Peace Negotiations Watch
Monday, May 23, 2005
(Volume IV, Number 19)
Contents:
Afghanistan
U.S., Afghan presidents meet amid
instability, protests
Bush meets with Karzai in Washington at
White House; Karzai denies reports he has done little to end poppy production.
Armenia/Azerbaijan
Armenia denies offer to hand over
territory to Azerbaijan
Talks between Armenian and Azeri
presidents takes place at Council of Europe summit in Warsaw.
Burundi/Rwanda
Burundi army accuses FNL rebels of
attacks despite ceasefire pact
Army commander says two civilians were
killed overnight.
Tutsi political groups urge Burundians
to boycott elections
Tutsi politicians accuse Hutu candidates
of being responsible for genocide.
Chechnya
Russian officials say Kuwaiti militant
linked to al-Qaeda killed near Chechnya
Militant may have been al-Qaeda emissary
to Chechen rebels.
Congo
Eight years after fall of Mobutu, Congo
residents say life is worse
Money has been overspent on war and
not enough on infrastructure.
Democratic Republic of Congo Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the DR
Congo Negotiation Simulation.
Georgia/Abkhazia
Three Georgians kidnapped in breakaway
Abkhazia region, one later released
Georgia hosted Belarusian opposition
leader during recent Bush visit.
Georgia, Russia resume talks on
withdrawing Russian bases
Two countries unable to agree on
timetable for the withdrawal of the bases.
Indonesia
Indonesia lifts emergency in Aceh;
rebels demand full withdrawal
New round of
talks between government and rebels to begin this week after successful
first-round in Finland.
Aceh
Negotiation Simulation
Click
here to access the Aceh
Negotiation Simulation.
Ivory
Coast
Pro-government militia in Ivory Coast
ready to disarm without force
Militia leader vows to fight back if his
group is disarmed by force.
Fear and loathing in the heart of Ivory
Coast's confidence zone
Government accused of dereliction in
buffer zone.
Kashmir
Pakistani
president calls for early solution of Kashmir issue
Musharraf suggests
resolution of Kashmir dispute before his term ends in 2007.
Pakistan invites separatist leaders in
Indian Kashmir to visit
Hurriyat
leaders expected to visit Pakistan on June 2.
Kashmir
Negotiation Simulation
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here to access the Kashmir
Negotiation Simulation
Kosovo
Serbia welcomes U.S. Kosovo initiative, but
rules out province's independence
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns calls 2005
the year of decision for Kosovo.
U.S. Is Seeking to Speed Up Talks on
Kosovo's Status
Burns emphasizes need for talks to help stabilize
Balkans region.
OSCE chairman urges dialogue between Kosovo
Albanian leaders, Belgrade
Jan Kubis met with Boris Tadic, stating that Kosovo
talks should begin as soon as possible.
Kosovo Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Kosovo
Negotiation Simulation.
Liberia
Report: Send Liberia's Taylor to
Tribunal
Watchdog group says Taylor is violating
terms of his exile from Nigeria.
Macedonia
Macedonia offers compromise in name
dispute with neighbor Greece
Macedonia rejected UN name
proposal, Republika-Makedonija-Skopje, last month.
Moldova
Ukraine proposes autonomy for Trans-Dniester within Moldova's boundaries
Autonomy plan would include internationally-monitored
elections in Trans-Dniester region.
Morocco
Former prisoners of war seek release of
fellow soldiers
Senator John McCain encourages Polisario
Front to release Moroccan prisoners.
Nepal
Nepal parties demand king scraps his
anti-corruption commission
Former
prime minister faces two separate graft cases.
Nepal Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Nepal
Negotiation Simulation.
Philippines
U.S. reaffirms backing for Philippine
peace talks with Muslim rebels
Secretary of State Rice encouraged by
progress in talks.
Serbia &
Montenegro
Nationalist gathering on Srebrenica
massacre leads to confrontation
Discussion at Belgrade Law Faculty
challenges whether Srebrenica massacre ever took place.
Spain Backs Serbia-Montenegro for EU
Spanish Foreign Minister supports
EU bid, while encouraging Serbia & Montenegro to remain united.
Serbia searching for top war crimes
suspects, official says
Deputy Prime Minister Labus speaks
before European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Sri Lanka
Suspected
Tamil Tiger rebels kill anti-guerrilla activist amid escalating tension in
eastern Sri Lanka
Violence has increased since last
year, when a split occurred among the Tamil Tigers.
