Peace Negotiations Watch

Monday, May 9, 2005

(Volume IV, Number 17)

Contents:

Afghanistan

Participation by Women in Afghan Elections Encouraged

Afghan minister urges women to participate in elections in large numbers.

Armenia/Azerbaijan

Three Azerbaijani prisoners freed from captivity in ethnic Armenian enclave

Three soldiers released after nearly three months in captivity.

Burundi/Rwanda

Burundi Issues Sentence in WHO Killing

Four former high-ranking security officials sentenced to death.

South Africa's Mbeki in talks to try to resolve Burundi dispute

Talks held in Pretoria at presidential residence.

South Africa helps Burundi leaders settle dispute

Parties to propose new candidate to head interior ministry.

Chechnya

Rights group urges EU to put Chechnya high on Russia partnership agenda

Chechnya being used as an excuse to deny democracy in other parts of Russia, according to rights group.

Police say suspected female suicide bomber shot dead in Chechnya

Woman third suspected suicide bomber to be killed in Chechnya within twenty-four hour period.

U.S., European leaders should press Russia on rights violations, says Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch encourages leaders to press Putin at Victory Day celebrations.

Congo

Congo's government, former rebels start power-sharing talks

National Resistance Council to become separate political party.

Democratic Republic of Congo Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation.

Georgia/Abkhazia

Georgia Anticipates Bush Visit

Bush and Saakashvili to meet in Tbilisi.

To be or not to be: Former Soviet republics question commonwealth's need for existence

Saakashvili also boycotting Victory Day celebrations in Moscow.

Indonesia

Indonesia tells U.S. official it will not squander tsunami funds

Zoellick meets with local officials in Aceh.

Aceh reconstruction close to zero: Indonesian official

Former OPEC president playing vital role in reconstruction efforts.

Aceh Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the Aceh Negotiation Simulation.

Ivory Coast

U.N. Security Council extends peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast for one month

Peacekeeping mission extended until June 4.

Ivory Coast disarmament talks suspended in relaxed atmosphere

Talks were to have concluded with a plenary session on Friday.

Kashmir

Historic trans-Kashmir bus set to roll for third time as violence surges

Bus trips opposed by militants.

Soldier killed in blast, four killed in separate clashes in India's Kashmir

Sixty-five year old Congress party employee killed by suspected militants.

Kashmir Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the Kashmir Negotiation Simulation

Kosovo

U.N. mission in Kosovo signs framework agreement with European Investment Bank

Jessen-Petersen hopes EIB loan will encourage other banks to extend loans to Kosovo.

A Village at the Edge, With Nowhere to Go but Down

Hade, Kosovo, was rebuilt after the 1998-99 war.

Kosovo Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the Kosovo Negotiation Simulation.

Liberia

Citizens from Guinea registering to vote in Liberia's postwar elections, officials say

Various Mandingo Guineans have forced their way onto the voting registration list.

Bring Charles Taylor to Justice

Ed Royce advocates that Charles Taylor be brought to an international trial.

Macedonia

Macedonian foreign minister says she hopes EU entry talks will begin in 2006

Macedonia hopes EU talks will begin in early 2006, when Austria holds EU presidency.

Moldova

Separatist leader in Moldova says foreign media reporting on region is false

Smirnov calls upon regional media to help portray Transdniester area more positively.

Nepal

Nepal parties close to common front in bid to restore democracy: communists

Parties to meet soon to finalize plan.

Nepal's top opposition leader slams the king, asks countries not to resume military aid

Assistant Secretary of State Rocca to visit Katmandu.

Nepal Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the Nepal Negotiation Simulation.

Philippines

Terrorism links a growing challenge for the Philippines: Zoellick

Terrorist organizations in Mindanao have connections with global organizations, such as al Qaeda.

Serbia & Montenegro

Serb general accused of war crimes pleads not guilty

Lukic pleads not guilty for crimes committed during war over Kosovo.

Serbia's president calls on all parties to pledge support for country's EU bid

Tadic encourages parties to sign pledge during Victory Day celebrations.

Mother of war crimes fugitive Bosnian Serb leader buried in son's absence

Mother of war criminal Radovan Karadzic is dead.

Somalia

Blast at premier's speech in Mogadishu highlights Somalia's troubles

Blast kills fifteen people attending speech at stadium.

Somali premier rules out relocation without presence of peacekeepers

Gedi will not move exiled government to Mogadishu without peacekeepers.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka probes claims of ethnic violence that triggered civil war

Fifty-nine investigators hired; monetary compensation given to some victims.

Sri Lankan president fails to win Marxist partner's support for tsunami deal with Tamil rebels

Marxist party willing to hold further talks with Kumaratunga.

Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation

Sudan

Sudan's Beshir laments stumbling Darfur negotiations

Sudanese President blames negative signals from Security Council.

U.N. Secretary-General calls for more African Union troops in Darfur

UN peacekeepers are limited, according to Annan.

UN starts food airlift from Libya to Darfur

Food transportation expected to increase in preparation for rainy season in three months.

Peace Negotiations Watch is prepared by the Public International Law and Policy Group in cooperation with American University and is made possible by grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Ploughshares Fund.

Afghanistan

Participation by Women in Afghan Elections Encouraged

Sean Yoong, Associated Press, 5/8/05

An Afghanistan minister Sunday urged women in her country to participate in this year's national election in big numbers, saying it finally gives them a chance to determine their destiny after years of repression under conservative regimes including the Taliban. The Sept. 18 parliamentary and provincial assembly polls could be a turning point for Afghan women, shackled by poverty, physical abuse, forced marriages, illiteracy and sickness, Afghanistan's Minister of Women Affairs Masooda Jalal said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"I want the women of Afghanistan to participate actively as voters and candidates," Jalal said on the margins of a ministerial meeting of the 116-member Nonaligned Movement on helping women face the challenges of globalization. "I want hundreds, even thousands of women in Afghanistan to come up with registration forms for being candidates, and I want millions to take part as voters," said Jalal, a former U.N. worker. "I want the women of Afghanistan to be awakened and alive politically and to determine their destiny by their own hands."

Nominations opened April 30 for Afghanistan's parliamentary elections, which follows last year's adoption of a new constitution and a landmark vote for president, completing the democratic transition mapped by Afghan and international leaders after U.S. forces ousted the hardline Taliban government in 2001.

Once considered the most emancipated in the region, Afghan women were pushed into the background when Islamic guerrilla factions took over the country after ousting the a Soviet-backed communist government in 1992. But worse was in store when the hard-line Islamic group Taliban assumed control in 1996, imposing such severe restrictions on women that they were virtually imprisoned in their homes.

They were forbidden to work, to go to school, to mix freely with the opposite sex, to show their faces. The strictest of the Taliban suggested people paint their first-floor windows black so prying eyes could not see within. Despite Taliban's fall, women have been slow to come out and take an active role in public life in the new Afghanistan. They still lack legal protection due to the slow pace of reforms to the country's outdated justice system, as well as a lack of female lawyers and family courts in many districts to handle women's grievances, Jalal said.

"Women's life in Afghanistan and their status is still the worst in the world," Jalal said. "This is because our resources are limited. The country is poor. We cannot do lots of things that we want to do." She said women should continue to increase their public profile without being frightened by incidents of brutality, such as the killing of three young Afghan women who were found raped, hanged and dumped on a roadside north of Kabul on May 1. "Afghanistan's women should not lose their courage," said Jalal, who was the only woman to run in last October's presidential elections against U.S.-backed interim leader Hamid Karzai.

Return to Index

______________________________________________________________________________________

Armenia/Azerbaijan

Three Azerbaijani prisoners freed from captivity in ethnic Armenian enclave

Associated Press, 5/7/05

Azerbaijan said Saturday that three Azerbaijani soldiers taken prisoner by ethnic Armenian authorities in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh had been released after nearly three months of captivity. The country's official in charge of missing servicemen in the conflict, Avaz Hasanov, said the release on Saturday had been brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous region inside Azerbaijan that has been under the control of ethnic Armenians since the early 1990s, following fighting that killed an estimated 30,000 people. A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but the enclave's final political status has not been determined and shooting breaks out frequently between the two sides, which face off across a demilitarized buffer zone. The enclave is backed by Armenia.

Return to Index

Burundi

Burundi Issues Sentence in WHO Killing

Aloys Niyoyita, Associated Press, 5/4/05

A Burundi court sentenced four former high-ranking security and prison officials to death after they and nine others were convicted in the 2001 killing of a World Health Organization official - a slaying the defense claimed was ordered by the former president. The court on Tuesday sentenced the other nine to terms ranging from two years to life for the killing of WHO representative Kassi Manlan, said Burundi's chief prosecutor, Gerard Ngendabanka.

In Geneva, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib declined Wednesday to comment on the verdict but said of the slaying: "For WHO, it was a big loss. It was a shock for us to see him murdered." Manlan, of the Ivory Coast, represented the U.N. health agency in Burundi for just three months when he was found dead Nov. 20, 2001, by fishermen on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura. Witnesses said he had a head wound. Former Bujumbura police chief Emile Manisha was among those sentenced to death. WHO officials conducted an internal investigation after the killing but declined to release their report while the case was still being tried.

Manlan's widow, Angele, told Burundi's Radio Isanganiro on Wednesday that the reason for her husband's killing remains unclear. "It is for this reason that I am asking, please, with a lot of indulgence, if the investigation should continue," she said. "WHO said they would investigate, but they have never called me to let me know how far they went with their investigation."

During the trial, defense lawyer Bernard Maingain, who represented two night guards at Manlan's house, alleged that former president Pierre Buyoya and his wife ordered Manlan's killing. He said, without being specific, that the WHO official's death was linked to the embezzlement of an unspecified sum of money meant for malaria prevention and treatment in Burundi.

The guards were sentenced to two years in prison each. Defense lawyers have not indicated whether they will appeal the verdict to Burundi's High Court, which has jurisdiction over the regional appeals court.

