FEB. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili met US President Barack Obama at the White House on Feb. 24, underlining Georgia’s status as a favoured US ally in the former Soviet Union. Mr Garibashvili took over as Georgian PM in November 2013. Georgia is the most staunchly pro-United States of the former Soviet countries.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
FEB. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has banned the sale of Uzbekistan-made GM Daewoo cars, media reported, triggering a potential trade row between the two neighbours.
Officially, Kazakhstan said Customs Union rules stated that imported cars must have at least one front airbag, ABS braking, child safety seat attachment points, daytime running lights and an immobiliser.
Unofficially, the suspicion is that Kazakhstan may be using the Customs Union to protect its own car industry.
The Customs Union has been in existence since 2011. It is led by Russia and so far includes also Kazakhstan and Belarus, although Armenia and Kyrgyzstan plan to join later this year. Uzbekistan has no plans to join.
Its rules and regulations, though, are some-what murky but what we do know is that, by instinct, it is a protectionist organisation.
What is clear is that last year GM-Uzbekistan, which produces its cars at a factory in Andijan in eastern Uzbekistan sold around 23,000 of its cheaper car models in Kazakhstan and around three times that many to Russia.
GM took over the Daewoo factory in Uzbekistan in 2008.
Visitors to Shymkent, a city of 600,000 people in Kazakhstan on the border with Uzbekistan, will notice that many of the cars on the roads being driven there are Daewoo.
Both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have been talking up their car industries. Uzbekistan’s main car markets are Russia and Kazakhstan and the GM Daewoo factory is its biggest producer.
Losing Kazakhstan, and Russia, as an export market will be a major blow and have, potentially, far reaching implications.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
FEB. 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Customs officials in Malta detained a hunter returning from a trip to Azerbaijan after he tried to smuggle 50 dead birds into the country, media reported. Fifteen of the birds — which included bustards, tits, egrets and wildfowl — are listed as protected species.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
FEB. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a meeting in Baku between Indian and Azerbaijani officials both sides talked up the importance of a south-north transport corridor.
The idea is to bolster trade through a route that runs from Mumbai to Bandar Abbas in Iran on the Persian Gulf by boat and then on to Azerbaijan by train and into Russia.
Cooperation between India and Azerbaijan has increased over the past couple of years and E.M.S. Natchiappan, the Indian minister for commerce, said this was key to the new trade route.
“The two countries have the requisite momentum to take the relationship to next level,” he said. “Completion of the corridor will lead to mutually beneficial connectivity between the two regions.”
Not only is the plan important for regional commerce but it is also important for regional stability. A busy trade route with India may help smooth over their varying differences between Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran.
Mr Natchiappan said India would test out the suitability of the route later this year.
In 2013, India’s state-owned energy company ONGC Videsh bought a 2.72% stake in Azerbaijan’s Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil field and a 2.36% stake in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline for $1b from Hess Corp., a US company.
This was an important deal for India because it had been looking to boost its energy reserves after being rebuffed by Kazakhstan. It was also an important deal for Azerbaijan which has wanted to diversify its energy client base and pull in a new trade partner.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
FEB. 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The final US aerial re-fuelling tanker supporting military missions in Afghanistan took off from the Manas airbase outside Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, the US military said. According to US data, re-fuelling tankers have flown 33,000 missions from Manas. The US military is quitting Manas this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
FEB. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan chalked up a diplomatic success when the government of Honduras in Central America passed a motion earlier this year condemning Armenian aggression in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani media reported. Azerbaijan fought a war over Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia in the early 1990s. Watch out for fresh investment in Honduras by Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
FEB. 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iran’s ambassador in Uzbekistan, Ali Mardan-Fard, said trade between the two countries would jump to $1b by the end of the year, tripling the turnover in 2013, media reported. Mr Mardan-Fard said Iran’s gradual opening up to the West and Uzbekistan’s position as a through path to Europe were driving the expansion.
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(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili made his first trip to Baku since taking over the presidency in November. At a press briefing after meeting with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Mr Margvelashvili said Georgia and Azerbaijan were part of a bridge linking Asia and Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — After weeks of pressure it was Uzbek officials who, officially at least, cancelled a planned trip by President Islam Karimov, to Prague planned for Feb. 20-22.
Human rights activists had urged Czech president Milos Zeman to cancel the trip before Mr Karimov.
They argued that Mr Karimov’s human rights abuses were too deep to be overlooked but Mr Zeman had refused to back down. He said the invitation was a reciprocal deal because the Czech Republic’s president in 2004 had travelled to Tashkent at Mr Karimov’s invitation.
A trip to the EU would have been something of a coup for Mr Karimov. He has tried to reintegrate back into the international community since they turned their backs on him after soldiers allegedly shot hundreds of demonstrators in a town in eastern Uzbekistan in 2005.
Since then, though, NATO countries have wooed Mr Karimov to help extract their military kit from neighbouring Afghanistan. In 2011, Mr Karimov visited NATO and EU headquarters in Brussels and in 2013 he visited Latvia, then the rotating head of the EU.
But, while Mr Zeman couldn’t be deterred from meeting Mr Karimov, Czech government ministers could. What appears to have tipped Uzbek officials into cancelling the trip was various Czech ministers pulling out of meetings leaving Mr Karimov with nobody, other than Mr Zeman, to meet.
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(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan and Iran signed a deal to improve cargo and passenger communication between the two countries. The deal may only be a minor one but any agreement between these two neighbours is important. Tension between the two sides has been rising over the past two or three years.
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(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)