OCT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A report by the Open Society Foundations, funded by US billionaire George Soros, on Uzbekistan’s cotton industry concluded that most of the profits from the sector goes to hidden funds that only a handful of top officials can access. Western companies are boycotting Uzbek cotton because of its alleged use of child labour.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Speaking via a video link to a conference in Tashkent, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said human interference had drained the Aral Sea with implications for millions of people. The Aral Sea, shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, has shrunk dramatically over the past 30 years, mainly due to Soviet era irrigation projects.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Houses prices in Kazakhstan rose by nearly 10% last year, media quoted the IMF as saying, one of the biggest rises in the world. The spike was far higher in Almaty. Economists have warned of a bubble in Kazakhstan’s housing market.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan met to discuss the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in talks mediated by French president Francois Hollande.
The official outcome of the talks — agreeing to more talks — may appear inconsequential but meetings between President Serzh Sargyan of Armenia and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan are rare.
“Status quo is not sustainable,” Mr Hollande’s office said after the meeting. “(Azerbaijan and Armenia) have agreed to continue the dialogue, in particular with a new meeting in September 2015 in the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.”
Nagorno-Karabakh has been described as one of the world’s most dangerous frozen conflicts. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought over the region in the early 1990s and only a shaky 1994 UN-brokered ceasefire keeps the two- sides apart. Recently, though, there has been an increase in the amount of fighting around Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia-back rebels now control the region but there is a constant background noise of sabre rattling. Azerbaijan has been re-arming its military, buying top-of-the-range kit from Israel. Armenia has quietly been rehousing Armenians chased out of Syria in Nagorno-Karabakh.
This was the second meeting this year between Mr Aliyev and Mr Sargsyan. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin hosted a meeting in August.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Croatia’s foreign minister Vesna Pusic began a tour of Central Asia with a stopover in Ashgabat, a rare visit to Turkmenistan by a senior member of a European Union government.
Ms Pusic was on a sales pitch to win more ship-building contracts for the yards in Croatia but the trip was also important symbolically. The more high-ranking visits by officials from Turkmenistan, the more the country enters the mainstream.
Such a visit would practically have been unthinkable under Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov. But Mr Berdymukhamedov has opened up the country and turned it into a regional energy superpower with all the wealth that goes with it.
For Turkmenistan, Croatia’s interest confers a sort of respectability and gives it an ally within the EU. Human rights activists still describe Turkmenistan as one of the most repressive countries in the world with no free media.
Media reports were also candid on what Croatia had, apparently, offered Turkmen officials as a sweetener for contracts — visa free travel for Turkmens holding diplomatic passports and other special passports.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Relations between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have often been strained but the challenges of dealing with a potential security void once NATO withdraws from Afghanistan is pushing the two neighbours to work together.
Uzbek president Islam Karimov made a rare visit to Ashgabat specifically to discuss how to deal with the Taliban who are hovering around the borders of Central Asia.
Reports earlier this year have said Turkmen forces have crossed the border with Afghanistan to set up more robust check points and defences. Uzbekistan also borders Afghanistan and Mr Karimov will, no doubt, have been keen to hear about the Turkmen experiences.
Uzbekistan also has to deal with a determined Islamic insurgency of its own with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). It is worried that a resurgent Taliban will inspire the IMU.
With both Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan outside the Russia-led Collective Security Organisation, both countries appear eager to pool intelligence and experiences for what analysts have said will be a difficult few months, perhaps years, ahead once NATO completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, OCT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — It’s early, 6.30am. Almaty is quiet and wet on a late September morning.
A taxi for the airport, booked the previous night, doesn’t arrive as scheduled at the tidy mid-range hotel near the city’s wooden Russian Orthodox Cathedral.
The concierge calls and then calls again. He gets up to wait outside nervously. Finally he suggests his guests stop a car on the street and negotiate a ride to the airport, 20 minutes away. In the rain, the visitors troop out to a busy intersection and wait.
One car arrives and rejects their offer. Two minutes later, another small car pulls up. A friendly fellow with a square jaw and thick hands negotiates a fare to mutual satisfaction and the visitors hop in. “You’ll make your flight,” he reassures his new passengers. “Don’t worry.”
Despite his confidence, arrival at the airport is rushed and hectic. The visitors bound through, up an escalator, towards the domestic check-in area. Two efficient young women — one Kazakh; one Russian — check passports and issue boarding passes.
Check-in complete. Security to go. The visitors turn around to see two security stations, both well-staffed and as efficient as the check-in counter. The visitors pass through in three minutes. Suddenly they have a half hour to kill.
Almaty Airport’s domestic departures area calls to mind successful small airports like London City and Toronto’s Billy Bishop, airports that do so well because they balance passenger volume, adequate staffing, and methodical organisation carefully.
This is a plus for oil workers and executives hoping to get to Atyrau, in west Kazakhstan, with minimum fuss, as well as everybody else flying domestically from Almaty.
If there’s room for improvement — and there always is — the waiting area café would benefit from an upgrade. Lacklustre pastries and mediocre coffee stand in the way of a good passenger experience.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s finance minister Bakhyt Sultanov announced cuts of $1.5b to the national budget over the next two years, a sign of tough economic times driven by sanctions on Russia and lower oil prices. The main cuts will focus on procurement and debt servicing.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Goldman Sachs has said Azerbaijan is partly to blame for falling oil prices by oversupplying the market. West Texas Intermediate is trading at around $79.58 a barrel, its lowest for two years.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek cinemas have been showing a carefully scripted film depicting how the life of the ordinary peasant is happier than those people seeking to emulate Western values in the city, the eurasianet.org website reported. Human rights workers accuse Uzbek officials of using propaganda to control people.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)