to get any oil shipments there, possibly via Georgia’s Black Sea port of Batumi, and secondly how would Russia react? Azerbaijan-Russia relations are already strained. Supplying Ukraine with oil, may strain them further.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Greece’s parliament ratified a bill that banned denial of an alleged genocide by Turkish Ottoman forces on Armenians a century ago.
This elevates recognition of the alleged genocide to a crime to denying it.
The vote, which was close, is a success for Armenian lobbyists who have been campaigning across the world for countries to recognise their plight from Turkey towards the end of the First World War as genocide.
Turkey has always denied the charge and instead said Armenians were killed in the chaotic aftermath of the War.
Greece and Armenia are natural allies against Turkey. Both sides have their animosities with their bigger, more powerful neighbour and it is probably unsurprising that Greece has joined a small group in making denial of the so-called Armenian genocide a crime.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
