MARCH 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s state news service Kazinform said it would publish a Chinese-language website, underlining how important China has become to Kazakhstan. Over the past half a decade or so, China has increasingly become Kazakhstan’s main economic partner. It owns a third of Kazakhstan’s oil and gas reserves.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In another sign of relations between Azerbaijan and Iran improving, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and the Azerbaijani special envoy to Tehran Kamaladdin Heydarov met to discuss ties. They both stressed that relations between the two countries were improving after a tense few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Issues of sovereign integrity are close to Azerbaijan’s heart. Its government, after all, still lays claim to Nagorno-Karabakh — the mountainous region in the South Caucasus that Azerbaijan and Armenia fought over in the early 1990s.
A UN organised cease-fire still holds the peace in Nagorno-Karabakh, ruled by pro-Armenia forces.
All this makes Russia’s moves in Crimea more complex for Azerbaijan to deal with. Just how does it position itself?
Relations with Russia have been strained over the past few years but it still doesn’t want to antagonise its large, and powerful neighbour.
Azerbaijan has also become increasingly important to the West over its energy supplies and deliveries.
In short it needs to tread a careful line.
This is what Azerbaijani foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, looked as if he was trying to achieve when he told a press conference: “We want a speedy solution to all these issues in Ukraine. Azerbaijan respects the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all nations.”
Neither an endorsement of Russia’s policies in Crimea nor a call for Russian forces to pull out of Ukraine.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s President Giorgi Margvelashvili made a surprise trip to visit Georgian soldiers in Afghanistan. Keen to boost its Western-leaning credentials, Georgia has been an enthusiastic supporter of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. It has also pledged to help Afghanistan rebuild.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s annexation of Crimea has, seemingly, changed the world order. Commentators have been discussing a new Cold War and the return of the East-West standoff. Russia’s swift, aggressive action in Crimea has scared the West.
Ironically, one country which may stand to benefit from the Crimea issue is Georgia — which Russia invaded in 2008.
Georgia is the most pro-Western of the former Soviet states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus and it has lobbied hard for membership to NATO and the EU.
But while these Western clubs have welcomed Georgia’s eagerness, they have also sounded caution while its vibrant political system went through the motions of picking a new leader.
Georgia survived the trauma of picking new leaders in 2012 and 2013, underlining its stability and credibility as a democratic nation. If this has endeared Georgia to the West, Russian action in Crimea may have nudged it even further into their arms.
Prominent commentators are now calling for Georgia to be given full membership status of NATO and the EU.
The Russian newspaper Kommersant quoted sources at NATO’s HQ in Brussels and the US State Department.
“If Russia announces annexation of the Crimea, the issue of granting Georgia a MAP (membership action plan) can be considered virtually a foregone conclusion,” Kommersant quoted an unnamed source in the US State Department as saying.
Crimea is now part of Russia. Perhaps it won’t be long before Georgia is finally part of NATO.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s transport minister, Maxim Sokolov, visited Yerevan and pledged an extra $50m investment in various joint-ventures, a sort of pre-Customs Union entry sweetener for Armenia. Pushing aside the EU’s advances, Armenia has agreed to join the Russia-led Customs Union later this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to boost tourism, and with its own political agenda in mind, Armenia has hired New York-based GK Brand and Toronto-based Cundari Group to re-brand its sovereign image.
The Armenian government wants to launch a new logo and business plan next year that will help draw in both businesses and tourists.
For Armenia, 2015 is an historically important year as it marks the 100th anniversary of what it has described as a genocide perpetrated against it by Turkish forces.
It says that 1.5m Armenians died when Ottoman Turks attacked them and drove them out of their homes in eastern Turkey in 1915. Turkey denies a genocide but has said that many were killed in partisan fighting.
Armenia is placing an emphasis on its culture, its churches and monasteries for its re-brand but there will also be plenty of political intent.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s parliament, unsurprisingly, passed a motion calling on the West to take all necessary trade and diplomatic action “to help Ukraine amid Russian aggression”. The motion was a strong statement of where Georgia lies on the Ukraine-Crimea-Russia tug of war.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov has passed a decree which stated that he had to give permission for the top 25 ranked officials in the government to go on overseas trips, media reported. The decree is not designed to save money, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported, but to safeguard state secrets.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia has relaxed it visa regime for Iraq, less than a month after opening a consulate in the Kurdish part of the country, media reported. On bad terms with its neighbours Azerbaijan and Turkey, Armenia has been strengthening economic and civil relations with Iran and Iraq.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)