Tamil
Tiger rebels push for tsunami aid deal with Sri Lanka government
Marxist party opposed to making
Tamil Tigers a partner in aid distribution efforts.
Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Sri
Lanka Negotiation Simulation
Sudan
Darfur
Peace Talks to Resume May 30
Mini-summit in
Tripoli leads to agreement that talks will resume later this month.
Sudan keen on refugee return amid
reconstruction of ruined region
500,000
Sudanese fled southern part of the country.
Africa Union lists military hardware it
needs from EU, NATO and UN for Darfur peacekeeping
AU
peacekeeping operation has been bogged down by logistical problems and lack of
air support.
Afghanistan
U.S., Afghan presidents meet amid
instability, protests
Jennifer
Loven, Associated Press, 5/23/05
President
Bush held up Afghanistan as a model of emerging democracy and anti-terror
partner, but President Hamid Karzai came to their meeting Monday waving a long
list of grievances associated with U.S. involvement in his country's struggle
to recover from decades of instability.
At
Karzai's Oval Office session with Bush, the centerpiece of a four-day U.S.
visit and the two leaders' first such get-together since September, the Afghan
leader hoped to win a commitment for a long-term - perhaps permanent - U.S.
military presence in his country. But Karzai also said in advance of the
meeting at the White House that he wants greater control over American military
operations there.
Approximately
20,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, and there is no end in sight to their
mission - including the still unfruitful search for al-Qaida leader Osama bin
Laden. That is in addition to about 8,200 troops from NATO countries in Kabul
and elsewhere. But there has been little U.S. receptiveness to the idea of a
rigid, permanent arrangement there. Karzai
also said that he wants to take over custody of the hundreds of Afghans
detained in military jails in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during
and after the 2001 U.S. invasion that ousted the repressive Taliban regime.
And,
citing reports of prisoner abuse by American forces at the U.S. military's main
base at Bagram, Karzai said over the weekend that he wants promises of
punishment for any U.S. troops guilty of mistreatment. The White House gave little hope there would
be announcements Monday on any of Karzai's requests. "I don't know that I'd expect
that," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "This is an
opportunity for the two leaders to discuss a range of issues, and particularly
to talk about Afghanistan's democratic progress that they're making."
Bush
has promised that advancing freedom's march across the globe is the top foreign
policy goal of his second term. So the meeting with Karzai was a chance to
showcase his administration's successes in the war on terror and support for
young democracies. In his weekly radio
address Saturday, Bush said Afghanistan's new constitution, elected president
and upcoming parliamentary elections in September represent "remarkable
progress." "A nation that once
knew only the terror of the Taliban is now seeing a rebirth of freedom, and we
will help them succeed," the president added.
But
the protests and other difficulties in Afghanistan show the complexities
involved in turning chaotic, poor countries with long histories of violence
into stable, thriving democracies.
Karzai
began his U.S. stay by sharply denying a reported State Department cable that
said he has not worked strongly enough to curtail production of opium, the raw
material for heroin. The cable, from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, said the U.S. crackdown there has not been very
effective, in part because Karzai "has been unwilling to assert strong
leadership," The New York Times reported Sunday.
"The
Afghan people have done our job," Karzai said Sunday on CNN's "Late
Edition." "Now the international community must come and provide
alternative livelihood to the Afghan people, which they have not done so far.
Let us stop this blame." Production
of opium has soared to record levels since the fall of the Taliban, leading to
warnings that the former al-Qaida haven is fast turning into a
"narco-state." Last year, cultivation yielded nearly 90 percent of
the world's supply. Recent anti-American
protests across Afghanistan killed at least 15 people and threatened a security
crisis for Karzai's feeble central government.
The
White House blamed a Newsweek report - later retracted by the magazine - for
igniting the violence. The May 9 story said Pentagon investigators had found
evidence that interrogators at Guantanamo placed copies of the Quran, the
Muslim holy book, in washrooms to unsettle suspects and flushed one down a
toilet. But Karzai has blamed opponents
of his ties with the United States and of his reconciliation efforts with the
Taliban.
Also
last week, there were two fatal attacks in two days on employees of a
U.S.-funded anti-drugs project in southern Afghanistan, a region prey to drug
traffickers and insurgents. An Italian aid worker also was kidnapped in Kabul
last week. Karzai was also meeting with
Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, congressional lawmakers and the new
head of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz. Karzai received an honorary degree
Sunday from Boston University and will pick up another at the University of
Nebraska-Omaha.