South Africa's Mbeki in talks to try to resolve Burundi dispute

Agence France Presse, 5/8/05

South African President Thabo Mbeki held talks with Burundi President Domitien Ndayizeye and former rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza on Sunday to try to resolve a dispute threatening the peace process in the central African country. A South African official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the talks at Mbeki's residence in Pretoria began in the evening and were expected to run late into the night.

Deputy President Jacob Zuma, South Africa's chief mediator for Burundi, was also taking part in the meetings with Ndayizeye and Nkurunziza, leader of the former rebel Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD). The talks were aimed mainly at resolving a dispute between Ndayizeye and Nkurunziza over the appointment of the interior minister, according to the South African official.

The FDD is part of a power-sharing government in Burundi but its three ministers have stopped taking part in meetings for the past three weeks. According to the official, Ndayizeye is insisting that Nkurunziza submit three candidates for the post of interior minister, which he is refusing to do.

Ndayizeye said earlier as he departed Bujumbura that he expected "understanding and not pressure" from the South African mediation effort. Burundi is to hold presidential and legislative elections by August 19 under provisions of the 2000 Arusha accord that put the country on a course towards peace after 12 years of civil war that have claimed more than 300,000 lives.

South Africa helps Burundi leaders settle dispute

Agence France Presse, 5/9/05

Burundi's president said Monday he had reached agreement with his main political rival in a dispute over the appointment of a new interior minister that threatened to derail the country's peace process. After South African-mediated talks at the weekend, President Domitien Ndayizeye said he and Pierre Nkurunziza, the leader of the ex-rebel Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), had found common ground on the matter.

"I would say that we had an agreement, especially over the issue of the interior minister," he said on his return from Pretoria where he held talks with Nkurunziza and South African President Thabo Mbeki. Since the interior ministry post fell empty in mid-March, Ndayizeye has been at loggerheads with Nkurunziza over the portfolio, which under a 2003 pact between the government and the former rebels is to be held by the FDD.

The FDD had proposed a replacement but the president rejected the name and instead asked for three other candidates, leading the group to boycott cabinet meetings and "freeze" contacts with Ndayizeye. The rising tensions had sparked concern among leaders in the African Great Lakes region who last month extended until August the mandate of Ndayizeye's transitional government over the objections of the FDD. After the talks in Pretoria Ndayizeye said he believed the crisis over leadership of the interior ministry was over.

"We agreed that they would propose another candidate to the post," he said, adding that he wanted to resolve other disputes without resorting to foreign mediation. "He (Nkurunziza) has created other problems related to the peace process whose solutions can be found here without causing so much agony," Ndayizeye said. Under the extended transitional period endorsed by the region, Burundi will hold a series of six election by August 19 and a new government will be sworn in on August 26.

The tiny central African nation is still emerging from nearly 12 years of civil war which has claimed the lives of some 300,000 people. A South African official said the agreement followed 12 hours of talks with President Thabo Mbeki and his deputy Jacob Zuma, who heads South Africa's mediation efforts, at Mbeki's residence in Pretoria. "President Ndayizeye and Nkurunzia came to Pretoria to deal with these issues which have now been resolved," said Zanele Mngadi, an aide to Zuma.

Return to Index

Chechnya

Rights group urges EU to put Chechnya high on Russia partnership agenda

Robert Wielaard, Associated Press, 5/4/05

An alliance of human rights groups urged the European Union Wednesday to use a broad economic and security partnership accord it plans to sign with Russia next week to pressure Moscow to halt abuses in Chechnya and elsewhere in Russia. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights said the EU should use the partnership agreement "to press for an end to the vicious cycle of human rights violations in Chechnya," where Russian forces are battling separatist rebels.

Six years into the conflict, "all sides continue to engage in serious abuses against civilians, including 'disappearances,' torture and extrajudicial killings," said the Vienna-based alliance of non-governmental organizations.

IHF Director Aaron Rhodes said in a telephone interview, "What the EU can do is end the abuses by Russian security forces in Chechnya and bring to justice those who have committed those abuses. We appeal to the EU to make this human rights problem in Chechnya a priority issue."

In a two-page appeal, the IHF estimated that up to 5,000 people have disappeared since the current conflict in Chechnya started in 1999. The fate of many of them remains unknown. Last year alone, 396 people were abducted, the group said. Of them, 207 remain missing and 24 have been found murdered as of February of this year. The long-delayed economic and security partnership is to be signed in Moscow Tuesday, opening the door to cooperation in economic, justice and external security issues.

Russian forces left Chechnya in 1996 after a disastrous, 20-month war with separatists. Fighting resumed in 1999, when Chechnya-based insurgents made raids into a neighboring region and after a series of deadly apartment-house bombings in Russian cities that officials blamed on the rebels. Tens of thousands have fled and violence has spread to other Caucasus regions.

"Chechnya is not disconnected from other social and economic and human rights problems in Russia," Rhodes said. "It has a corrosive effect on Russian society. Chechnya is being used as a pretext for denying democratic practices in Russia," he said. The IHF appeal to the EU said only "a few human rights violations" in Chechnya have been investigated. "To date, only one person has been convicted for torture or disappearance in connection with the conflict in Chechnya," it said.

Through its partnership deal with Russia, the EU aims to craft a single EU-Russian market with no barriers to trade and to introduce economic reforms, competitiveness and good economic governance in Russia. It also wants more cooperation on investments, financial services, telecommunications, transport, energy and the environment and to hold human rights discussions.

Police say suspected female suicide bomber shot dead in Chechnya

Sergei Venyavsky, Associated Press, 5/7/05

Police said Saturday that security forces had shot dead a suspected female suicide bomber at a checkpoint in the Chechen capital Grozny. A spokesman for the Chechen branch of the Russian Interior Ministry, Ruslan Atayev, said the incident happened late Friday. The woman was the third suspected suicide bomber to be killed in the breakaway province of Chechnya in 24 hours.

Russia has been on high alert ahead of Monday's ceremonies in Moscow marking the end of World War II in Europe, amid fears of terror attacks. Dozens of world leaders are due to attend the festivities in the Russian capital. Russian security forces on Thursday said they foiled a major terrorist attack in Chechnya, discovering a truck bomb and a cache of poisons. They said two women who had planned to use the truck bomb in a suicide bombing were killed.

Authorities almost immediately blamed the planned attacks on militants, including some with reputed ties to al-Qaeda. Russian private television NTV broadcast footage showing the bloodied body of what it said was the dead woman killed Friday, laid out on a blanket. The ministry spokesman said police fired at the woman, in her mid 20s, after she refused to surrender. An explosives belt was found strapped to her body, he said.

Separately, security forces killed two suspected rebels in a gunfight on the border between Chechnya and the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan on Friday as they were reportedly heading toward Grozny. "These were not just rank-and-file rebels but people who held a key role in the militant movement," Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov said in comments broadcast by NTV. Analysts said that while terrorists may be active, security personnel are also eager to underline their heightened state of awareness.

Militants have struck twice in the past on the World War II victory holiday one of the most important dates on the Russian calendar. An attack last year killed Kremlin-backed Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov and as many as 24 others attending a parade in Grozny. A bombing in 2002 on a parade in the southern town of Kaspiisk killed 43 people.

Chechnya has been wracked by conflict for more than a decade. Russian forces re-entered the troubled republic in 1999 after a two-year period of de facto independence that followed Moscow's defeat in a 1994-1996 war. But guerrilla fighting continues and the Chechen rebels have mounted a series of horrific terror attacks in Russia culminating in September's school hostage-taking in which some 330 people died.

U.S., European leaders should press Russia on rights violations, says Human Rights Watch

Henry Meyer, Associated Press, 5/7/05

U.S. President George W. Bush and EU leaders should voice concern about human rights violations in Russia during their upcoming summits in Moscow surrounding celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, Human Rights Watch said on Saturday. The New York-based rights group said the summits were taking place against a background of continuing government abuses in Chechnya and a rollback of civic freedoms throughout Russia.

On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with Bush, and on Tuesday he will hold a summit meeting with top European Union officials expected to seal a new partnership accord between Moscow and Brussels. "The summits are a rare opportunity for leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to speak out in a unified voice," said Rachel Denber, acting Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. "Their individual political agendas must not silence their common concern about the rollback of human rights in Russia."

More than 50 world leaders will be in the Russian capital for Monday's World War II victory commemorations, including Bush, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, in a diplomatic coup for President Putin. The gathering in Moscow comes amid growing concern in Western capitals about the authoritarian turn taken by Putin, who has shored up his personal power through measures widely criticized as antidemocratic.

After having put nationwide television under state control, the Russian leader in the past 18 months has eliminated direct elections of regional governors, made parliament into a pliant body and attacked independent big business. Putin is constitutionally barred from standing for a third term in 2008 but critics say he is planning to change the constitution to allow him to run in the presidential ballot or will ensure that a loyal ally succeeds him.

In Chechnya, the war-torn southern province where the current separatist conflict is in its sixth year, Russian forces and their pro-Moscow Chechen paramilitary allies as well as Chechen rebels are accused of carrying out serious human rights abuses including kidnappings of civilians. "The EU and the U.S need to convey deep concern about the abuses in Chechnya and the general setbacks in civic freedoms in Russia," said Denber.

Return to Index

Congo

Congo's government, former rebels start power-sharing talks

Agence France Presse, 5/6/05

Government officials and former rebels in the Republic of Congo have started power-sharing talks about bringing members of the ex-militia into "all national institutions", officials said Friday. The armed group is the National Resistance Council (CNR) led by Frederic Bitsangou, alias Ntumi, which in March 2003 signed a peace accord with the government after years of clashes and upheaval in the forested Pool region south and west of Brazzaville.

The talks on "political partnership" were under way between President Denis Sassou-Nguesso's administration and CNR members who have joined an ad hoc peace committee set up under the accord, an official statement issued late Thursday said, without specifying when the discussions began. "We want to be part of all the national institutions," Ntumi's spokesman Philippe Ane told AFP on Friday. "But this participation depends on the collecting of all the weapons still in the hands of our youths in the Pool."

