JULY 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian officials criticised a trip by French actor Gerard Depardieu to Georgia’s break-away region of Abkhazia as both ignorant and inflammatory for Georgian-Russian relations. Russia gave Mr Depardieu citizenship earlier this year after he complained about high taxes in France.
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(News report from Issue No. 142, published on July 8 2013)
JULY 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia will hold its presidential election on Oct. 31. Confusion had reigned, briefly, though over the date. Only three hours after a spokesman for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said the election would be held on Oct. 27, the head of the presidential administration announced the date of the vote as Oct. 31.
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(News report from Issue No. 142, published on July 8 2013)
JULY 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — British PM David Cameron completed a two-day trip to Kazakhstan. This was the first trip to Kazakhstan by a serving British PM and concluded with reportedly $1b worth of deals between the two countries. Human rights groups said that Mr Cameron should have done more to press concerns on Kazakhstan’s rights record.
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(News report from Issue No. 142, published on July 8 2013)
JUNE 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Following its neighbour Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan will produce a historical film promoting its national values, media reported. The film called “Queen of the mountains” will cost $1.5m and will tell the story of a Kyrgyz noblewoman who saves her nation from Russian imperial forces in the 1870s.
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(News report from Issue No. 141, published on July 1 2013)
JUNE 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Georgia arrested several more officials linked to the previous government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s UNM party. UNM members have said the accusations of corruption are false. The row highlights political instability in Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 141, published on July 1 2013)
JUNE 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Whatever the deals signed between British PM David Cameron and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan will emerge as a winner.
Persuading Mr Cameron to visit Kazakhstan is a PR coup for Mr Nazarbayev and will have other countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus looking on enviously.
Mr Cameron is the first serving British PM to visit Kazakhstan, although, as one of Mr Nazarbayev’s advisers, ex-PM Tony Blair is a relatively regular visitor to Astana.
Kazakhstan has spent deeply on a small army of Western lobbyists, including the well-connected London-based Portland, and tasked them with improving its image.
Most of Europe’s leaders had already made the journey east to Astana. The EU, France and Germany have develop strong ties with Kazakhstan. Britain, though, had stood aside.
It was only a matter of time, though, before this changed.
Wealthy Kazakhs increasingly look to London as a fulcrum for their international business and lifestyle ambitions. As well as multiple business links, the Kazakh elite are sending their children to top English boarding schools and the government has been sponsoring a new generation of lawyers and civil servants through British universities.
Travel connections between London and Almaty, Kazakhstan’s financial centre, have also improved this year when British Airways finally opening a direct flight from Heathrow.
For Mr Cameron, the trip is trickier. He will want to develop economic ties with Kazakhstan but will have to tread carefully around the inevitable human rights questions to avoid upsetting his hosts. Britain also needs help from Kazakhstan to pull its military kit out of Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 141, published on July 1 2013)
JUNE 14 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a meeting in Tashkent, Uzbek President Islam Karimov and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev called for the UN to investigate the potential environmental impact of proposed dams in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Water is a sensitive subject in Central Asia and can aggravate inter-country relations.
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In their hunt for former billionaire banker Mukhtar Ablyazov, the Kazakh authorities haven’t had it all their own way.
Ablyazov is the former chairman of BTA Bank who fled Kazakhstan after the collapse of the bank, one of the country’s biggest, in 2009. The Kazakh authorities accuse him of embezzling billions of dollars, plotting a series of bomb attacks in Almaty and trying to topple the government. He is currently on the run.
Many of Ablyazov’s former associates have been arrested recently, including Yerlan Tatishev, a former BTA Bank director. In May, the Kazakh security services secured the extradition from Italy of Ablyazov’s wife and daughter.
Now though, they’ve suffered a setback. A judge in the Polish regional town of Lublin rejected a request from Kazakhstan to extradite Muratbek Ketebayev, an associate of Ablyazov. Polish police detained him on June 13. The judge freed him two days later.
Mr Ketebayev had been a Kazakh deputy economy minister before fleeing Kazakhstan to Poland. Like Ablyazov, the Kazakh authorities have accused him of trying to overthrow the government.
According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Polish prosecutor released Mr Ketebayev because he felt the extradition request was politically motivated.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan has officially lost its one-party parliament after an election for five vacant seats voted in a member of the newly formed Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (PIE), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Analysts, though, have said PIE is a stooge party and is not genuine opposition.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Nino Burjanadze, Georgia’s former parliamentary speaker and once an ally of President Mikheil Saakashvili, said she will run in October’s presidential election. Ms Burjanadze has a high profile and will be a potential threat to candidates put forward by Mr Saakasvhili’s party and by PM Bidzina Ivanishvili.
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
