Tag Archives: international relations

Kazakh president snubs Moscow military meeting for US diplomat

MAY 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev appears to have triggered a minor international row by snubbing a meeting of a former Soviet military group in favour of talks with a senior US diplomat.

Mr Nazarbayev had been due to travel to Moscow for a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a military group that includes Russia, Belarus, Tajikistan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.

Instead he decided to meet with the US deputy Secretary of State, William Burns, in Astana.

Officials were quick to deny there was a problem even though all the other CSTO leaders turned up in Moscow for a meeting chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr Nazarbayev was conspicuous by his absence.

Back in Astana, to make the situation even more uncomfortable for Mr Nazarbayev, diplomats told journalists that Mr Burns had asked Mr Nazarbayev to try and use his influence with Mr Putin to relax Russia’s pressure in eastern Ukraine.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 184, published on May 14 2014)

Turkmen-Chinese axis strengthens

MAY 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – If more evidence was needed of the burgeoning Turkmenistan- China axis, last week provide it.

First, on May 7, Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, sitting rather comically on an oversize gilt throne, officially opened a new gas processing plant at the Bagtyarlyk field in central Turkmenistan.

The field holds an estimated 1.3 trillion cubic metres of gas which it is pumping to China, just like several other fields in Turkmenistan.

China holds exclusive rights to developing Turkmenistan’s onshore gas fields and the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) paid for the new processing plant at Bagtyarlyk.

Turkmenistan’s gas exports have swelled by a fantastic proportion over the past few years. Reuters quoted a CNPC official saying that last year Turkmenistan exported 20 billion cubic metres of gas to China and that this year the amount would grow to 25bcm. He said the aim was to hit 40bcm of gas exports to China in 2016 and 65bcm in 2020 when the giant Galkynbysh field comes on stream.

According to one source, Turkmenistan already supplies a sixth of China’s gas needs.

Mr Berdymukhamedov can claim much credit for this turnaround. His predecessor was more inward looking, more enthralled with Russia. Mr Berdymukhamedov went after China as a client, a strategy which is clearly paying off.

And a few days after opening the new processing plant, Mr Berdymukhamedov was in Beijing on an invitation from the Chinese president. There he was feted as a major ally, given a state welcome and offered a strategic partnership.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 184, published on May 14 2014)

Turkmenistan’s president visits Tajikistan

MAY 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — They may be neighbours but Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has had little time over the past four years to visit his Tajik counterpart Emomali Rakhmon.

Now though, Mr Berdymukhamedov has been in Dushanbe catching up with Mr Rakhmon and mulling various projects, particularly in the energy and transport sector.

It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to hear of Mr Berdymukhamedov’s first trip to Dushanbe since 2010. The geo-politics of gas has thrown these two countries together.

Turkmenistan has transformed itself into one of China’s biggest gas suppliers. It needs Tajikistan to help it pump gas to its client and pipelines are the main motivating factor behind Mr Berdymukhamedov’s trip to Dushanbe.

The state-owned China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) has already signed a deal with the Tajik authorities to lay part of a new pipeline that will pump gas from Turkmenistan to China. Through the Turkmen state newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan, Mr Berdymukhamedov said work on the Tajik branch of the gas pipeline to China would start shortly.

Media reported the two leaders discussed other issues during Mr Berdymukahmedov’s stay in Dushanbe, security after NATO leaves Afghanistan and regional transport issues, but energy clearly formed the basis of the meeting.

Energy, and China’s thirst for it, sets the diplomatic agenda inside Central Asia.

ENDS
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