In the 1990s, Congo was wracked by unrest and two civil wars among the armed forces and militias which were the private armies of rival political parties in the former French colony in central Africa. The CNR, known as the Ninjas, holed up in the forests and hills of the Pool area, were not disbanded after Sassou-Nguesso, a former military ruler, seized power in 1997. They continued to battle the army, attack trains on the key rail link between Brazzaville and the oil port terminal of Pointe-Noire and launch incursions into the south of the capital.

Sporadic clashes and army mopping-up operations have occurred since the pact because of tension and disagreement over the post-conflict status to be given Ntumi, a Roman Catholic priest, who is not happy with privileges the government has offered. The CNR is to become a political party and has already announced that it will put up candidates when parliamentary by-elections are eventually held in the Pool region, where no voting took place during a 2002 poll because of the conflict in the area. The movement's military wing is to be dissolved, with some former fighters taken into the national security forces.

Democratic Republic of Congo Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.

Return to Index

Georgia/Abkhazia

Georgia Anticipates Bush Visit

Peter Finn, The Washington Post, 5/5/05

When President Bush arrives here next week, he can expect a rapturous reception from the Georgian public and its young, restless leader, whose Rose Revolution swept a tired and corrupt government from power in November 2003 and became a model for revolts in other former Soviet republics. Bush's visit is "confirmation that Georgia is a front-runner in the dissemination of democracy," President Mikheil Saakashvili, 37, told a group of students here this week.

In an interview with two American reporters over dinner later in the day, he elaborated on that theme: "No one expected that a government in this part of the world could perform. You can argue about the pluses and minuses of the government, but no one can argue that this government isn't delivering."

After the street revolt, called the Rose Revolution for the flowers that protesters carried, Saakashvili was elected to office with more than 90 percent of the vote. With enthusiastic support from the United States, he has pushed through one initiative after another in an effort to remake the broken state he inherited from former president Eduard Shevardnadze.

But Saakashvili's overwhelming dominance of politics has led to charges from the country's opposition -- themselves Rose Revolutionaries who stayed out of government -- that Saakashvili is so taken with his preeminence that the revolution's democratic promise is being undermined.

"There are no checks and balances in this country," said David Gamkrelidze, a onetime conspirator with Saakashvili and now head of the New Right Party, the only formal opposition group in Parliament. "Saakashvili has authoritarian instincts. He cannot tolerate any criticism. And I hope that President Bush, in private, will speak to him about transparency, about democratic control, about the rule of law."

Bush will address a mass rally on Tbilisi's Liberty Square. Georgian officials expect a crowd of up to 100,000, a rare mass welcome for an American president who is viewed with hostility in many parts of the world. According to a recent opinion poll here, 72 percent of Georgians approve of Bush's visit. The 7 percent who expressed a negative opinion are people who complain about everything, said Saakashvili, who studied at George Washington University.

Along Tbilisi's Rustaveli Prospect, pavement is being resurfaced, walls are being washed and run-down facades are being repainted in pastel blues and pinks before the Bush motorcade passes. For Saakashvili, these are not cosmetic changes -- the Potemkin village of the opposition's gibes -- but visible evidence for Bush of a countrywide transformation.

"After President Bush leaves, I will take a brush in my hand and show that this facade painting is a continuous process," Saakashvili said. "People forget. They forget that Georgia was an occupied and enslaved country. We are creating a state." The country still faces major challenges, including dealing with two breakaway regions supported by Russia, Georgia's northern neighbor and longtime overseer. Russia still has two military bases here; officials in Moscow and Tbilisi are negotiating a timetable for their removal.

Between courses of chicken, cheese pie, kebab, fried fish and meat dumplings, Saakashvili listed his administration's achievements in the last 17 months. With a budget that has jumped from $350 million annually to $1.9 billion, the government has embarked on a $200 million road-building project to link all the major population centers. Saakashvili said he expected Georgia's chronic power shortages to be resolved by next year, as new power stations come on line and old facilities are refurbished. By 2008, he said, every school in the country will have Internet access.

The country's highway police, who routinely extorted bribes from drivers, were fired and replaced with a force that even the opposition admits is not corrupt. The army, little better than a militia two years ago, has been professionalized, and more than 800 Georgian soldiers are serving in Iraq. A new nationwide educational testing system has been developed with the aim of fostering a meritocracy and rooting out the practice of students bribing their way into university. The government has announced plans to abolish 90 percent of all licensing requirements this month to increase small business start-ups.

Many welcome the changes. Tamara Buzishvili, a 17-year-old student at Tbilisi State University, said she believed that when she graduates she will be able to "get a job without high connections," something she said she couldn't have imagined two years ago. "The investment climate is much better," said David Mapley, a British investment fund manager. "We recently brought in some multibillion dollar companies, and they liked what they saw."

Still, many Georgians are impatient for more, and the president's political standing has fallen from its post-revolution heights. "The changes are superficial, and it's still one-man rule," said Akaki Kulijanashivili, 42, a philosophy professor who took part in the revolt. Some former allies of Saakashvili say he seems increasingly unwilling to respect dissent. They pointed to a government practice of jailing allegedly corrupt government officials and then pardoning them when they paid millions of dollars, all without any judicial proceeding. Saakashvili said the practice had ended.

To be or not to be: Former Soviet republics question commonwealth's need for existence

Judith Ingram, Associated Press, 5/7/05

Dictators and democrats will rub elbows this weekend at a Moscow meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States, where the most pressing question may well be whether the Russian-led organization shouldn't just be shut down for good. The loose grouping of 12 former Soviet republics has long been rent by disputes _ between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, between Georgia and Russia over mutual accusations of support for separatists and terrorists.

But it has never appeared so untenable as it does today, following the uprisings against the entrenched leaderships of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. The CIS puts democratically elected leaders such as Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in the same club as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko _ whom the United States has branded the last dictator in Europe _ and the Turkmen autocrat, President Saparmurat Niyazov, best known abroad for the cult of adoration he's built to himself and his family.

"The CIS is a pointless organization for today. It brings together absolutely different countries with diametrically opposed interests," said Levan Ramishvili, an analyst at Georgia's independent Freedom Institute. Sunday's meeting comes amid a spiraling diplomatic spat between Ukraine and Belarus, where five Ukrainians have been jailed for taking part in a protest.

And it comes less than a month since Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and the leaders of other former Soviet republics joined their voices in challenging Russia to make good on its six-year-old pledge to withdraw troops and weaponry from Georgia and Moldova. The CIS clearly has more quarrels than shared vision among its members.

Saakashvili is staying away from Sunday's meeting, as well as Monday's Victory in Europe day celebration in Moscow, because Georgia failed to win agreement on the withdrawal of Russian bases. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev is staying away because of the attendance of the Armenian leader, and because Sunday is a day of mourning, marking a key battle during the six-year war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

"If the CIS is going to survive, then it will be merely as a consultative council of heads of state, which doesn't obligate anyone to anything," said Stanislav Shushkevich, the Soviet-era parliamentary speaker in Belarus who together with Russia's Boris Yeltsin and Ukraine's Leonid Kravchuk signed the 1991 document that dissolved the Soviet Union.

"There's only one problem: Does the leader of a democratic state really want to confer with dictators?" The most vocal recent criticism of the CIS has come from countries such as Ukraine and Georgia, where pro-Western leaders have come to power and hopes of shedding Russian influence are high. But even President Vladimir Putin has thrown doubt on the future of the CIS, telling reporters in the Armenian capital Yerevan earlier this year that the forum had been created for the "civilized divorce" of the former Soviet republics, in contrast to the European Union, which was built to foster real cooperation.

Other officials have been no more sanguine. "There is no good in the CIS as it is now _ ineffectual and unable to function," said Ilyas Omarov, the spokesman for the Kazakh Foreign Ministry.

The group's attempts to be more than a talk shop have often only fostered more discord. Its peacekeepers have been accused of destabilizing conflict zones in the former Soviet Union, and its election monitors _ deployed to provide a counterbalance to Western-dominated observer missions from such groups as the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe _ have consistently given high marks to blatantly fraudulent ballots.

Pavel Borodin, the secretary of the Russia-Belarus union, said the CIS would have to radically change its focus to survive but survive it would. "The CIS will be reborn as a purely economic organization," he said. "This is a market of 300 million consumers. There's nowhere else to turn." Putin made much the same point to German journalists this week, singling out the shared energy system, transport network and other infrastructure dating back to Soviet times as strong incentives to deepen economic cooperation.

"These are all natural advantages that the past has give us," Putin said. "Not to use this, I think, would be simply stupid." Yet the plans to remove trade barriers between member states that have dominated the CIS agenda since its creation have never gotten off the ground. Attempts at forging closer economic ties have been hampered by the stark differences between the sizes of the member economies and their levels of development, as well as fears of Russian domination. "The CIS is a system that has completed all of its set tasks, and there is no hope for its development," Ukrainian Economic Minister Sergei Teryokhin said.

Return to Index

Indonesia

Indonesia tells U.S. official it will not squander tsunami funds

Constant Brand, Associated Press, 5/8/05

Indonesian officials have assured the United States that they will not allow billions of dollars pledged for tsunami relief to be squandered through corruption, a senior U.S. diplomat said Sunday. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick spoke during a visit to Aceh province, the area hardest hit by the Dec. 26 tragedy. His trip was aimed at publicizing the U.S. role in rebuilding the region, an undertaking Washington hopes will boost its battered image in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

"The world's eyes will be on Indonesia," Zoellick told The Associated Press in an interview after touring devastated parts of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. In one struggling coastal community, he was hugged by a tearful survivor. Corruption is rife in Indonesia, and there have been concerns that much of the aid money could be siphoned off. Aceh, which is also beset by a separatist conflict that has simmered for nearly three decades, is regarded as one of the country's most graft-ridden regions.

Zoellick said he had gotten assurances from local officials that they would be extremely careful with the money. "It's important to have auditing and balances," he said. The earthquake-triggered waves on Dec. 26 killed at least 126,000 people in Aceh province and other parts of Indonesia's Sumatra island and left almost half a million people homeless. The U.S. military arrived on the scene within days, flying dozens of helicopter missions to distribute lifesaving medicines and food.