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______________________________________________________________________________________
Armenia/Azerbaijan
Armenia denies offer to hand over
territory to Azerbaijan
Associated Press, 5/18/05
Armenia
on Wednesday denied a claim by neighboring Azerbaijan that it offered at recent
talks to return occupied territory adjacent to the disputed enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Foreign Ministry
spokesman Gamlet Gasparyan said the statement by Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister
Elmar Mamdyarov that Armenia had agreed in principle to withdraw from seven
occupied regions "does not correspond to reality."
The
talks between the presidents of both countries took place Monday ahead of the
two-day Council of Europe summit in the Polish capital, Warsaw. They focused on the presence of Armenian
troops in Nagorno-Karabakh, 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.
Despite
the denial of the territorial concession, the Armenian official stressed that
the Warsaw talks - which also included a meeting between the leaders of
Azerbaijan and its main ally Turkey - had achieved progress in securing a
settlement. "It was another step on
the road to a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem," he said.
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.
France, Russia and the United States lead the Minsk Group under the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is seeking to assist
a diplomatic solution.
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Burundi army accuses FNL rebels of
attacks despite ceasefire pact
Agence France Presse, 5/19/05
Burundi's
army Thursday accused the National Liberation Forces (FNL), the country's lone
remaining insurgency group, of attacks despite the weekend signing of a ceasefire
deal with the government. A rebel
spokesman responded angrily, saying the army's allegation was "a
declaration of war" despite the truce deal, while representatives of the
United Nations and African Union urged rival sides to calm down and pursue a
slow transition to peace and democracy. On
an upbeat note, top police officials said the integration of former rebels into
a new police force was completed, bringing the total strength to around 17,000.
Army
commander General Juvenal Niyoyunguruza said two civilians were killed
overnight Wednesday, only three days after the rebels penned a cessation of
hostilities agreement with the government. "How can you say that the FNL stopped
fighting when they continue with the killings and looting from the people?"
the privately owned Radio Publique Africaine (RPA) quoted General Juvenal
Niyoyunguruza, the country's first region military commander, as saying. "Last night (overnight Wednesday), the
FNL killed two civilians in Mumbini locality and looted money. They have not
stopped killing," Niyoyunguruza said.
The
first military region covers Bujumbura's western rural outskirts, the FNL's
zone of operations. "The army's
declarations show that President (Domitien) Ndayizeye has no real power,"
FNL spokesman Pasteur Habimana told AFP. "It's just made a declaration of
war on us despite of the signing of an accord in Dar es Salaam." On May 15, FNL leader Agathon Rwasa and
Ndayizeye, meeting in the Tanzanian port city of Dar es Salaam, signed an
agreement calling for an immediate cessation of hostilies in the country and
are expected to hold talks on the modalities of a permanent ceasefire.
"We
realise that there is still fighting on the ground," Niyoyunguruza said.
"We heard about the agreement over the radio, but the leaders have not
given us instructions about it." Habimana
said the army itself had failed to stop attacks and announced that Rwasa
"urges all FNL fighters everywhere to defend themselves from now on. The
FNL, up to now, has been aggressive neither militarily nor verbally."
The
small central African nation is emerging with difficulty from 12 years of civil
war that killed some 300,000 people. Up to Sunday, the FNL was the country's
sole rebel group not to have signed a ceasefire agreement with the government. The head of the civilian police team in a UN
mission in Burundi, Ibrahim Diallo, said "the integration of former rebel
fighters into the Burundi National Police (PNB) has been complete since
Monday."
"This
concerns 6,132 people now deployed at 20 centres all around the country, where
they have joined their new companions in the former gendarmerie and
police," Diallo told a weekly press briefing. A senior PNB officer who asked not to be
named told AFP that the overall number, under a scheme to give ethnic Hutus and
Tutsis parity in the security forces, was "around 17,000 men, which is
fewer than the planned 20,000." While
the fighters traded accusations, the United Nations and the African Union urged
Burundi's rival political parties to pledge to respect the results of an
upcoming series of elections.
"We,
representatives of the AU and the UN, appeal to you, heads of parties, to
publicly pledge now to respect the code of conduct and to reject any act of
intimidation and incitement to violence, to pledge to accept poll results once
they are proclaimed and endorsed by the electoral commission," said
Carolyn McAskie, UN chief Kofi Annan's special representative for Burundi.
