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The Regions This Week
May 25, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 8
Eurasia
The US government banned all imports of cotton goods from Turkmenistan without specifying the reason. The ban is likely related to Turkmenistan’s use of child labour and forced labour in cotton harvesting — a common Soviet-era practice, which was recently officially banned in neighbouring Uzbekistan.
Muslim clerics in Tajikistan advised Tajiks working on the construction of the Rogun hydropower project to skip Ramadan, echoing earlier comments by the country’s President Emomali Rahmon. The authorities appear to be worrying over worker safety at the risky 3,600 MW hydropower project, to feature the world's tallest dam.
Kazakhstan is using natural gas and “genetically efficient” cows to slow down land degradation caused by overgrassing and deforestation, deputy chairman of the State Agriculture Inspection, Mars Almabek, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Kazakhstan is importing genetically modified cattle from the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Iranian saffron producers listed their highly valuable commodity as a derivative future on the Iran Mercantile Exchange. Around 85% of the world’s saffron is produced in Iran.
The US is “working on Georgia's accession to Nato”, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili. Tbilisi is keen to join the western alliance but its situation is complicated by the presence of the Russian military in the Georgian separatist republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Governors across Armenia will be replaced, the country’s new prime minister said. Nikol Pashinian did not elaborate on his reasons for replacing the governors, but he took office pledging to rid the country of the corruption and cronyism allowed to flourish under previous governments.
Kyrgyz MPs targeted former president Almazbek Atambayev directly in an ongoing political purge. They placed Atambayev on a list of officials who might be responsible for a power-plant accident last winter which left many residents of the capital Bishkek without heating for days, and are hoping to strip him of immunity to investigate his role in the accident.
BP is deferring further work on the Rhum gas field that it co-owns with a subsidiary of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) due to impending US sanctions. The project in the North Sea had to stop gas production in 2010 when the EU and the UK applied sanctions to NIOC.
Mining giant Rio Tinto suggested the Mongolian government should back off tampering with mining agreements. Arnaud Soirat, the head of Rio Tinto’s copper business in Mongolia, said at the Mongolia Economic Forum that Mongolia needs
to honour agreements regarding tax and royalty payments if it wants to be a “successful resource nation”.
Azerbaijani low cost carrier Buta Airways expects to reach breakeven by the end of this year. Buta, a subsidiary of Azerbaijan Airlines, was founded in 2016 and launched its first flights in September 2017.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Clean Technology Fund (CTF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) will jointly allocate approximately $52mn to finance construction of a 50 MW photovoltaic solar power plant in Baikonur in central Kazakhstan.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International sent a delegation to visit Uzbekistan for the first time in 14 years. The visit marks the second time a major human rights group has sent a delegation to Uzbekistan after a long absence as the country tentatively opens up under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.