The United States has since pledged nearly $1 billion in public and private funds for relief efforts for tsunami-hit countries. Most of the funds are earmarked for Aceh. Zoellick witnessed the signing of an agreement between U.S. aid officials and the local administration committing Washington to spend $245 million to rebuild a 149-mile coastal highway washed away by the tsunami.

Still many Acehnese have expressed anger at the slow pace of the reconstruction effort. The province is awash with foreign aid groups living in luxury houses, but hundreds of thousands of survivors remain in squalid camps or temporary accommodations. "There is a tremendous amount to do. This place got hammered," Zoellick said. "The question is how to do the coordination properly. People want to make sure some of the money starts to flow to the projects."

The massive U.S. aid effort comes as anti-American sentiment in Indonesia remains high after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which were perceived by many here as attacks on Islam. The U.S. help has been welcomed in Aceh, where distrust of the Jakarta government is high. Zoellick is on 10-day tour of Southeast Asia. After leaving Aceh, he headed to neighboring Singapore.

Aceh reconstruction close to zero: Indonesian official

Agence France Presse, 5/9/05

Reconstruction in tsunami-ravaged Aceh is "close to zero," the recently appointed head of an agency overseeing the province's reconstruction said Monday. "Roads? There are no roads being built. Bridges? There are no bridges being built. Harbours? There are no harbours being built," Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, head of the Agency for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Aceh Province and Nias island, told foreign journalists. "We have to do much better and faster," he added.

Mangkusubroto said paperwork and procedures have hindered a speedy start to restoration of the province, where the so-called rehabilitation and reconstruction phase started on March 26. He said the level of reconstruction in Aceh was "close to zero," while there had been some rehabilitation work "but also not far from zero." Almost 129,000 were confirmed dead after a major earthquake and tsunami struck Indonesia's westernmost province of Aceh on December 26. Mangkusubroto is former oil and energy minister and former president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. He was installed at the helm of the agency by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on March 1.

"There is no sense of urgency" prevailing in the government, he said after visiting Aceh. But he also said the billions of dollars in aid pledged by donors and foreign countries have yet to be disbursed. The situation in Aceh was "shocking, because very limited things have been done to the poor people," he said. "There is not enough food for the kids... at least there should be food." Indonesia was the country worst-hit by the tsunamis, which killed tens of thousands in nations around the Indian Ocean. Entire villages along Aceh's coast were wiped out.

Mangkusubroto said many people left homeless after the disaster have spurned barracks which the government built for them. The barracks were designed as a temporary shelter for the displaced for up to two years, before they can rebuild their homes. But many barracks, each housing up to 24 families, remain empty. "They don't want to live in the barracks. They move out. Some of them went back to their former land and put up their tents there. Some of them moved to another place to get temporary shelter," Mangkusuboto said. He said the displaced appeared more receptive to individual houses.

"I do hope, in three weeks' time we can start building houses, 1,500 houses in a number of locations," he said. Mangkusubroto pledged to take stern measures against anyone in his agency found diverting funds for the reconstruction of Aceh. "Anybody who corrupts the money will get the maximum penalty, multiplied by two," he said. His agency was set up for an initial term of four years. The government has earmarked up to 46.1 trillion rupiah (4.78 billion dollars) for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Aceh.

Aceh Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the Aceh Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.

Return to Index

Ivory Coast

U.N. Security Council extends peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast for one month

Leyla Linton, Associated Press, 5/4/05

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Wednesday to extend the mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Ivory for a month while it considers a French proposal to increase the number of peacekeepers there. The Security Council said the situation in the country "continues to pose a threat to international peace and security in the region" and extended the peacekeeping mission's mandate until June 4. It called on both sides in the West African country to implement a peace deal mediated last month by South African President Thabo Mbeki.

The council also welcomed the annoucement last month by Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo that would allow Alassane Ouattara, the top opposition leader, to stand in presidential elections set for October. The resolution to extend the Ivory Coast mission was necessary because its mandate ended Wednesday. France has circulated another draft U.N. Security Council resolution which would increase the size of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast by more than 2,000 people. Some 6,000 U.N. peacekeepers and 4,000 French troops are in the country.

It would also expand the peacekeepers' mandate, allowing them to help monitor the disarming of militias as well as monitor an arms embargo imposed by the U.N. Security Council last November.

The French draft resolution also calls for a high representative to help oversee the elections. France believes a high-profile figure, designated by the U.N. Secretary-General after consultations with Mbeki and the African Union, is needed to ensure the elections are free and fair. The representative would be independent from the U.N. mission. Ivory Coast has been split into a rebel-held north and loyalist south since a September 2002 coup attempt propelled the world's largest cocoa grower into civil war.

Ivory Coast disarmament talks suspended in relaxed atmosphere

Agence France Presse, 5/7/05

Representatives of the army and rebels in the Ivory Coast Saturday failed to reach agreement on a long-overdue disarmament process, a key condition of the latest peace pact signed to end two years of crisis, and suspended the negotiations, military officials said. The officials in the west African country said the parties would meet again on Friday.

The talks between the Ivory Coast government forces (FANCI) and the rebel New Forces (NF) began on Tuesday and were to have concluded with a plenary session on Friday, but sources said important differences remained in the working group dealing with disarmament and demobilization issues. The conference, in a luxury hotel in Yamoussoukro, the political capital, is also being attended by UN and French military representatives. The atmosphere was described as relaxed, but tough talking continued.

As recently as a month ago the west African country appeared to be on the edge of an explosion. But military leaders from the two sides have spent the past few days in close proximity and there have been a number of formal and informal contacts. The two sides are staying in the same hotel, taking their meals together and talking under the watchful eyes of Moroccan troops belonging to the UN peacekeeping force in the country.

Few weapons were visible though some handguns were discreetly concealed under jackets. There was no real sign of fraternisation. Each side gathered in different parts of the main hall but there were constant comings and goings. Colonel Philippe Mangou, chief of staff of the FANCI, and his FN counterpart Colonel Soumaila Bakayoko vanished periodically for private talks. Colonel Lassina Doumbia, who was in charge of the early November 2004 government offensive against the FN in Bouake, their stronghold in the centre of the country, in violation of the ceasefire, was talking face to face with his chief enemy at the time, Major "Ben Laden".

A corporal, who had deserted from the loyalist forces and is now a FN major, joked with one of his former superior officers and greeted him with a broad smile and a very military "my respects, Colonel!" Soldiers in unmatching battledress from both sides took photographs with their latest-model mobile telephones. A stylish woman rebel soldier drew admiring glances despite her combat boots and masculine red beret. An unidentified soldier snoozed on a bench, the blue beret peeping from his pocket betraying that he is a UN peacekeeper.

UN military and civil observers and French peacekeepers milled around in a heterogeneous crowd. In front of reporters the former foes, now comrades in arms since the signing on April 6 of the Pretoria peace deal, aimed a reviving a January 2003 agreement, put on a show of satisfaction. In the evening, changed into designer-label civilian clothes, they met for a beer in the bar. But behind the relaxed exterior tough talking went on. Military leaders from the two sides have on several occasions called together their teams, under a tree in the garden or a remote corridor, and told outsiders to keep away.

Return to Index

Kashmir

Historic trans-Kashmir bus set to roll for third time as violence surges

Agence France Presse, 5/4/05

Security forces checked for landmines on the eve of the third run of the trans-Kashmir bus slated for Thursday against a backdrop of surging violence in revolt-hit Indian Kashmir. Since the launch of the historic route April 7 meant to promote peace in the divided Himalayan region, over 100 Islamic militants have been killed in scores of clashes with troops in Indian-held Kashmir. It is the biggest number to be killed in a month in at least three years, police say, and comes as the nuclear-armed neighbours are engaged in a peace process they have declared "irreversible."

Police in Srinagar, capital of Indian Kashmir and urban hub of rebels who have been waging a 15-year battle against New Delhi's rule, said heavy security would be in place for the third run. "We're checking for landmines and boobytraps. Security will be watertight," a police officer close to the security operation said. Two buses go in each direction every two weeks along the 170-kilometer (105- mile route) between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-held Kashmir, crossing the heavily militarised line dividing the two zones and reuniting relatives and friends who have not seen each other for decades.

The service, which established the first link between the two sides of the region in nearly 60 years, is opposed by some militant groups who have threatened to turn the vehicles into "coffins." The rebels and some hardline separatists fear a move to a "soft border" is a bid to sideline the separatist cause by allowing greater people-to-people contact. In the latest violence Wednesday, troops, backed by police, shot dead four militants in a fierce clash in northern Bandipora town, police said. The deaths came on top of the killing of 11 people, including two politicians and six rebels Tuesday. Nineteen others were also hurt in separate incidents Tuesday.

Normally six to eight people die daily in insurgency-related violence. Analysts say security forces may have launched the crackdown against militants in a bid to wipe out as many as possible in case New Delhi announces a unilateral ceasefire in the fight to crush the 15-year insurgency. There have been calls in the Indian media for New Delhi to declare a ceasefire in Kashmir to help cement the peace drive.

The calls follow a visit to New Delhi last month by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in which the two countries declared their peace process "irreversible" and vowed to reach a "final settlement" over Kashmir, trigger of two of their three wars. Police estimate the number of rebels in Indian Kashmir at between 1,500 and 1,700, a figure that has fallen since the mid-1990s when they calculated the figure at around 4,000.

In 2000, New Delhi announced a ceasefire but called it off after six months after rebels refused to reciprocate. There were no incidents on the second run but on the first, rebels fired grenades at the buses that exploded harmlessly. The day before, gunmen attacked a government complex in Srinagar where passengers were moved for safety.

Soldier killed in blast, four killed in separate clashes in India's Kashmir

Mujtaba Ali Ahmad, Associated Press, 5/7/05

Suspected Islamic rebels triggered an explosion on a key highway in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Saturday, killing a soldier. Four other people were killed in separate gunbattles, police said. Separatist rebels detonated a bomb planted on the roadside near Sangam village about 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of Srinagar, the summer capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state, said police officer Ashiq Hussain. One solider was killed. The road connects Kashmir to the rest of India.