"We
want from you a firm and solemn pledge before the Burundian people and the
international community," said McAskie, who was flanked by Mamadou Bah,
her counterpart from the AU. Campaigning
for the June 3 communal elections opened Wednesday, the first in a series of
five polls that will culminated with legislative elections on July 4 and a
presidential ballot on August 19.
Tutsi political groups urge Burundians
to boycott elections
Agence France Presse, 5/21/05
Six
minority Tutsi political groups on Saturday called on Burundians to boycott
upcoming elections, saying the polls will "impose the worst
criminals" as leaders in the country.
"The worst criminals against humanity and those responsible for
genocide will be imposed through a parody of electoral consultations,"
said Serges Kananiye, vice-president of a group calling itself the Association
for the Fight Against Genocide.
He,
along with leaders of five other groups, said elections to be held in the
coming months to replace the war-torn nation's transitional government with the
endorsement of regional leaders would be nothing but a farce. "Whether you are Hutu or Tutsi, we urge
you not to vote and to urge others not to vote either because nothing good will
come from these elections," said Charles Mukasi, president of a radical
wing of the main Tutsi party UPRONA.
"It
is the unpunished criminals who are on the electoral lists, they will commit
genocide against the Tutsis," he told thousands of Burundians at a rally
here. The crowd had gathered in
Bujumbura to commemorate what they refer to as "the Tutsi genocide by the FRODEBU
party in 1993" observed on the 21st of every month.
The
Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU), a Hutu group led by the President
Domitien Ndayizeye, is currently at the top of Burundi's transitional
government and considers the association's members to be extremists. The tiny central African state, still
struggling to recover from more than a decade of civil war, is scheduled to
hold a series of elections between June 3 to August 19 after which a new
government will be sworn in.
Some
300,000 people have been killed in the war which was sparked in 1993 by the
assassination by Tutsi military officers of President Melchior Ndadaye, the
country's first Hutu president, just months after his democratic election.
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Russian officials say Kuwaiti militant
linked to al-Qaida killed near Chechnya
Steve
Gutterman, Associated Press, 5/18/05
Russian
authorities said Wednesday that a Kuwaiti militant who was an al-Qaida emissary
to Chechnya has been killed by security forces in a neighboring region, the
second statement in as many days linking foreigners to Chechen rebels.
The
alleged militant, who went by the single name Jarah, was killed Tuesday evening
along with another suspect during an operation near the Chechen border in
Dagestan, said Maj.-Gen. Ilya Shabalkin, the spokesman for the Russian campaign
against rebels in Chechnya and surrounding areas.
In
a statement, Shabalkin said Jarah was an al-Qaida emissary in Chechnya and has
close connections with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an outlawed Egyptian
Islamic movement, and of Al-Haramain, a Saudi Charity that the kingdom's
government dissolved last year amid U.S. suspicion that it was bankrolling
al-Qaida.
He
said Jarah had been a middleman for the funding of Chechen rebels by foreign
terror groups and had helped top rebel leaders - Shamil Basayev and Aslan
Maskhadov, who was killed earlier this year - to organize "many large
terrorist acts." He did not name any specific attacks Jarah allegedly helped
plan.
Russia
authorities say Chechen rebels, fighting their second separatist war in a
decade, have been financed by Islamic terrorist groups abroad and that many
Arab mercenaries have fought alongside the rebels in the mountainous southern
region, in some cases leading groups of militants.
According
to Shabalkin, whose claims could not be independently confirmed, Jarah received
training in Taliban terror camps and was adept at preparing bombs and poisons.
He said that Jarah had spent "a long period of time" in the Pankisi
Gorge, a region near Chechnya in neighboring Georgia, and in Azerbaijan.
While
in Georgia and Azerbaijan, he said the Kuwaiti citizen and unidentified
associates received large amounts of money from "foreign terrorist
centers" and sent it along to Russia's North Caucasus region, which
includes Chechnya.
Jarah
also frequently entered Chechnya, where he moved with rebel groups under
Basayev and took part in terror and other attacks, trained militants in
explosives and taught them extremist Muslim ideology, Shabalkin said. He was
also involved in training female suicide bombers, Shabalkin's statement said.
