FEB. 21 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that cooperation with Georgia needed to improve significantly before Russia would consider dropping visa requirements for Georgians. Georgia and Russia have been working on improving relations since a war in 2008 over the Georgian break-away regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
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(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)
FEB. 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to facilitate Iran-Azerbaijan trade, Iranian justice minister, Mostafa Pourmohammadi told journalists in Baku that he wanted to set up a joint arbitration court. Relations between the two neighbours has been improving steadily over the past few years and both sides have said that they want businesses to follow their lead and bilateral trade to increase.
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(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)
FEB. 14 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Continuing his outreach to neighbours, Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev said that he would also visit Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev in the first half of 2017. The potential emergence of Uzbekistan as an economic powerhouse in Central Asia under Mr Mirziyoyev, who took over from the presidency after Islam Karimov died in September, may challenge Kazakhstan’s dominance.
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(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)
FEB. 15 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev will make his first visit to Moscow as Uzbekistan’s leader in April, media reported quoting his press team. The trip is likely to include a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin met with Mr Mirziyoyev during the funeral of former president Islam Karimov in September. He backed Mr Mirziyoyev as president.
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(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)
FEB. 15 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Baku scored a diplomatic coup by hosting the first meeting of the most senior military officers in the United States and Russia since 2014.
The meeting between General Joseph Dunford, US chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, and General Valery Gerasimov, head of the Russian general staff, was scored through with extra importance as it was also the first high-level meeting between the two sides since Donald Trump became US President in January.
A statement from the Pentagon underlined its importance.
“The current sate of US-Russian military relations and the importance of consistent and clear military-to- military communication to prevent miscalculation and potential crisis (was on the agenda),” the Pentagon statement said.
Relations between the two sides have been strained over Russian military action in both Ukraine, where it is supporting pro-Moscow rebels, and in Syria, where it is supporting the forces of Syrian president Bashir Assad.
Before meeting Gen. Gerasimov, Gen. Dunford met with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and the Azerbaijani defence minister Zakir Hasanov.
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(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)
FEB. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia sent a second batch of humanitarian aid, mainly canned food, to Syria, the RFE/RL website reported. The aid was sent through the Russian military base in Syria. The food bore inscriptions in Arabic and Armenian which said: “With warm wishes for peace from Armenia to the brotherly people of Syria!” Tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians, mainly living in Aleppo, have fled the civil war.
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(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)
FEB. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — >> So what has happened? I’ve read that a commercial flight has flown between Dushanbe and Tashkent
>> Yes, that’s right. This was the first commercial flight between the Tajik and Uzbek capital since 1992. In 1992, Tajikistan was just tipping over into a civil war when commercial flights were scrapped but they were never re-instated after the war petered out a few years later. By this time Emomali Rakhmon had secured himself as the president of Tajikistan, a position he still holds. Uzbekistan was then ruled by Islam Karimov, who died in September last year. The two men loathed each other, Karimov was notoriously cantankerous and Rakhmon is quarrelsome.
>> So, the row was entirely personal?
>> Much of it was but there was also a macro-political and economic angle too. Tajikistan has long-planned to build a dam at Rogun in the Pamir Mountains. This was a Soviet-era plan that never moved from the drawing board into reality. Tajikistan, though, needed to generate more electricity and has been looking for backers for years. And this irritated Uzbekistan and Karimov who argued that the dam would damage water flows downstream where Uzbek cotton fields needed to be irrigated. At times the row became so heated that it threatened to spill over into war that may have dragged in neighbours.
>> What has changed?
>> Karimov’s death in September changed Uzbekistan’s foreign policy outlook. The new president Shavkat Mirziyoyev has been far more positive in promoting relations with Uzbekistan’s neighbours. This has included Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The resumption of a commercial flight between the two capitals may feel a bit of a token gesture but it is actually a very significant step forward for bilateral relations. Rakhmon actually invited Mirziyoyev to Dushanbe for a bilateral meeting last month. This was something that would have been unimaginable under Karimov.
>> And now that flights have resumed, what can we expect?
>> The first flight was operated by Somon Air, a Tajik airline. It is likely that the airline will look to set up a regular service between the two cities. And just making that link, just having it there, is an important part of the heeling process for the region. It’s blighted by complex borders, thanks Stalin, and disparate pockets of ethnic groups, making travel links important. This is especially so between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Many of the people living in Uzbekistan are ethnic Tajiks. Previously, to travel between the two cities, people had to make tortuous road trips that would take days.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The United States warned Azerbaijan that it shouldn’t try to force the closure of the OSCE office in Yerevan, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website reported. It said that Azerbaijan may be trying to close Europe’s main security and democracy watchdog after it voted against extending its mission because it was based in Yerevan. The OSCE is heavily involved with monitoring a ceasefire around Nagorno-Karabakh, disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Azerbaijan closed the OSCE office in Baku in 2015.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon travelled to Qatar for a two day state visit with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Mr Rakhmon has said that he wants to attract more investment from Qatar and other Arab countries in Tajikistan’s tourism and hydropower sectors.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan and the EU may sign a new general cooperation agreement next week to replace a deal that has not been updated for 20 years, media reported by quoting the EU ambassador in Bishkek, Cesare de Montis, as saying. There is an element of window dressing in this deal but it is still an important agreement for Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)