Meanwhile, soldiers killed a suspected rebel during a shootout Saturday in Gofbala village north of Srinagar, a police officer said on customary condition of anonymity. A civilian caught in the crossfire was killed, the officer said. Another rebel was killed in a clash with soldiers in nearby Batabagh village, he said. In Tangmarg village north of Srinagar, suspected rebels shot and killed 65-year-old Congress party worker Rahim Pala, in his home early Saturday, police said. The Congress party is part of the state's ruling coalition.

More than a dozen militant groups have been fighting since 1989 for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan. At least 66,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict. The Himalayan region is split between the nuclear-armed rivals, who have fought two of their three wars over control of Kashmir since gaining independence from Britain in 1947. Rebel violence has continued despite increasingly warm relations between the two countries.

Kashmir Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the Kashmir Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.

Return to Index

Kosovo

U.N. mission in Kosovo signs framework agreement with European Investment Bank

Fisnik Abrashi, Associated Press, 5/3/05

The United Nations mission in Kosovo signed an agreement with the European Investment Bank Tuesday enabling this economically depressed province to receive loans from the bank despite its unresolved status. Soren Jessen-Petersen, the top U.N. official of this disputed province, said he hopes the agreement will boost economic growth in Kosovo, where unemployment rate is over 50 per cent. "Signing of this framework agreement today will serve as an important precedent that will help attract other international financial institutions extending loans for Kosovo," Jessen-Petersen said.

The European Investment Bank finances investments that promote European integration. Kosovo is the poorest region in the Western Balkans with an annual gross domestic product per capita of around €1,000 (US$1,300) according to EU figures. Support from the international financial institutions is indispensable as the U.N. tries to create a sustainable economy in Kosovo, Jessen-Petersen said at the signing ceremony.

Until now, the province could not tap into the international financial institutions because of its unresolved international status. This has been "undoubtedly a serious impediment to economic development," a European Union report last month said.

Kosovo became an international protectorate, run by the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers, in 1999 after a NATO air war ended a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. Ethnic Albanians want full independence, while Serbs insist the province remain part of Serbia.

Talks on the province's future status are expected later this year, if Kosovo meets human rights and democracy standards to safeguard the future of its minority Serbs. The minority has often faced violence from the ethnic Albanian majority in reprisals after the end of the 1998-99 war. Since the end of that conflict the EU has granted €1.6 billion in humanitarian and economic aid for the province, which has a population of some 2 million people.

A Village at the Edge, With Nowhere to Go but Down

Nicholas Wood, The New York Times, 5/9/05

Perched on a hilltop overlooking Kosovo's central plain, this small ethnic Albanian village looks much like any other rebuilt after the two-year war between Serbian security forces and ethnic Albanian resisters in this Balkan province. The roads are lined with large modern houses, some enclosed by high walls. Children kick a soccer ball around as women hang their laundry out to dry. Just a few signs indicate that not everything is normal: the cracks in the main road that runs along the perimeter of the village of less than a mile square, the two gigantic pits a few hundred yards beyond.

Hade sits above the vast, bustling open coal mine that supplies Kosovo's two main power stations, five miles away. Out of view of the houses, the hillside below the settlement has fallen away, jarring loose sloughs of mud and earth. Mining specialists say that at any moment much of the village may follow. Officials here admit Hade is on the verge of disaster, but a number of families remain in their homes, refusing to leave.

How the village came to be in such a perilous position is in dispute. The causes most often cited sound like a list of ailments that have recently afflicted this region, which is still trying to recover from the conflict that ran from 1997 to 1999. Serbian security forces then used violence to try to quell an ethnic Albanian independence movement, prompting resistance and a 78-day NATO bombing campaign that ended the fighting.

The causes include the technical incompetence of local officials; Kosovo's dilapidated infrastructure, with decrepit power stations that require vast amounts of fuel; bad planning by aid agencies; the corrosive effects of the ethnic divisions here over the past 15 years; and the nebulous nature of government under the United Nations, which has run the province since 1999.

What is not in doubt is that Hade lies above a rich seam of the soft brown coal called lignite, which the mine voraciously unearths. Half of the village was removed for a carefully planned mine expansion in the late 1970's and early 80's. A recent tour by four-wheel-drive vehicle offered a cautionary look into the mine. Mud creeps like lava across a new road. A section of asphalt laid two months earlier has slid away. Alexander Valenta, a stocky suntanned South African mining engineer employed by the United Nations to advise on mining coal, said workers had cut too closely and too steeply into the ground below Hade.

''The disintegration accelerates over time,'' Mr. Valenta said, pointing at the track of the mudslide below the village. ''This is the first movement in an exponential line.'' The management of the mine has changed three times in 15 years. In 1990, Albanian workers were forced out by the Serb-dominated state government. When Kosovo came under the authority of the United Nations nine years later, Albanians drove many Serbs out of Kosovo. They lost control of the mine. Each transfer cost the mine expertise, Mr. Valenta said, and the ever present pressure to produce coal quickly led to dangerous shortcuts.

But over the last 40 years, villagers have grown used to living next to the mine; most of the village's men worked there at some point. Earlier mudslides and partial collapses have left their homes intact, and they cannot see the most recent signals: the large conveyor belt that carries coal out of the mine keeps villagers from the mine's edge, and from seeing their own falling hillside.

''I'll be happy to leave once the government fulfills my wishes,'' said Jetullah Graicevci, the owner of the village store. Six men standing outside the store who would not give their names made similar comments, saying they wanted jobs and ''money in the bank'' before they moved. ''It's like people going out to ski when they've been warned and getting killed by an avalanche,'' Mr. Valenta said. ''This is identical. The people must be moved now.''

Kosovo's regional government and the United Nations mission in the province agree that the village must be evacuated, but confusion remains about whether all the approvals are in place. Citing ''the imminent danger to the safety of the villagers,'' Neeraj Singh, a spokesman for the mission, said his agency had, in recent communications, ''reiterated the need for urgent action from the Kosovo government to relocate residents from the endangered zone immediately.'' He said the mission had given the regional authorities permission to begin the evacuation.

The Albanian-dominated Kosovo government says that preparations for the evacuations have been made, but that a further order is needed from the leader of the United Nations mission. Sabit Graicevci -- a father of three in his mid-30's, the village's mayor and a member of the same clan as the shop owner -- is one of many here who are mystified as to why they were allowed to rebuild their homes after the war if the ground under Hade was to be mined soon. No one has been able to explain, he said.

Villagers had been reassured by local and United Nations officials that it was safe to rebuild homes destroyed by Serbian security forces during the war. The United Nations helped coordinate assistance from international aid agencies; a sign still stands at the village entrance stating that the European Agency for Reconstruction paid to rebuild eight homes. Some families are heeding the government's warning and have begun to dismantle their homes, but others have refused to sign compensation agreements.

For the moment, the Graicevcis and at least several other families say they have no plans to move. The Kosovo government offer -- about $45,000 for the average house -- is still unattractive. [As of May 8, 21 families remained, and heavy rains over the weekend made their situation even more perilous, local officials said.] ''We want to keep our children in school until the end of the year,'' Mr. Graicevci said. ''Then we'll see what happens.''

Kosovo Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the Kosovo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.

Return to Index

_____________________________________________________________

Liberia

Citizens from Guinea registering to vote in Liberia's postwar elections, officials say

Jonathan Paye-Layleh, Associated Press, 5/3/05

Citizens from neighboring Guinea are forcing their way onto the voter rolls in Liberia ahead of postwar presidential balloting, election officials said this week. At least 130 ethnic Mandingo Guineans have joined voters rolls in northern Liberia - a one-time rebel stronghold sharing the same ethnic makeup as nearby parts of Guinea - said Musu Haluwa, a poll worker in Voinjama, a rebel headquarters during Liberia's civil war.

"They come threatening that if we don't register them, they will do this and do that to us," she said Monday. "But we cannot stop them, we are powerless." A spokesman for the electoral commission arranging the Oct. 11 elections was aware of foreigners registering to vote, saying Tuesday it was even happening in the capital, Monrovia. "This is unacceptable," Bobby Weedor said. "The process is for Liberians." Virtually all government functions ground to a halt during Liberia's ruinous 1989-2003 civil war. Many Liberians don't have state identification cards and election workers are left wide latitude in determining who is eligible to cast ballots.

Workers said they knew those issuing threats to join the rolls were from neighboring Guinea, where French is widely spoken, due to their regional accent and unfamiliarity with Liberia's version of English. It was unclear exactly why Guineans would want to vote in Liberia, or how many had succeeded. Some Liberians suspect moves by a heavily Mandingo former rebel group now standing a candidate in the elections to pad rolls in hopes of boosting chances on election day.

Voinjama, 300 kilometers north of Monrovia, was the one-time headquarters of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy insurgent group, known a LURD, which was heavily Mandingo. Its leader Sekou Conneh, himself a Mandingo, is among at least 53 people who have announced interest in becoming Liberia's next president.

The elections are arranged under a 2003 peace deal that ended Liberia's civil war and arranged a transitional, power-sharing administration expected to cede power to a new democratically elected president in early 2006. Some 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers are on patrol Liberia, where 90,000 fighters have been disarmed since the war ended in Aug. 2003.

Bring Charles Taylor to Justice

Ed Royce, The New York Times, 5/5/05

NEARLY two years after Charles Taylor fled Monrovia under pressure from advancing rebels and a force of Marines on ships off Liberia, he sits exiled in Nigeria, plotting to undermine an international effort to rebuild the country he did so much to destroy. Although Mr. Taylor has been indicted on charges of fueling a brutal war in neighboring Sierra Leone, a deal brokered by Nigeria and the United States has kept him beyond the reach of justice.

But when President Bush meets with President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria today, he has the chance to press him to bring Mr. Taylor before the body that indicted him, the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In so doing, Mr. Bush will not only help safeguard West Africa's fragile stability but strengthen the rule of law and the role of a court that the United States has done so much to create and support.