On
Tuesday, Shabalkin had announced that Russian security forces killed a
prominent Chechen rebel he accused of planning chemical attacks. He said the
rebel was supposed to carry out the attacks under orders from a Jordanian
militant, Abu Mudjaid, who allegedly organized a shipment of toxic substances
to Chechnya from abroad. Authorities in
Chechnya say many attacks there have been carried out by militants entering
from Dagestan, the restive region where Shabalkin said Jarah was killed.
Russian
and regional officials met Wednesday to discuss plans to base a Russian
military unit in Dagestan's Botlikh district, an area near the Chechen border
where rebels seized villages in 1999 fighting that was one of the catalysts for
the Kremlin's decision to send troops into Chechnya that year, starting the
second war.
Russian
forces had withdrawn from Chechnya following a devastating 1994-1996 war that
left the region with de-facto independence.
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Eight years after fall of Mobutu, Congo
residents say life is worse
Bryan Mealer, Associated
Press, 5/17/05
Eight years ago, the flamboyant, cruel and rapacious
Mobutu Sese Seko fled the country he had named Zaire as rebels marched into his
capital. Now, President Joseph Kabila -
son of the rebel leader who ousted the dictator - has ended a war, pushed
through a constitution and promised elections. But as Congolese marked the
anniversary of Mobutu's fall Tuesday, many say life has grown worse. A few hundred people attended anniversary
church services Tuesday, and others trickled to the capital's Laurent Kabila
memorial. Congolese posed for pictures near a copper-plated bust of the rebel
leader, who was assassinated by a disgruntled bodyguard in 2001, and stood next
to his coffin, which is draped with a Congolese flag and encased under glass.
Armed soldiers stood guard.
The memorial contrasts sharply with the landscape
elsewhere in Congo's hardscrabble capital streets are cratered with potholes
filled with neon-green sewage. Begging children swarm around open car windows.
Jobs are a distant memory, much like electricity and water and a life once led
with dignity.
The rebel victory was heralded as a new beginning
for Congo, whose economy had been gutted by Mobutu and his coffer-robbing
associates. Laurent Kabila, who changed the country's name back to Congo from
Zaire, appointed himself president and promised a massive turnaround. Instead,
he squandered what little Mobutu had left, then fought invading armies from
Rwanda and Uganda in a war that killed nearly 4 million people. Kinshasa residents say their day-to-day
survival is more threatened now than under the dog days of "Papa"
Mobutu. Their children are dying faster, their husbands are unemployed and to
eat one meal a day is a stroke of good fortune.
"When Papa was president, we had money for
dresses and we ate breakfast everyday," said Emma Matimba, who sells
scrawny piles of peanuts near Kinshasa's soccer stadium, where Kabila was sworn
in to great aplomb two weeks after his army's May 17 arrival. "Now we don't have water or power to
cook," she said. "I can't afford to send my kids to school. Kabila
made life insufferable."
When the portly, Marxist-leaning rebel leader
arrived in Kinshasa, after a legendary eight-month march across Congo, the
country's national debt was a whopping US$9.6 billion (€7.6 billion).
International donors, who'd given up on Congo after Mobutu used aid money to
buy yachts and French villas, slowly came back.
But donors were soon accusing Kabila of pocketing aid money. Hopes of
promised elections were shattered when Kabila banned all political activity. He
even forbade wearing miniskirts.
Neighboring Rwanda and Uganda had backed Kabila's
September 1996 invasion to oust Hutu rebels who'd fled to Congo after Rwanda's
1994 genocide. Rwanda believed the Hutus were planning another slaughter and
felt Mobutu was not doing enough to stop them.
Once in office, Kabila fired many of the Rwandan advisers who'd aided
his advance. In 1998, Rwanda and Uganda
invaded Congo again, sparking a five-year war that sucked in six African
armies. Thrust into power after his
father's 2001 assassination, Joseph Kabila helped bring all warring sides
together in 2003 to form a transitional, power-sharing government.
On Monday, Congo's parliament adopted a new
constitution that paves way for the end of the transition government and
promises elections by June 2006. International donors seem to have faith in
Joseph Kabila, and have poured millions into the country's election
preparations. But still, even after
nearly three years of peace, Congo's people have seen little improvement. According Congo's finance ministry, the
country's national debt has sank to US$14 billion (€11.08 billion).
A parliamentary report in March found massive
overspending by the president and his Cabinet. Spending on elections, new roads
and education was 50 percent under budget; money was spent instead on continued
fighting in the east and travel by the president and vice presidents. The local currency dips weekly against the
dollar. Poorly paid soldiers loot and steal from residents, and health care is
so out of reach most people don't even bother going to a doctor.
