JUNE 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – An Iranian delegation headed by Muhammedreza Nematzadeh travelled to Tashkent for a meeting with senior Uzbek officials where the two countries pledged to improve ties, media reported. Trade volumes between the two countries have been steadily increasing.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company, said it wanted to invest $1.2b upgrading its oil refinery in Baku. Officials in Azerbaijan have been saying for several months that they want to increase their capacity for producing high-grade oil-products.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a stopover in Bishkek as part of a wider tour of Central Asia and its capitals, UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon said Kyrgyzstan should hold an impartial investigation into the death of 400 people during fighting in the south of the country in 2010.
Most of the people killed during fighting around the city of Osh in south Kyrgyzstan in 2010 were Uzbek.
“Kyrgyzstan has ambitious plans to promote interethnic harmony and to protect the rights of all, including minorities,” Reuters quoted Mr Ban as saying at a press conference in the city.
“But it’s important for these policies to be put into practice. Root causes must be addressed fully and impartially investigated and prosecuted.”
The inference is clear. Any Kyrgyz investigations since 2010 have been skewed to clear ethnic Kyrgyz of blame for the fighting which drove thousands of ethnic Uzbeks over the border into Uzbekistan.
Although lying inside Kyrgyzstan’s borders, Osh and the surrounding towns and cities have always been heavily populated by ethnic Uzbeks.
Human rights groups have accused Kyrgyzstan of a cover up over how the fighting in 2010 started by convicting local Uzbek leaders for starting the fighting.
Relations between the two communities living around Osh continued to be strained and the peace fragile.
Mr Ban was visiting Bishkek as part of a Central Asia tour, his second since 2010.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The IMF jumped into an increasingly vicious row over supervisory oversight of commercial banks in Georgia by criticising the government’s plans to strip the Central Bank of the responsibility.
In a rare intervention into domestic politics, the IMF released a statement
which said it was worried about the implications that a change of supervisory powers would bring.
“The IMF is concerned that recent proposals to amend the central bank law would put NBG (National Bank of Georgia) independence at risk,” the statement said.
The government’s plan, which some suspect has been motivated by a desire to punish the Central Bank still headed by senior officials appointed by the previous administration of Mikheil Saakashvili, has been controversial from the start. A group of businesses warned that the policy change would not only pose a threat to the banking system, but also to the business and investment climate. This sentiment was supported by President Giorgi Margvelashvili, who said he would veto the bill if it was adopted by parliament.
The government has said that it wants to transfer responsibility for the oversight of commercial banks to an independent body to improve and strengthen this oversight. It has fallen out with Central Bank chief Giorgi Kadagidze over his handling of the economic storm which has battered the region.
IMF made its statement the day after former PM and Georgia’s most powerful man, Bidzina Ivanishvili, backed the proposed changes.
Mr Ivanishvili set up the governing Georgian Dream coalition and is considered the country’s chief power broker. He has clashed with both Mr Margvelashvili and Mr Kadagidze.
It its statement, the IMF also reiterated its public support for Mr Kadagidze, pitting itself firmly against Mr Ivanishvili and Mr Margvelashvili.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At the fourth EU-Tajikistan Cooperation Committee in Brussels, the European delegation confirmed it had earmarked 251m euro for Tajikistan over the next five years to improve rural areas. The EU said the aid was more necessary now because of the drop in remittances.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Under the glare of international media and the scrutiny of the human rights lobby, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev prepared to open the inaugural European Games in Baku on June 12.
Mr Aliyev and Azerbaijan have been building up to this moment for years and view the Games, which last until June 28, as a chance to promote the country.
But the Games have also drawn major criticism of Azerbaijan’s recent human rights record. It has imprisoned journalists and locked up opposition activists.
One of the most high profile prisoners is Khadija Ismayilova, an investigative journalist who is in pre-trial detention. She is accused of goading another journalist into a suicide attempt.
On the eve of the Games, the New York Times published a letter from Ms Ismayilova.
“Azerbaijan’s best and brightest have been locked up, tucked away for the European Games. They didn’t want you to see or hear us and our inconvenient truths,” she wrote. “The truth is that Azerbaijan is in the midst of a human rights crisis. Things have never been worse.”
The Azerbaijani authorities have countered these allegations by accusing the West of an anti-Azerbaijan campaign.
Away from the rehtoric the build up to the Games has been fraught. A fire tore through a block of flats last month killing at least 15 people. It spread quickly because of foam stuck to the side of the building to beautify it for the Games. And earlier this week, a bus hit a group of Austrian athletes in the Olympic Vil- lage, badly injuring one of the synchronised swimming team.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Football, or soccer as Americans prefer to call the sport, is not Turkmenistan’s strong point.
It is currently ranked 173rd in the world, out of 209 teams. In Central Asia, only Kyrgyzstan is rated worse in 177th position.
But Turkmenistan’s status in the football world has just dipped further after it lost to the US protectorate of Guam 1-0.
This was Guam’s first ever World Cup qualifier victory.
Guam has a population of 200,000 and is not noted as a football powerhouse either. It last played a World Cup qualifier in 2000, losing 16-0 to Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kashagan, Kazakhstan’s trouble- some Caspian Sea oil field, will start pumping oil by mid-2016 and hit an output of 370,000 barrels per day by the end of 2017, media reported quoting an interview with Stephane de Mahieu, managing- director of the consortium developing the field.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s first communications satellite, launched in April, has started operations, the Turkmen government said. The satellite will improve broadcasts over the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Uzbekistan have imposed new restrictions on foreign travel, media reported. From now on, people with debts will be barred from leaving the country. Uzbekistan is considered to be one of the most repressive countries in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)