After he terrorized his way to power in Liberia, Charles Taylor backed the brutal Revolutionary United Front, a rebel group that murdered, raped and mutilated tens of thousands in Sierra Leone in the 1990's. But in return for agreeing to go into exile and to stay out of politics, Mr. Taylor was able to escape a 17-count Special Court indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity handed down against him in 2003; instead, he landed softly in Nigeria. The State Department said this was a temporary step intended to stop the killing in Liberia. This deal, bad then, is worse today.

What's more, Mr. Taylor constantly violates the terms of the agreement. He is in regular telephone contact with former aides and is working with parties set to contest and, most likely, disrupt the Liberian elections scheduled for October. Last month, Jacques Klein, the United Nations special representative in Liberia, reported that Mr. Taylor was intruding in Liberian politics. When he left Liberia, he told followers, ''God willing, I will be back.'' He reaffirmed his intention on Nigerian television in spring of 2004.

Sierra Leone and Liberia, though stabilized, remain fragile. The United States has spent nearly $750 million rebuilding Liberia since Mr. Taylor left. Leaving him at large threatens to knock down what the United States has built up. Moreover, the United States has spent $22 million to create the Special Court, which will chip away at West Africa's culture of impunity, foster the regional rule of law and, more broadly, provide a model for international justice besides the International Criminal Court. While the court has tried some of those responsible for Sierra Leone's mayhem, its legacy will be determined by whether it tries Charles Taylor.

Given Nigeria's own unhappy recent past as a dictatorship and its current role as a force for peace and stability in Africa, Mr. Obasanjo's harboring of Mr. Taylor is perplexing. Many Nigerians understand this, including the Nigerian Union of Journalists and the Nigerian Bar Association, which have criticized Mr. Obasanjo's policy.

But so far the United States has yet to press President Obasanjo for rendition. Why the United States continues to coddle Charles Taylor is something of a mystery. On Wednesday the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling on Nigeria to send Mr. Taylor to the Special Court. The European Parliament passed a similar resolution in February. Last week, a bipartisan group of senators asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to request that Nigeria transfer Mr. Taylor to the Special Court. But according to one published report, a senior administration official recently assured Mr. Obasanjo that Mr. Bush would not raise the matter during his visit.

Sending Mr. Taylor to the Special Court is right and sensible. Mr. Bush, who has spoken so purposefully on other occasions about the need for freedom, justice and accountability, can make those same points about one of Africa's worst warlords in his conversation with Mr. Obasanjo today.

Return to Index

Macedonia

Macedonian foreign minister says she hopes EU entry talks will begin in 2006

Associated Press, 5/4/05

Macedonia's foreign minister said Wednesday she hopes negotiations on her country's eventual entry into the European Union will begin in the first half of 2006, when Austria holds the EU's rotating presidency. Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva told reporters at a news conference with her Austrian counterpart, Ursula Plassnik, that the desired negotiations on the former Yugoslav republic's entry "will be an acknowledgment of the reforms" the nation has tried to implement over the past few years.

The 25-nation EU, which widened a year ago to take in 10 newcomers, most of them ex-communist eastern European countries, will not be complete until it absorbs the Balkans, Mitreva said. So far, the EU has reacted cautiously to Macedonia's desire to start entry negotiations in 2006. Macedonia aims to join the EU by 2010, Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski said in February.

One obstacle for Macedonia is its name. EU member Greece has long argued that it implies a territorial threat to its northern province also called Macedonia. All EU nations must approve the entry of new members, and Greece has warned it would not ratify the Balkan nation's entry as Macedonia.

Mitreva acknowledged the dispute Wednesday but said she remained hopeful that Macedonia and Greece could reach a compromise acceptable to both sides. The country now is formally known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. U.N.-sponsored talks to solve the problem have been deadlocked for years. The United States in November decided to recognize the country as Macedonia.

Macedonia applied for EU membership in March 2004, three years after an ethnic Albanian insurgency pushed it to the brink of civil war. A year ago, it concluded an association agreement with the EU to open trade and step up political cooperation. Mitreva and Plassnik also discussed bilateral relations and trade Wednesday.

Return to Index

Moldova

Separatist leader in Moldova says foreign media reporting on region is false

Associated Press, 5/5/05

The leader of a Russian-speaking separatist province in eastern Moldova said Thursday that foreign media were portraying his region inaccurately as a heaven for smuggling and criminal activity. Igor Smirnov, who has ruled Trans-Dniester since it broke away from Moldova after a war in 1992, called on his region's press to help create a positive image for Trans-Dniester, the province's official news agency Olvia Press reported.

He accused the Moldovan government of striking deals with foreign media to portray Trans-Dniester in a negative way, as a place where weapons smuggling and human trafficking were rife. The Moldovan government has often accused Smirnov's regime of fostering corruption and posing a security threat to the region. No country recognizes Trans-Dniester's independence, but the region gets strong support from Russia, which considers it a strategic location and maintains 1,800 troops there.

Smirnov said his region wanted close ties with Russia and supported the continued presence of Russian troops in Trans-Dniester. Moldova's pro-Western government has called the Russian troops "an illegal occupation force" and demanded they be withdrawn, along with huge stockpiles of weapons and ammunition left over from the former Soviet Army. Smirnov also accused Moldova and the West of imposing an economic blockade on his region. Moldovan authorities have not commented on Smirnov's accusations.

Return to Index

Nepal

Nepal parties close to common front in bid to restore democracy: communists

Shusham Shrestha, Agence France Presse, 5/7/05

Nepal's opposition parties are close to forming a common front to push for the restoration of democracy three months after King Gyanendra seized power, a communist party official said Saturday. The plan under discussion by the seven parties focuses on proposals to seek restoration of parliament, Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist and Leninist spokesman Pradip Nepal (NCP-UML) said. "Our party is for reinstating parliament and the rest of the parties are in the process of agreeing to the common minimum programme," he told AFP.

"All the parties will meet soon to finalize it," he said. Nepal Workers and Peasants' Party chairman Narayan Man Bijukchhe said all parties had agreed to call for restoring parliament rather than new elections. Another NCP-UML senior official said restoration of parliament, dissolved in 2002, could pave the way for dialogue with Maoist rebels who have been battling to overthrow the monarchy and install a communist republic since 1996.

The efforts by the long divided parties to strike an alliance follow Gyanendra's dismissal of the government and takeover of power February 1. Gyanendra said he took power to tackle the increasingly deadly revolt after fractious parties failed to contain it. The common front would be made up of the Nepali Congress, Nepali Congress (Democratic), Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist and Leninist, People's Front Nepal, Nepal Workers and Peasants' Party, Nepal Sadbhawana Party-Anandadevi and United Left Front, Nepal said.

The other senior NCP-UML official, who did not wish to be named, said restoring parliament would pave the way for "an all-party government capable of holding peace talks with the rebels." "Such a government will also explore the possibility of inviting the rebels to join the interim government to hold parliamentary elections or elections for a constituent assembly," the official said. The Maoists have been calling for elections for a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution and settle the political role of the king.

The Nepali Congress (Democratic) party said in a statement Friday it was "ready to find a way to ensure the reinstatement" of parliament. "Restoration of parliament will end the direct rule by the king and reactivate the democratic process in the country," it said. The Nepali Congress (Democratic) is headed by Sher Bahadur Deuba who was fired by Gyanendra when he seized power. Deuba is in custody on corruption charges laid by an anti-graft panel with sweeping arrest and punishment powers.

Last weekend, Gynanedra lifted a state of emergency but kept the extraordinary powers he assumed in February. Several political leaders have been freed since emergency rule ended but hundreds of other party officials remain in jail, human rights groups say.

Nepal's top opposition leader slams the king, asks countries not to resume military aid

Binaj Gurubacharya, Associated Press, 5/9/05

Nepalese officials said a top U.S. diplomat's visit Monday would ease the international pressure on King Gyanendra to roll back his takeover of the government, while opponents accused the monarch of drifting toward dictatorship.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca was to arrive in the capital, Katmandu, later Monday to hold talks with official's in Gyanendra's royal government the highest American official to visit Nepal since the king's Feb. 1 power grab.

"I am confident that the visit will increase the understanding and areas of cooperation to save Nepal and its democracy from terrorism," Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey said Monday. But former foreign minister Prakash Sharan Mahat, of the Nepali Congress Democratic party, urged Rocca to increase pressure on Gyanendra to abandon his grip on power.

"We are hopeful the United States will continue to support our struggle for democracy in Nepal," Mahat said. Former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, who heads Nepali Congress, the country's largest political party, said his party was joining six others in a campaign to press the monarch to relinquish powers and restore democracy. "There are indications that the king is moving toward a dictatorial regime," Koirala told The Associated Press on Sunday ahead of Rocca's visit. "He has shut all doors to reconciliation."

India, Britain and several other nations suspended military aid to Nepal to press Gyanendra to restore democracy after he sacked the previous government. The country sorely needs the aid to fight a nine-year-old communist rebellion that has claimed more than 11,500 lives.

The United States never formally suspended military aid to Nepal, but Washington has not delivered any help in the past three months. Earlier, the U.S. military supplied arms and offered training in guerrilla warfare to Nepalese soldiers. Gyanendra said he needed to seize control in part because the previous government had failed to bring the communist insurgency under control.

After the royal takeover on Feb. 1, the government detained some 3,000 politicians, student leaders, journalists and rights activists to block opposition. Most of the detainees have been released, though more than 200 protesters remain in detention. The state of emergency was lifted last week, apparently under international pressure, but the king still rules the country through a royal council of appointed ministers and many curbs on rights remain in force. Since the emergency was lifted, India has expressed willingness to resume aid to Nepal.

"How can democratic countries help a dictatorship? If they do it, it will go against the democratic forces here," Koirala said. Koirala ruled out any immediate dialogue with the king and said political parties would apply pressure until the demands outlined in the seven-party alliance's common program are met. The program, adopted Sunday, said the king should reinstate the dissolved parliament and make the government accountable to the lawmakers. It demanded the release of all political detainees and restoration of all fundamental rights, and slammed the king for appointing a royal anti-corruption body, saying it was being used to target political opponents.