"The government only makes themselves and their
families rich," said Farine Apoa, a bread seller in Kinshasa's Victoire
slum. Apoa said two of her seven children died recently of malaria, and
could've been saved if she could afford a doctor. "Mobutu was bad, but at least we had more
food, and our husbands had jobs," she said, pointing at rotting garbage
floating in a nearby pothole. "Look at how we live. This place is a nasty
dump."
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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Three Georgians kidnapped in breakaway
Abkhazia region, one later released
Associated Press, 5/19/05
Three
Georgians were kidnapped Thursday in the breakaway region of Abkhazia, and one
was later released with a note from the abductors demanding a ransom, officials
said. The kidnapping stoked tensions
between Tbilisi and the separatist province, which the federal government hopes
to bring back into the fold. The three
men were kidnapped Thursday morning in the province's Gali district, when the
car they were driving was stopped by unknown people, regional security official
Temur Gabunia said.
One
man, Spartak Dzhegeria, was later released with a message from the kidnappers
demanding a ransom of US$5,000 (€3,900) for the safe return of the other two,
Zvid Partsvania and Arkady Tabagua, the official said. Gabunia gave no further details about the
case, which both Georgian and Abkhazian officials are investigating. Dzhegeria recently had returned from the Serb
province of Kosovo, where he served with Georgia's peacekeeping troops.
Abkhazia
has run its own affairs since 1993, when separatists drove out Georgian
government troops. The Black Sea region is not recognized internationally, but
has cultivated closer ties with Russia, which has peacekeepers there. In a separate development, Georgia on
Thursday criticized the visit of officials from the former Soviet republic of
Belarus to the Abkhazian capital Sukhumi.
Georgian
Parliament Speaker Nino Burdzhanadze said the visit demonstrated that Belarus
was "violating elementary norms of civilization by dealing with issues of
sovereignty of another country, of its territorial integrity."
Observers
in Tbilisi believe the move to send a delegation to Abkhazia was Belarus'
retaliation for Georgia's hosting a Belarusian opposition leader during the
recent visit to Georgia of the U.S. President George W. Bush. Belarusian authoritarian President Alexander
Lukashenko has vowed that a popular uprising - such as those that recently
toppled longtime governments in three ex-Soviet republics, including Georgia -
would not take place in Belarus.
Georgia, Russia resume talks on
withdrawing Russian bases
Misha
Dzhindzhikhashvili, Associated Press,
5/23/05
Georgia
and Russia resumed negotiations Monday on withdrawing Soviet-era Russian bases
from the Caucasus Mountains country, as Russian President Vladimir Putin said
Moscow would not tolerate being pressured in the talks. The two countries have been unable to agree
on a timetable for the withdrawal of the bases - a source of growing tension as
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and his Western-oriented government seek
to shake off Russian influence.
As
a Russian delegation arrived in Tbilisi, Putin warned Georgian officials
against putting pressure on Moscow in the talks, saying in televised remarks
from Moscow that "there is nothing that would require an instantaneous
withdrawal of the troops." Georgia
last week imposed sanctions against the bases in a bid to have Moscow speed up
the withdrawal, limiting visas to Russian soldiers and placing additional
controls on the shipment of equipment and cargo to and from the bases.
"Such
a pressured way of conducting negotiations seems ungrounded to me," Putin
said in Moscow. Putin hinted that Russia
had its own means for pressuring its former satellite states, by urging Russian
energy companies to charge world market prices for supplies instead of the
discounted rates offered to former Soviet republics. "We need to build relations with foreign
partners in the sphere of energy supplies on market conditions," Putin
said, but added that "economic sanctions do not always prove effective in
achieving political goals." Georgia
has insisted the bases be out by January 2008, but Russia wants more time to
prepare infrastructure to house the returning troops and equipment.
Georgian
officials appeared ready for a compromise, however. Parliament speaker Nino
Burdzhanadze told Kviris Palitra newspaper that Georgia may accept having the
bases withdrawn in the course of 2008, as Moscow has suggested. "It is not crucial whether the bases
will leave before Jan. 1, 2008, or in May of that year," she was quoted as
saying in Monday's edition.
Russia's
special envoy leading the delegation, Igor Savolsky, denied speculation that
the two sides would be discussing the issue of compensation for the bases'
withdrawal. Moscow previously insisted on several hundred million dollars
(euros) in payment.
