Author Archives: admin

Aerbaijan’s imprisoned oppo leader complains

OCT. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The lawyer for imprisoned Azerbaijani opposition leader Ilgar Mammadov said he had been beaten by guards in prison. The accusation piles more pressure on Azerbaijan’s human rights record. It has denied entry to researchers from Amnesty International and arrested journalists and opposition activists. Mammadov was sent to prison in 2014 for inciting riots.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

Turkmenistan opens Tbilisi shop

OCT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Perhaps with potential gas supplies to Europe in mind, Turkmenistan opened a shop in Tbilisi selling various national produce. Turkmenistan is exploring the potential of supplying the EU with gas. Georgia hosts a gas pipeline running west from the Caspian Sea.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

Kazakhstan’s space agency enters join venture

OCT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Meyrbek Moldabekov, deputy head of Kazakhstan’s space agency KazCosmos, said it has entered a joint venture with French aircraft manufacturer Airbus to build satellites. Airbus owns 27.5% of the venture and will be jointly responsible for operations at an assembly plant to be built in Kazakhstan by 2017.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

Azerbaijani President sacks long-serving Security Minister

OCT. 18/20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev sacked National Security Minister Eldar Mahmudov two days before police arrested seven other senior officials and accused them of abuse of office.

The move surprised analysts of Azerbaijan’s murky political scene as Mr Mahmudov had been considered a close ally of Mr Aliyev.

He had held the position as the powerful National Security Minister for 11 years and no reason was given for his dismissal. Mr Aliyev had handed him the position of National Security Minister within a year of taking over as president from his father.

Although Mr Mahmudov has not been arrested, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor-General opened criminal cases into his seven officials for abuse of office.

“Investigative operations have raised suspicions about a group of ministry officials abusing service powers, illegally intervening in the activities of entrepreneurs in violation of the law on entrepreneurship, and violating the judicially and legally protected interests of different individuals,” it said in a statement.

Human rights groups and opposition activists have previously accused Mr Aliyev of undermining his opponents by accusing them of corruption.

The arrests and the sacking of Mr Mahmudov, whether they are linked to corruption or not, add a degree of instability to Azerbaijan, already rocked by the imprisonment of journalists and opposition activists.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

Armenian genocide denial is a right

OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a landmark ruling that will irritate the Armenian government, the European Court of Human Rights (ECRH) decreed that Dogu Perincek, chairman of Turkey’s Patriotic Party, should never have been convicted in 2007 by a Swiss court for denying an alleged genocide by Ottoman Turks of thousands of Armenians in 1915. The ECRH said the conviction was an infringement of Mr Perincek’s free speech. Armenia has been campaigning for denial of the genocide to be a crime.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)

Georgia talks with Russia’s Gazprom

OCT. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia is in talks with Russia’s Gazprom to import gas, Georgian energy minister Kakha Kaladze told media, highlighting the improved relations between the two neighbours. Georgia currently exports nearly all its gas from Azerbaijan although it hosts a pipeline pumping gas from Russia to Armenia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)

Kazakhstan and Russia agree to explore north Caspian for oil

OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Astana where he signed a deal with Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev to jointly explore and develop the north Caspian Sea for hydrocarbon reserves.

The deal, signed before a meeting of leaders from the former Soviet Union, came roughly a week after Kazakhstan also hosted Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. He signed deals with Mr Nazarbayev to increase cooperation in energy and aerospace. The timings of the two leaders’ visits to Astana highlights just how pressured the diplomatic space that Kazakhstan has to operate in is. It needs to keep relations with both Ukraine and Russia, who are locked in a proxy war in eastern Ukraine, sweet.

“We have big plans on joint oil production in the Caspian Sea,” Mr Putin said after signing the deal.

Kazakhstan and Russia also signed a deal for the Russian military to test missiles that would spread debris over a patch of Kazakhstan.

A week earlier, Mr Poroshenko had been in town talking up ties with Kazakhstan. This week, Kazakhstan’s ministry of defence said that it had signed a deal with Ukraine to boost cooperation in aviation.

Mr Nazarbayev has previously touted Kazakhstan as the ideal place for trying to thrash out a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. There has been no formal move to hand this role to Kazakhstan but but leaders do apparently appear relaxed about flying to Astana in quick succession.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)

Kazakh fugitive Ablyazov is set for Russia

OCT. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – French PM Manuel Valls ordered Kazakh fugitive Mukhtar Ablyazov to be extradited to Russia to face fraud charges. French police arrested Ablyazov in a villa on the south coast in 2013. He had been on the run since being found guilty of contempt of court in London in 2012. He fled Kazakhstan in 2009 after being accused of stealing $6b from BTA Bank. Kazakhstan wants him extradited to face charges of trying to organise a coup.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)

SDK wins Kyrgyz election

OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan released official results for its Oct. 4 parliamentary election that cemented the Social Democrat’s (SDK) grip on power. The SDK, the party of President Almazbek Atambayev, won 38 seats, up from 26 in 2010. Second was Respublika-Ata Jurt with 28 seats. The Kyrgyzstan party won 18 seats, Onuugu- Progress 13 seats, Bir Bol 12 seats and Ata-Meken 11 seats.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)

Russia wants to patrol Tajik-Afghan border

OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s deputy minister of defence, General Yuri Borisov, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was in talks with Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon to station soldiers on the Tajik-Afghan border to fight off any potential threat from the Taliban. Russia and Central Asian leaders have grown increasingly wary of the push north of the Taliban.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)