Return to Index

Philippines

Terrorism links a growing challenge for the Philippines: Zoellick

Agence France Presse, 5/5/05

Links between Muslim militants and global terror groups are making efforts to end a decades-old insurgency in the Philippines especially difficult, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said Thursday. The southern island of Mindanao, where Muslim insurgents have been waging a separatist rebellion since 1978, was in no immediate danger of becoming a new Afghanistan but "it remains a dangerous situation," Zoellick said here.

His comments were milder than those made last month by US embassy charge d'affaires Joseph Mussomeli who infuriated Manila when he said Mindanao was fast turning into a "mecca" for terrorism and risked "becoming like an Afghanistan situation".

Zoellick praised the government of President Gloria Arroyo for bringing the 12,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to the negotiating table and introducing anti-terror legislation, which remains pending in Congress.

However, while peace talks with the MILF were under way "there's fragmentation among those parties, and there are links to the groups that have broader international reach," Zoellick told reporters after briefing Arroyo on his government's security policies in the region.

"I think there is some progress being made, but obviously it remains a dangerous situation in part because some of these groups are linked to other groups that have a global, radical agenda about trying to destroy as opposed to creating opportunities for peace and development," he said.

Mindanao is also home to the smaller Abu Sayyaf, a gang of self-styled Islamic militants with links to the Al-Qaeda. Splinter groups from the MILF are meanwhile believed to be forging links with the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group blamed for a string of deadly attacks in the region, including the 2002 Bali bombing that killed more than 200 people.

Several arrested militants linked to the MILF have told government prosecutors that the JI helped fund bombing attacks in Manila in 2000 that killed several dozen people. The Philippine government has said that some 40 foreign JI members were training with MILF splinter groups in Mindanao. The MILF is also believed to have links with the Abu Sayyaf.

The Philippines is Southeast Asia's second biggest recepient of US aid, with some 120 million dollars earmarked for this year alone, Zoellick said. US troops are also training and equipping Filipino soldiers in the south. "This will be a long struggle," Zoellick said. "But I think as we've learned, we see there's a variety of networks, some formal, some informal."

"I think that the course globally against terrorism has been one that has been moving in the right direction, but I don't want to underestimate the scope of the challenge," he said. Reacting to Zoellick's comments, the Philippine armed forces said it was doing its best to combat terrorism in the south and welcomed continued US assistance in terms of training and equipment.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Buenaventura Pascual said the military was working closely with the MILF in gathering intelligence against foreign terrorist cells as part of the peace talks. "The AFP (military) is pushing the peace negotiations with the MILF because we believe that it is the ultimate solution for lasting peace in central Mindanao," he added.

Return to Index

Serbia & Montenegro

Serb general accused of war crimes pleads not guilty

Agence France Presse, 5/4/05

Serbian police general Sreten Lukic, charged with committing crimes against humanity and war crimes during the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict, pleaded not guilty to all charges Wednesday when he appeared before the UN war crimes tribunal here. Last month Lukic asked for a delay of 30 days because he did not fully understand the charges brought against him at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Lukic, 50, is accused of the expulsion and forced deportation of some 800,000 Albanians and the murder of "hundreds of Kosovo Albanian civilians" during the fighting in the war when rebels from the province's ethnic Albanian majority fought for independence from Serbia.

At the time he was chief of staff for Kosovo at the Serbian interior ministry. He faces four charges of crimes against humanity and one of war crimes. He is the 13th suspect from Serbia or the Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska to have been extradited or voluntarily surrendered to the UN court, under the Belgrade government's cooperation strategy.

Two of his co-defendants, General Vladimir Lazarevic and Nebojsa Pavkovic, the former chief of staff of the army of Yugoslavia (now Serbia-Montenegro), are also being held at The Hague. A fourth accused, General Vlastimir Djordjevic, is still on the run.

Serbia's president calls on all parties to pledge support for country's EU bid

Associated Press, 5/6/05

Serbia's Pro-Western president urged all political parties Friday to sign a statement of support for the Balkan republic's bid to join the European Union. Boris Tadic wants the leading political groups in Serbia to sign a pledge to "work continuously" to bring Serbia closer to the EU. "Serbia is facing great challenges. All parties must share the work that lies ahead," Tadic said. The request appeared in part to be an attempt to secure nationalist parties' backing for the arrest of top war crimes suspects - a key EU demand ahead of any negotiations on the country's entry into the bloc.

It was also apparently designed to make sure Serbia continues on its path toward the European Union and institutes the necessary reforms no matter who is in power. There was no immediate public response from any parties to Tadic's proposal. The president said the pledge could be signed during Victory Day celebrations next week marking the defeat of Nazi Germany. Serbia, which is struggling to emerge from international isolation after the rule of former President Slobodan Milosevic, has won EU approval to one day start membership talks with the bloc.

But Belgrade was also told that it must first arrest and extradite remaining Serb war crimes suspects to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, including former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic. Belgrade leaders have been reluctant to arrest suspects, fearing political backlash from nationalists who accuse The Hague court of anti-Serb bias. According to recent surveys, the nationalist Serbian Radical Party is the most popular party in Serbia, while Tadic's Democrats are second.

Mother of war crimes fugitive Bosnian Serb leader buried in son's absence

Agence France Presse, 5/7/05

Jovanka Karadzic, whose son, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, is on the run from international war crimes prosecutors for his role in the 1992-1995 Bosnian conflict, was buried Saturday in his absence. She died Thursday at the age of 83 after a short illness in a hospital in the northwestern Montenegrin town of Niksic. Her son, one of the chief architects of the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims and Croats during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, has been the target of a manhunt by NATO forces deployed in the region since he went into hiding at the end of the conflict.

After former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who is currently on trial at the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague, he is the most wanted suspected war criminal in the Balkans. No police could be seen at the funeral, which was celebrated at a monastery and at a cemetery by two senior members of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

She is "the mother of an immortal", Metrolitan Amfilohije Radovic of the Montenegro Orthodox Serb Church said, without naming Radovan Karadzic. "She told me she would have preferred him to be brought back dead, but faithful to the people and the faith, than to see him alive, but a traitor to the people."

He compared her to the mothers of other Serbian national heroes who had sacrificed themselves for their country." Another son, Luka, said his mother had died sad that Radovan had not been able to say a last goodbye to her. In recent days several thousand people have come from Montenegro, Serbia and the Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to offer their condolences.

Several newspapers in Serbia and Montenegro published obituaries Friday and Saturday of Jovanka Kardazic, some of them signed by her fugitive son, wanted, along with his wartime military commander, Ratko Mladic, by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Montenegrin police conducted several searches of his mother's house and farm in the tiny village of Petnica, near the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina, but without success. Karadzic is believed to be hiding in Serb-dominated parts of Bosnia and Montenegro, where he is still seen as a hero by his nationalist supporters.

Return to Index

Somalia

Blast at premier's speech in Mogadishu highlights Somalia's troubles

Agence France Presse, 5/4/05

A blast that killed at least 15 people in a Mogadishu stadium where Somalia's transitional prime minister was speaking about plans to bring a government to the lawless country and reconcile rivals has deepened concern over the viability of peace prospects here, analysts say. While the cause of Tuesday's explosion is still being debated and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi was unhurt, its proximity to the premier and the panic it sparked have highlighted uncertainties about restoring a functional government to the anarchic country, they say.

Gedi, whose government was formed in exile, and other Somali officials have insisted the blast was caused by the accidental detonation of a bodyguard's grenade, but diplomats on Wednesday said they had been told it was the result of a failed grenade attack. Either way, the explosion has underscored the volatile security situation in a capital awash in light and heavy weaponry and controlled by unruly warlords. "It is very hard to believe that this was an accident ... but it still highlights the risks facing the Somali government," said one east African diplomat, expressing concern that possible future "accidental" explosions could cause more serious damage.

"Whether it was an accident or not, the fact that it happened near the prime minister sends a signal that if such things happen in the future they might well be called accidents," the diplomat said. The blast occurred on the fourth day of Gedi's maiden tour of the capital aimed at building support for his government and ending a bitter dispute over when and where in Somalia it should relocate from exile in Kenya.

While presenting the blast as an accident on Wednesday, shortly after the explosion Gedi called the explosion an "act of violence" that would not dampen his resolve to secure a lasting peace in the war-shattered Horn of Africa nation which has been without a functioning central government for 14 years. But an official with the east African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) which is soon to send peacekeeping troops to Somalia to assist the government's relocation, said the blast would give people additional pause in supporting the administration.

"There is hesitance in supporting the government," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Right now there is a total deadlock, the whole peace process would have collapsed were it not for the international community." Matt Bryden, Somalia analyst for the respected International Crisis Group, said it was unlikely that the blast would seriously affect the peace process but that combined with other factors was indicative of myriad problems in restoring stability to the country.

"What we see after a tremendous welcome that Gedi got in Mogadishu is a sense of disappointment arising from things that are happening simultaneously," he said. "There is a sense of lost opportunity." With the disputes over relocation and the composition of the peacekeeping force still unresolved, Bryden said the peace process was at a standstill. "This is very worrying," he said. "If the institutions remain divided, this process is at a dead end."

Yet diplomats who were in Somalia at the time of the blast say there appears to be a consensus emerging that it is now time time for the militias to go. "The process of pacification is going on and there is now a consensus among the militias and the ex-militia leaders now in the administration that Somalia should have a central government," said one. "The era of the warlords is over," the diplomat said, adding that a plan to disarm and canton the militias could be adopted by the government in the coming weeks.

Such a move could ease the deployment of the African Union-authorized IGAD peacekeepers who are soon to arrive to try to restore stability for Gedi's government, attempting to succeed in the lawless country where UN and US missions failed miserably in the 1990s.

Somali premier rules out relocation without presence of peacekeepers

Agence France Presse, 5/7/05

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi on Saturday ruled out relocating his government currently exiled in Kenya to his country until regional peacekeepers are deployed in Mogadishu to help restore stability. "It will not be useful to relocate the government there (Mogadishu) unless the stabilisation force by the African Union is deployed," Gedi told reporters here on arrival from a seven-day first visit to Mogadishu since his appointment in December.

