His Excellency, Mr Fakhraddin Gurbanov, presented his credentials to Her Majesty The Queen on 1st November 2007 as the Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Having studied foreign languages, international relations and governance at universities in both Azerbaijan and the US, he is a highly respected diplomat with a wealth of experience, particularly in North America. He has kindly taken time out of his schedule to answer some questions about Azerbaijan for Open Central Asia magazine. Read more »
Archive for July 3rd, 2010
July 3rd, 2010
U.S. Central Command has laid out some of its expanding military aid programs with Tajikistan, which includes a new training center at Karatog and the apparent creation of a UN-ready peacekeeping unit. Obviously concerned about what can come across the border from Afghanistan, the U.S. is focusing its training on counterterrorism and counternarcotics:
Once the National Training Center is complete, Tajik forces will use it to build their counterterrorism and counternarcotics capabilities. American and Tajik troops will also establish an English language laboratory at the training center to increase domestic language capacity. Language instructors from the U.S. Defense Language Institute began hosting the first of two 16-week courses on English proficiency in April. Read more »
The World Bank co-organized one of the Forum’s plenary sessions jointly with the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the JSC “Economic Research Institute”. Motoo Konishi, World Bank Regional Director for Central Asia and Konstantin Huber, World Bank Executive Director for Kazakhstan, attended the session. John Litwack, Lead Economist for Kazakhstan, moderated the session. Read more »
July 3rd, 2010
How does Kazakhstan’s chairmanship differ from the previous ones?
While working out the program of our chairmanship we considered the need to ensure succession with the activity of previous chairmen. We consider that successful must occupy one of the important places in defining the main directions in the OSCE activity. Thus, the Kazakh chairmanship was not aimed at radical changes in the OSCE activity and especially the open challenge to the established state of affairs. But we are also not “technical” chairman. We stake on innovations and enjoying our state of the first chairman of OSCE from among post-Soviety, predominantly Asian and Muslim member-states. I think the strong accent on the need to hold the OSCE summit this year is our main innovation. We do not need the summit for the sake of the summit, this is not the fixed idea. If we continue clinging to the status quo and demonstrate passiveness, the full disintegration of the OSCE which will have the most unpredictable complications for the whole area of its responsibility is possible in the nearest future. It is the responsibility of the leaders of the participating countries to avert such events. We sincerely hope for their understanding and support. Read more »
July 3rd, 2010
Around ninety representatives of youth studios and press centers, and active members of Kelajak ovozi Youth Initiative Center attended seminars and training sessions held as part of the Youth Media Forum organized by the Fund Forum and the NAEMM in Tashkent on June 29, and participated in the Media Festival “Ozod yurt to’lqinlari” (Waves of a free country), an event organized annually by the NAEMM with the goal of boosting the activities of nongovernmental television and radio stations in the Republic.
The Media Forum included a seminar titled “The media as a means of mass interpretation” (journalistic position, misconceptions and ways of interpretation) and a training session involving teams and the use of the brainstorm method “Effective media team: professional relationships and independent thinking”.
Once the intensive training session was complete, the participants went on to attend the Media Festival “Ozod yurt to’lqinlari”, during which the Honorary Chairperson of the Youth Media Council Gulnara Karimova handed over equipment to young TV specialists of Kelajak ovozi YIC.
