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The Regions This Week
April 13, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Eurasia
Hardline cleric and director of billion-dollar religious foundation Astan Quds Razavi, Ebra- him Raisi, confirmed he is to run in the May
19 Iranian presidential election. He is seen as capable of uniting the conservatives and chal- lenging moderate President Hassan Rouhani's bid for a second term of office. Election officials, meanwhile, were stunned when polarising ex- president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turned up to register his intention to run. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had advised the hardliner not to.
Speaker of the de facto parliament of Rus- sian-backed breakaway region South Ossetia, Anatoly Bibilov, won a first-round victory in a presidential election condemned by Georgia and the West as illegitimate. The results also showed 78% of voters backing a proposal to change the region's name from the Republic of South Os- setia to the Republic of South Ossetia-Alania. Russia recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent after its brief 2008 war
with Georgia.
Rakhmat Akilov, 39 and from Uzbekistan, con- fessed to a “terrorist crime” in carrying out the April 7 Stockholm truck attack that killed four, his lawyer said. Swedish police said he had been denied residency in Sweden and had expressed sympathy for Islamic State.
British-operated, Indian-owned Jaguar-Land Rover arrived on the Iranian automotive mar- ket. Despite the 100%-import tax levied on sales of imported “luxury cars”, it has agreed a deal that makes Ravanro Khodro the Iranian distribu- tor of its vehicles. They will be priced between IRR2.5 to 4bn ($72,000-$115,000) in Iran.
Iranian automakers missed their 12-month production target by 50,000 vehicles, having produced 1.25mn vehicles in the last Iranian cal- endar year (ended March 20). Delays in delivering new vehicles to forecourts and technical issues
have hampered development at joint ventures formed with Chinese and French car producers. Consumer belt tightening is also a problem.
Amid Iran's worst water shortage difficulties since records began, Iranian and Dutch water management and water governance officials met in Tehran to discuss remedial measures against difficulties such as desertification. Nearly 100 wetlands and lakes in Iran are suffering lower than average levels of water. Lake Urumia has shrunk to one-third of its size in recent years.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said Kazakhs who join Islamic State (IS) will be deprived of citizenship. Kazakhstan witnessed a wave of terrorism in 2016 raising concerns that home-grown radicalism could be on the rise. The president said approximately 500-600 people from Kazakhstan and around 5,000 citizens of the former Soviet Union have joined the terrorist organisation.
Kazakhstan will put 280 companies up for
sale in 2017 and 84 in 2018 and aim for a full
or partial sell-off of 1,008 companies under its privatisation plans until 2020. The firms include 217 units owned by $67bn sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna or its subsidiaries. Kazakhstan has sold 310 companies as part of its privatisa- tion programme launched in 2014. It aims to cut the government’s participation in the economy to 15%.
Paris-based Areva and Kazakhstan's Kazato- prom signed a deal to strengthen their long- standing cooperation in uranium mining in Kazakhstan via joint venture KATCO. The JV pro- duces uranium with the in-situ recovery method at the Muyunkum deposit in South Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan ranks second in the world for ura- nium reserves.