DEC. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan is not prepared to support the creation of a free trade zone with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as some other members have suggested, first deputy PM Rustam Azimov told media. Russia and China dominate the SCO which is focused on Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)
SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to Tehran, Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev said he wanted Iran to join the Russia and China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Mr Atambayev held meetings with his Iranian counter-part Hassan Rouhani to persuade Iran, which is set to become a major regional partner once Western sanctions are removed, to invest in infrastructure projects in Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 1/3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Highlighting just how important China has become to Central Asia, four out of five of the region’s leaders travelled to Beijing to watch a military parade designed to mark the 70th anniversary of China’s victory over Japan in World War II.
Trips to Beijing have become a regular part of the diplomatic land- scape for the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. China now regards the region almost as its personal backyard, seemingly striking bilateral deals and agreements through the Shanghai Cooperation OrganisatPion (SCO) at will.
And this week appears to have been no different. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev flew to Beijing a few days early to sign off on a handful of deals. On his website, akorda.kz, Mr Nazarbayev said that the deals, spanning a range of sectors, had been worth $23b.
“We have actively cooperated with China for more than 20 years, mainly in the energy sector and in extracting other raw materials,” he said.
“Yesterday during our constructive talks with President Xi Jinping we agreed to create 45 joint facilities, and agreements were signed on 25 of them worth a total of $23b.”
The details of these deals were vague but they covered a range of sectors from tourism to hydropower.
Mr Nazarbayev also congratulated Chinese President Xi on winning the 2022 Winter Olympic Games for Beijing in July ahead of Almaty.
Following on a few days behind him were the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Only Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan’s president, was missing. Also present were other leaders from neighbouring countries including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye.
With an economic downturn linked to Russia and a collapse in the price of oil, China has become an even more important driver of economic development in Central Asia and the SouthCaucasus.
At the end of last month, Kyrgyzstan officially opened a new power line funded by China that will improve electricity transit from the south of the country, where its hydro- power stations are sited, to the north and when Uzbekistan’s president Islam Karimov flew into Beijing its official media said bilateral trade had tripled in six years to around $5b.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
JULY 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A photo released by Uzbek officials of President Islam Karimov’s trip to Russia earlier this month for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) appears to have been doctored to shrink Chinese president Xi Jinping, a tall man, to the same height as Mr Karimov and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Opposition groups have previously accused official Uzbek media of doctoring images of Mr Karimov, 77, to make him look younger and fitter.
The Uzbek government has not commented.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 6/7/8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Indian PM Narendra Modi started an eight day tour of Central Asia and Russia with stops in Tashkent and Astana, an expedition he hopes will generate energy deals and shore up business links.
This is the first grand tour of Central Asia by an Indian leader, underlining just how seriously the country is now taking the region. But India is also playing catch up with China which has already established deep business and government level links in Central Asia.
The need to deepen relations was acknowledged by Mr Modi in a statement to media he released after meeting Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
“I spoke about my vision for India’s relations with Central Asia,” he said.
“Kazakhstan is our biggest economic partner in the region. But, our relations are modest, compared to our potential. We will work together to take economic ties to a new level.”
Despite the rhetoric and good will that Mr Nazarbayev and Uzbek President Islam Karimov before him greeted Mr Modi with, no major deals were announced.
In Tashkent, the two sides said they discussed speeding up a deal to deliver uranium from Uzbekistan to India. In Astana, the Indian and Kazakh delegations also agreed a uranium supply deal and a mechanism to broaden military cooperation.
Mr Modi headed to the Russian city of Ufa on July 9 for a two day break from Central Asia to attend a meeting of the so- called BRICS, and a group that also includes Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa, and a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). India is an observer member of the SCO, an economic/security group headed by Russia and China and focused on Central Asia.
He returns to Central Asia on July 11 with a meeting in Ashgabat with Turkmen leader Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov before travelling to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Mr Modi’s meeting with Mr Berdymukhamedov is arguably the most important.
