NOV. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Malaysia sentenced three Uzbeks, two women and one man, to death after convicting them of trying to smuggle drugs into the country. Officials caught the three Uzbeks, one a pensioner and the other two unemployed, carrying 10kg of methamphetamine in their luggage at Kuala Lumpur airport.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
NOV. 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A NATO delegation flew into Baku for a three day trip designed to further military assistance and training. A second NATO delegation is due to arrive a few days later to open a NATO training centre. Both trips underline increasing close connections between Azerbaijan and NATO.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
NOV. 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan will start building extra warships for its navy in the Caspian Sea, media quoted unnamed Azerbaijani defence ministry officials as saying. The announcement is likely to alarm the other Caspian Sea littoral countries and underline Azerbaijan’s general military expansion.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
OCT. 31 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Underlining Kazakhstan’s links with NATO countries, Kazakh defence minister Adilbek Dzhaksybekov flew to London for talks with his British counterpart Philip Hammond. Kazakhstan wants British advice on how to professionalise its military. Earlier this year the Kazakh government announced that it would end conscription.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Officials from NATO, the US-led Western military alliance, will open a training centre in Baku when they visit the Azerbaijani capital on Nov. 18, media reported. Azerbaijan has deployed a small detachment of soldiers to support NATO’s campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moving closer to NATO is a snub to Russia.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — If proof was needed that a cease-fire between Azerbaijan and Armenia around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh was increasingly fragile, Russia may have given it.
Colonel Andrei Ruzinsky, commander of the Russian forces based in Armenia, said that Russia’s military would back Armenia if Azerbaijan ever tried to take back control of the province.
His intervention was interesting and, perhaps, well timed. Over the past few weeks there have been a number of small fire-fights between the two sides, more, it appears, than normal.
A shaky 1994 cease-fire keeps Armenia and Azerbaijan apart around Nagorno-Karabakh. The region is controlled by Armenian-backed rebels but Azerbaijan has said it wants to reclaim the region.
And it has built up the military firepower to do this.
Armenia’s military is far smaller than Azerbaijan’s but it has the backing of Russia.
While Azerbaijan has steered towards Europe and the West, Armenia has looked to Russia for support. It is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation and pledged to enter the Customs Union. Russia is the main driver and backer of both groups.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a meeting in Ashgabat, Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko and his Turkmen counterpart Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov agreed to build a factory to produce unmanned aerial drones. Media reports said Turkmenistan wants the drones to patrol its borders.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
OCT. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s government has approved a deal to merge its air defence systems with Kazakhstan, media reported. A deal to merge air defence capabilities was originally signed in January. Combining air defence systems will edge Kazakhstan further towards Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armaments is big business in Azerbaijan. The government has increased its defence budget rapidly over the past decade and also built up a domestic industry. Azerbaijan media said that its defence manufacturing sector had grown by 250% in the first nine months of the year.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia will double the number of warplanes at its base at Kant outside Bishkek, media quoted Viktor Sevastyanov, a senior Russian air force commander, as saying. Earlier this month the US started withdrawing its forces from its own base in Kyrgyzstan. It will end operations at the Manas air base by mid-2014.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