"There
has not been and there will be no talk on compensation," Savolsky told
reporters upon arriving at the Tbilisi airport. "The sides have agreed
that they will seek additional external financial resources." Savolsky also said that some of the troops
would be relocated to Armenia, an ex-Soviet republic that is a close regional
ally to Russia and where Moscow has a military presence. Most of the troops in
Georgia, however, will be moved to Russia, he said.
Separately
on Monday, Saakashvili opened a new customs checkpoint on the
Georgia-Azerbaijani border. The checkpoint was built under a U.S.-financed
program, which envisages building several others. Saakashvili voiced hope that
similar checkpoints would soon operate on the borders with Abkhazia and
South-Ossetia, two breakaway provinces that Tbilisi hopes to bring into the
fold.
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Indonesia lifts emergency in Aceh;
rebels demand full withdrawal
Slobodan
Lekic, Associated Press, 5/19/05
Indonesia
lifted emergency rule in insurgency-hit Aceh on Thursday but kept soldiers
there for post-tsunami reconstruction, as rebels demanded a full withdrawal,
accusing troops of keeping up attacks despite efforts to rebuild the province
and negotiate peace.
Jakarta
imposed martial law in Aceh two years ago when it abandoned peace talks and
launched a full-scale offensive against rebels in the Free Aceh Movement. It
was downgraded to an emergency a year later, though fighting continued. More
than 3,000 people have died in the violence.
After
the Dec. 26 tsunami killed more than 128,000 people in Aceh, the rebels
proclaimed a unilateral truce, saying they wanted to help rescue efforts, and
the government reopened peace talks. Both
sides describe the talks in Finland as a success and the next round opens next
Thursday. However, a key demand for the rebels remains the full withdrawal of
the 39,000 government troops in province.
"Even
after the tsunami - while foreign troops, the international press and
well-meaning NGOs gathered in the capital and brought attention to Aceh's
plight - the people of Aceh continue to suffer under the Indonesian gun,"
rebel spokesman Sofyan Dawood said in a statement Thursday. "Abduction and murder of civilians, and
the torture and summary execution of our captured fighters has continued
without an hour's pause."
In
Aceh, residents said the presence of the security forces remained pervasive
despite the formal end of the emergency.
"I think today is no different to any other previous day,"
said Zulfikar, a 42 year-old street vendor in the provincial capital Banda
Aceh. "We do not see any change."
Under the emergency, the military had broad authority to impose curfews,
detain suspects indefinitely and censor the press.
The
lifting of the emergency Thursday means that the military no longer can
infringe on civil liberties in Aceh and that the local administration is being handed
back to civilians, Minister of Justice and Human Rights Hamid Awaluddin said.
But
the government has refused demands for a military pullout. Cabinet Secretary
Sudi Silahahi said the troops would stay "to restore peace and order"
and help local governments "safeguard the process of rehabilitation and
reconstruction of Aceh." Human
rights groups say soldiers have been responsible for numerous abuses, including
extrajudicial killings of unarmed villagers, torture and rape in Aceh. "Indonesia's negotiators serve up warm
words across the table in Helsinki, but the military continues to round up
entire Achehnese villages," Dawood said.
"Why
would a peaceful Aceh need Indonesian troops? Is Thailand or Malaysia planning
to invade us? Or does Indonesia have some other, darker reason?" Dawood
said. Rebels of the Free Aceh Movement
have been fighting for independence for the oil and gas-rich province since
1976. Nearly a fifth of the country's
armed forces are currently engaged in Aceh. About 15,000 policemen, including
heavily armed paramilitary units, also are deployed to the province on the
northern tip of Sumatra island.
Aceh
Negotiation Simulation
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Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law &
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Pro-government militia in Ivory Coast
ready to disarm without force
Agence France Presse, 5/19/05
A
pro-government militia in western Ivory Coast said Thursday its fighters are
ready to surrender their weapons provided that the disarmament program backed
by the international community is not conducted by force. "We are in favor of disarmament,"
said Denis Glofiei Maho, the leader of the militia known as the Front to
Liberate the Great West (FLGO) in Guiglo, the main city in the loyalist zone of
the west African state's cocoa belt.
But
Maho, considered one of the most powerful and well-organized militia leaders in
Ivory Coast warned that his troops will fight back if they are disarmed by
force. "We will die before we
surrender our arms by force," he told AFP.