An explosion rocked a Mogadishu stadium from where Gedi was addressing thousands of Somalis Tuesday about plans to bring a government to the lawless country and reconcile rivals. Diplomats said it was an attempt on his life although Gedi rejected the claims immediately after the blast that killed at least 15 people and wounded nearly 40 others. "There was no attempt on my life, this was an accident and it has nothing to do with a pre-planned attack," Gedi said on Saturday.

The prime minister, who visited several parts of the bullet-charred capital, said Mogadishu residents had shown a willingness to restore stability, despite widespread violence. "The people have the will to pacify Mogadishu and it is an important and valuable asset of the peace process," he said. "We have to take this opportunity for the relocation of the Somali government." In March, the regional seven-nation east African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) said the first deployment of two battalions of IGAD soldiers from Sudan and Uganda could be on the ground by the end of April.

IGAD is expected to eventually deploy as many as 10,000 troops to assist Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, Gedi and other transitional institutions to relocate from exile in Kenya to Somalia. But up to now, the first batch of peacekeepers from Sudan and Uganda has not arrived, owing to logistical bottlenecks. Precise details of the mission are yet to be released amid a bitter dispute over the composition of the force within the transitional Somali government.

Fierce opposition to the participation of neighboring countries Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya in the force prompted a bloody brawl in the Somali parliament, sitting in Nairobi, last month. IGAD -- which comprises Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and nominally Somalia -- has repeatedly announced that it would not let the Somali peace process collapse. Somalia has been in chaos without any functioning central authority since the fall of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 turned the nation into a patchwork of fiefdoms ruled by warlords.

Return to Index

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka probes claims of ethnic violence that triggered civil war

Associated Press, 5/5/05

Sri Lanka on Thursday deployed 59 investigators to probe violence against ethnic minority Tamils in riots that triggered the country's civil war more than 20 years ago. The investigation comes nearly a year after the government agreed to pay about US$7 million in compensation to 939 victims of the anti-Tamil riots, following a recommendation from a three-member Truth Commission on Ethnic Violence. There have since been 4,622 new applications for compensation, a statement from the commission said, adding that the new probe will "ascertain the veracity of the claims made by these applicants."

The amount of any compensation will depend on the degree of damage and nature of suffering, the commission said. More than 800,000 Tamils fled to India and Western nations to escape the 1983 anti-Tamil riots, which erupted after a fledgling Tamil rebel group ambushed 13 soldiers.

Thousands of other Tamils joined the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam, or Tamil Tigers, who launched a two-decade civil war to carve out an independent homeland for the Tamils, who claimed discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. Nearly 65,000 people died in the conflict.

Norway brokered a cease-fire in February 2002. The truce has largely held, but government-rebel peace talks broke down two year ago over disagreements about power-sharing arrangements, Efforts to restart negotiations have so far failed. There are about 3.2 million ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka, an Indian Ocean island nation of 18.6 million.

Sri Lankan president fails to win Marxist partner's support for tsunami deal with Tamil rebels

Krishan Francis, Associated Press, 5/7/05

Sri Lanka's president has failed to win support from a key coalition partner to set up a joint group with Tamil Tiger rebels to distribute foreign aid to tsunami victims in Tamil-majority areas, a party official said Saturday.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga met late Friday with the Marxist People's Liberation Front, which is her party's main partner in the country's governing coalition and has threatened to withdraw from the government if it sets up a joint aid-distribution group with the guerrillas.

The Marxist party, which has claimed that setting up a joint group would help the rebels attain their goal of a separate Tamil state, said Friday they would hold more talks with Kumaratunga to try and reach a compromise, an official said on condition of anonymity. The Marxist party has 39 seats in the country's 225-member Parliament and without their support Kumaratunga's government could collapse.

The Tamil Tigers have been observing a three-year-old cease-fire with the Sri Lankan government, after fighting a two-decade civil war to try creating a separate homeland for the country's ethnic minority Tamils. The conflict killed more than 65,000 people.

Government-rebel peace talks have stalled over differences on how much power should be devolved to Sri Lanka's Tamil-majority north and east. The Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami killed at least 31,000 people in Sri Lanka, and left nearly 1 million homeless. The hardest- hit areas were in the country's northeast, some of which is controlled by the Tamil Tigers.

Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation

Click here to access the Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.

Return to Index

Sudan

Sudan's Beshir laments stumbling Darfur negotiations

Agence France Presse, 5/3/05

Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir said Tuesday that, despite improvement in the security and humanitarian situation in the western region of Darfur, peace negotiations are stumbling, largely due to "negative signals" from the UN Security Council.

"The previous period has witnessed several successful measures for containing the Darfur crisis that were mainly manifested in the voluntary return of considerable numbers of internally displaced persons to their villages, in controlling the health situation to make the region free of epidemics and in the remarkable improvement in the humanitarian situation as reflected in housing and feeding," Beshir told the National Assembly.

"The direct and indirect talks, meanwhile, continued swinging between convening and adjourning due to the negative signals and unfair pressures embodied in recent UN Security Souncil resolutions, particularly 1591 and 1593, to which our people have reacted vigorously."

Beshir, nevertheless, said, he is hopeful an agreement would be reached "in the very near future" as a result of joint efforts by the Sudanese people and by the African Union, in addition to the diplomatic support by neighbouring countries, particularly Libya, Chad and Egypt.

As many as 300,000 people are believed to have died in more than two years of civil strife pitting government forces and their Arab militia allies against ethnic minority rebels in the region. The conflict has also displaced more than two million people, according to the United Nations. Beshir also said provisions of the January 9 Comprehensive Peace Agreement "will offer a general framework for radically resolving all problems of our country topped by the Darfur problem."

Beshir reiterated his appeal to all Sudanese political parties to participate in deliberations of the National Constitutional Review Commission, which has already started drafting a transitional constitution that will be effective during a six-year interim period.

U.N. Secretary-General calls for more African Union troops in Darfur

Leyla Linton, Associated Press, 5/6/05

The African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur needs to be strengthened but help from U.N. soldiers will be limited, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report Friday. Annan said although violence in Darfur was not occurring on the massive scale of last year, the general level of insecurity in Darfur was still hindering humanitarian aid and remained "unacceptable." He said attacks have continued, highlighting the destruction last month of the South Darfur village of Khor Abeche by armed militia from the Miseriyya tribe of Niteaga under the command of Nasir Al Tijani Adel Kaadir.

Annan also said that if those displaced by the conflict were to return it is widely believed they would face renewed attacks. They were already at risk of murder, rape or other crimes if they ventured outside the camps set up to shelter them, Annan said. The AU mission needs to expand from its current level of around 2,000 to 7,447 soldiers and police by the end of August to improve security, Annan said. He said large numbers of people displaced by the conflict were not expected to return to their homes between June and August because of the threat of violence and the lack of food.

Annan said the U.N. peacekeeping mission to Sudan would only be able to offer limited help to the AU troops in the coming months because it needed to focus all its attention on monitoring a north-south peace deal struck earlier this year between the government and southern rebels that ended a 21-year civil war. The United Nations and its mission in Sudan could, however, help the African Union mission with technical advice, training support, help in choosing police, by developing an expansion plan and by convening troop contributors and pledging conferences.

An even larger deployment of 12,000 troops would be needed to keep the peace throughout Darfur to enable the return of all displaced people by the 2006 planting season, according to Annan. He stressed that although it would be up to the African Union to decide how to organize this, its leaders might decide it was time for the wider international community to play a part in this complex operation which would require "a substantial increase in resources," he said.

The vast western Sudanese region of Darfur is the scene of one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. An estimated 180,000 people have died in the upheaval - many from hunger and disease - and about 2 million others have been displaced since the conflict began in February 2003.

It erupted when rebels took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin. The government is accused of responding with a counterinsurgency campaign in which the Arab Janjaweed militia committed wide-scale abuses against the African population. A U.N. commission concluded in January that crimes against humanity - but not genocide - occurred in Darfur and recommended that cases of alleged atrocities since July 1, 2002 be referred to the International Criminal Court.

UN starts food airlift from Libya to Darfur

Agence France Presse, 5/7/05

The United Nations Saturday began an airlift of food from Libya to the Darfur region of western Sudan as a precaution against a major disaster that could affect millions later in the year. "An Ilyushin-76 aircraft took off from Al Kufra in southeast Libya with 30 metric tons of cereals and later landed in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur," a statement from the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) said.

"It was the first flight taking food aid via Libya direct to Darfur and followed the opening up last year of an ancient caravan route overland for convoys of WFP food aid to travel from Libya to refugee camps in Chad."

The statement said that by using the new air corridor, the WFP will be able to deliver an extra 5,000 tonnes of food each month to Darfur over the next three months in preparation for the rainy season, a period when many roads become impassable in Darfur and food needs peak.

"The extra capacity using the Al Kufra airlift will be a tremendous help during the approaching rainy season and concurrent period of greatest food shortages," Ramiro Lopes da Silva, WFP representative in Sudan and country director, said. "We are looking at a worst-case scenario of more than three million people needing food assistance in Darfur from August."

The WFP said its capacity to reach people uprooted by two years of conflict in Darfur had been boosted since April by the overland transport of food from Abeche in Chad to Geneina in western Darfur. So far 400 tonnes of sorghum had been delivered along this route.

"Both the overland route from Chad, with the potential of providing an additional 5,000 tonnes of food per month, and the new air corridor will greatly augment WFP's existing monthly delivery capability of up to 50,000 tonnes using road, rail and air transport within Sudan," the statement said.

It added that the WFP had so far received 286 million dollars of the 467 million dollars it needed to feed an average of 2.3 million people each month in Darfur in 2005, leaving a 39 percent shortfall. Since 2003 fighting in Darfur between rebels and pro-government militias has led to an estimated 180,000 to 300,000 deaths and led to the displacement of more than two million people.

Return to Index