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