JULY 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Azerbaijan convicted 9 men of fighting for the extremist group IS in Syria and sent them to prison for up to 15 years, media reported.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan lodged a complaint to the British foreign ministry after Bako Sahakyan, leader of the Armenian-backed group governing the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, said he was due to flew to London for meetings with independent policy analysts. Azerbaijan fought a war with Armenia in the 1990s over Nagorno-Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia has given Armenia a $200m loan to buy Russian-made weapons for its military, media reported quoting Ara Nazaryan, the Armenian deputy defence minister. Russia is Armenia’s closest ally in the region. It is still officially at war with Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JULY 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan has bought four SU-30 fighter jets from Russia, media reported quoting a senior Kazakh airforce commander. Kazakhstan has said that it wants to bolster its armed forces.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JUNE 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia said one of its soldiers had been killed in a shootout with Azerbaijan around the disputed region of Nagorno- Karabakh. Armenia and Azerbaijan sporadically clash around Nagorno-Karabakh where a shaky 1994 ceasefire maintains a fragile peace.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JUNE 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – People of the Yazidi faith opened a new temple in Tbilisi, media reported. The Muslim extremist group IS has been persecuting the Yazidi in Iraq. Media said the Yazidi population in Georgia has fallen to around 6,000 people from 30,000 a few years ago.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s parliament ratified a security deal with the Georgian rebel region of South Ossetia which will see Russian soldiers stationed permanently in the region. Although the deal is symbolic, as Russian soldiers have been posted in S.Ossetia since the end of a 2008 war, it still rankled Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek defence ministry has ordered four C295W military transport planes manufactured by Airbus at its plant in Seville, Spain, Tashkent-based news agency uzdaily.com reported.
There has been no official confirmation from the Uzbek government but for
Uzbek media to report on a deal like this is a nod to its veracity. Plane spotters in Seville have also posted photographs online of a C295W plane carrying an Uzbek flag on its wing tail.
Airbus, which is headquar- tered in Paris and is part owned by Germany, France and Spain, has also dodged commenting on the deal although one of its representatives was quoted by Uzbek media in June at an airshow in France.
“For Airbus is a great honour to participate in the modernisation of Uzbekistan Airways,” the director for Airbus sales in Central Asia and eastern Europe, Stefan Konkoly, told the website jahonnews.uz.
Mr Konkoly, apparently, didn’t mention a deal with the Uzbek military.
Europe has only recently patched up its relationship with Uzbekistan. A few years ago, it considered Uzbekistan a pariah state. Human rights groups had accused the Uzbek government of shooting dead hundreds of protesters in 2005 in the town of Andijan in the east of the country.
More recently, though, Europe and NATO needed Uzbek support to pull its military out of Afghanistan.
Part of the deal was to sell or leave behind so-called non-lethal military equipment to fight Islamic extremism and drug trafficking.
Each Airbus C295W military transport plane can carry 70 soldiers and 10 tonnes of kit.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Apparently aimed at showing off their determination to crack- down on the drugs trade from Afghanistan, Uzbek security officials burnt 1.4 tonnes of drugs — including opium and heroin — at a factory outside Tashkent in front of foreign diplomats.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Russian soldier was found stabbed to death in the city of Gyumri, Armenia, home to one of Russia’s largest overseas military bases. Media reported that another Russian soldier has been detained on suspicion of killing the man.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)