Turkmenistan held parliamentary elections yesterday. The government said the elections were free and fair, an exercise in democracy. Critics dismissed them as a sham.
While all 125 seats were contested, only one political party is legally registered in Turkmenistan.
U.S. Air Force planes are not and cannot possibly be garrisoned at the Almaty airport, a Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman told Xinhua.
The spokesman denied during a routine press conference previous reports that U.S. planes had been stationed at the Almaty airport. Kazakhstan agreed to let the U.S. Air Force use its airspace at the request of the United States after the Sept .11, 2001attacks.
American military officials are continuing to press for alternative transport routes to Afghanistan, with senior commanders exploring the feasibility of a rail route through the Caucasus and Central Asia, reports Eurasianet.org.
from eurasianet.org:
The settlement of a $500 million court case in London involving Tajikistan’s aluminum has provided no resolution of the central questions involved in the affair. If anything, the matter has raised fresh questions about the conduct of the Tajik government.
Lawyers involved in the case — involving claims and counter-claims brought by and against Talco, or the Tajik Aluminum Company, operator of one of the world’s largest smelting operations — announced they had settled the suit on November 27. No parties involved in the dispute admitted any liability and terms of the financial settlement were not disclosed.
Kazakhstan’s lower house of Parliament approved controversial legislation Wednesday to increase government control over religious groups, drawing criticism from a major international group Kazakhstan is to lead in 2010, according to the AP.
Rights groups say the amendments to the country’s law on religion will hinder religious minorities in the sprawling Central Asian country and could force some of them out of existence.
Kazakhstan, where Muslims and Christians each make up about 45 percent of the population, has sought in recent years to cast itself as an active promoter of religious tolerance. But some Christian communities — including Baptists and Lutherans, largely from the ethnic German population — have come under government scrutiny.
Pilotless “drone” aircraft deliver a silent, deadly payload that has proved effective in killing militants, but has also killed civilians when intelligence goes awry or in “collateral damage, reports the Guardian.
In Pakistan, strikes were infrequent – every few months – until August, when there was a sudden and dramatic increase in the drone attacks. Since then there have been at least 20 strikes – more than one a week – possibly in a stepped-up attempt to kill Osama bin Laden before George Bush leaves office on January 20 next year.
Budget airline operator AirAsia is looking into possible flights to Uzbekistan.
AIRASIA is looking into the possibility of flying to Uzbekistan following a request by Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
The prime minister said AirAsia group chief executive officer Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes was receptive to the idea and assured him that he would make an immediate appraisal of the proposal.
The state-run energy companies of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have agreed to set up an oil transport system across the Caspian Sea to help move Central Asia’s energy reserves to Western markets.
The system would use tankers and barges to bring oil from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, the starting point for the Western-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which bypasses Russia to deliver oil through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey.
Reports say shipments are planned to start in 2013.
The announcement was made as the leaders of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, and senior officials from other nations held an energy summit in Baku.
Kazakhstan expects to put the final touches on its fiscal stabilization plan by November 25. One of the government’s top priorities is shoring up the country’s wobbly banking sector.
“I think there should be significant movement in the next two weeks,” Masimov told a cabinet meeting on November 10. The prime minister added that the first benefits of a $15 billion stimulus package, announced in October, should become evident within days.
Nabucco, the gas pipeline project that hopes to bypass Russia and reduce European dependence on Gazprom supplies, received a positive nod from Turkmenistan during a meeting between President Berdymuhamedov and Ms. Maria Reich-Rohrwig (phonetically spelled), Austrian envoy at large for Nabucco.