India is the end destination for gas in an ambitious plan to build a pipeline from Turkmeni- stan across Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz Pres. Almazbek Atambayev said he would support expanding the Russia and China led Shanghai Corporation Organisation (SCO) to include Iran, Pakistan and India, local media reported. The SCO is holding a summit meeting in Ufa, Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
APRIL 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Special forces from Kyrgyzstan, China, Russia, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan — all members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) — began exercises in Kyrgyzstan, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Analysts say the SCO is a military alliance.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will visit Tehran later this year, signalling Kazakhstan’s eagerness to embrace Iran after the United States agreed to relax sanctions imposed on it.
Yerlan Idrissov, Kazakhstan’s foreign minister, made the announcement at a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Astana.
“We expect the visit of President Nazarbayev to Iran and we hope that this visit will contribute to the development of our relations,” he said.
Mr Zarif was visiting Kazakhstan less than two weeks after agreeing a deal with the US in Lausanne, Switzerland, that could scrap sanctions on Iran in return for extra American oversight of the Iranian nuclear programme.
The US has said Iran wants to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran has insisted its nuclear programme is for civilian use only.
Mr Nazarbayev has visited Iran previously. He was one of the few international leaders to attend the inauguration of Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in 2013.
For Kazakhstan, Iran is an important consumer market, particularly for grain and steel products. Kazakhstan exports its products to Iran by ship across the Caspian Sea.
At the press conference in Astana, Mr Idrissov also said Kazakhstan supported Iran’s potential membership of the Russia and China-ed Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), an economic-security organisation focused on Central Asia.
Iran is already an observer member of the SCO. Russia has also said that it supports SCO membership for Tehran, a proposition that will alarm NATO and the US.
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(News report from Issue No. 227, published on April 15 2015)
APRIL 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan have reportedly broken ranks with other former Soviet states and declined to sign a memo calling for sanctions on Russia to be dropped.
At a meeting of foreign ministers in Bishkek most members of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) agreed to back the petition which was to be sent to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) (April 3).
But Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan — along with Ukraine and Moldova — declined to sign the document, the local language service of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
All three of the Central Asian and South Caucasus countries have form.
Azerbaijan’s cause is probably a sovereignty issue. It doesn’t want to set a precedent that would allow the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh to drift further from its control.
Uzbekistan’s reasons are more deep-rooted and linked to its traditional unilateral stance on issues concerning Russia.
And Turkmenistan could be just aiming to irritate Russia.
It appears that Ashgabat is locked in a worsening row with Russia over gas supplies and the devaluation of the rouble. Earlier this year, Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymkuhamedov blamed Russia for Central Asia’s economic troubles.
Regardless, the failure to secure the full backing of CSTO members in Bishkek is a — largely overlooked — diplomatic miss for Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
SEPT.13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Other than providing a forum for bilateral get-togethers and photoshoots it is difficult to see what makes the Shanghai Cooperation multilateral.
To much fanfare, the six members plus observers of the organisation met in Dushanbe, releasing what can only be described as a nondescript Dushanbe Declaration at the closing of the summit.
Containing both Russia and China, the SCO remains the most notable intergovernmental organisation in the region but places no binds on members, several of whom have significant bilateral tensions with one another.
Outcomes of the 13th summit are open to interpretation. The Dushanbe declaration’s blanket statement supporting “continued negotiations” to achieve peace in Ukraine was presented by Russian media as support for Moscow’s controversial policies in the civil war, despite the organisation’s general opposition to separatism.
Neither Pakistan, who Beijing favours as a member, or India, who Russia favours, were admitted to the club, although this may happen in the SCO’s 14th summit held in Ufa, Russia, next year. Islamabad and New Delhi’s rivalry may add further complication within the organisation’s disunited membership.
One big disappointment was that bilateral meetings in the summit’s backdrop failed to resolve Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s border conflict, or the long-standing tensions between Dushanbe and Tashkent.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)