After years of delay, the Ivorian military and rebel New Forces reached
agreement Saturday setting June 27 as the date to begin the disarmament
operation, a key obstacle in reconciling the country divided since September
2002 between rebel north and loyalist south.
Tens
of thousands of rebel fighters are to be demobilized around the northern zone,
while FLGO and other militias loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo will be
cantoned in government-built camps in the south. There was, however, no agreement as to how
the militias will be disarmed and dismantled, which the rebel military has said
was a key obstacle to any weapons handover on their side.
Unlike
in neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Ivorians themselves and not the
United Nations will run the disarmament program, which has been plagued with
poor organization and a lack of funds since its inception. The 6,200 UN and 4,000 French peacekeepers
keeping the protagonists apart will assist in the coordination and monitoring
of the process but will otherwise limit their involvement.
A
stipend of some 500,000 CFA francs (770 euros, 1,000 dollars) will be issued to
each disarmed combatant, which is one of the major incentives, Maho said, for
his 7,000-strong force to surrender their arms.
"The western-based rebels we fought against will benefit from
disarmament, so why shouldn't we?" he said. "There is no reason why
we should not benefit, and the national disarmament commission is very much in
agreement with us on this point."
The
World Bank, the major partner of the Ivorian government in the funding of the
disarmament operation, released a report last week chock-full of concerns about
the way the national disarmament commission was handling the operation, saying
it suffered from a "certain number of inadequacies".
Fear and loathing in the heart of Ivory
Coast's confidence zone
Agence France Presse, 5/23/05
Scrawled
in a wobbly hand, the appeal "we want peace in Ivory Coast" was
bittersweet, written as it was on a piece of splintered wood inside a ransacked
house piled high with garbage. Such are
the contradictions that exist in Ivory Coast's confidence zone, a 400 kilometer
(250 mile) strip of no-man's-land dividing rebel north from loyalist south
under the watchful eyes of UN and French peacekeepers since September 2002 when
a rebel uprising triggered divisive civil war.
"There
is no security here," said Felix Doue, village chief of Guinglo-Zia,
tucked under the southern boundary on the government side. "This notion of confidence zone is so
tiring, when the truth is that any provocation could make everything
explode." The town of Blody, proves
no exception. House after house on its dusty streets bears the scars of the
ethnic antagonism that pits indigenous farmers against economic migrants,
animist and Christian against Muslim.
Nor
has Blody been spared the violence that has punctuated the years of antagonism,
stoked higher by xenophobic militias and municipal officials reaping the
material benefits of the war economy in this lush cocoa-growing belt in the
southwest. At least seven people were
killed, including the village chief, and three are still missing after clashes
in early May that erupted in nearby Duekoue and radiated out into the villages
linked together by red laterite trails.
Neither
the indigenous nor migrant community will take responsibility for unleashing
the violence, though both sides recognize that it is fear that drives the
fighting. An exodus from Blody of the
indigenous farmers has only made the migrants more vulnerable, they say, likely
to be confronted by the pro-government militias based in Duekoue who slip into
the confidence zone with ease, undetected by the Bangladeshis ostensibly in
charge of security in the zone.
But
slip through they do, due to the shortage of troops, material and funds that
has dogged the UN operation at every step in the 13 months since it was
deployed in Ivory Coast. "The
confidence zone has unfortunately become a zone without confidence," said
one UN official, based in the restive west where rolling ethnic clashes have
claimed dozens of lives in the last several months. "The zone is too vast and outstrips the
resources of the UN peacekeepers, who cannot be everywhere, all the time."
Such
problems have been catalogued repeatedly, by independent and United Nations
teams alike, and have become even more critical with a planned disarmament campaign
due to start next month and elections slated for October.
A
report in March to the UN Security Council from Secretary General Kofi Annan
said the state was derelict in providing legal, police or juridical protection
to the zone's residents, while Human Rights Watch also deplored the instability
and insecurity in the zone. "Weapons
are moving around and people are being killed," said Blody resident Andre
Doh. "In all actuality, the
confidence zone does not exist, but nobody will admit it."
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Pakistani
president calls for early solution of Kashmir issue
Associated
Press,
5/20/05
Pakistan's leader called for early resolution of the
Kashmir territorial issue, saying he was ready to discuss any reasonable option
to resolve the lingering dispute between nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and
India. "We must grasp a fleeting
moment" to solve this problem, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Friday
night. "I personally feel it should be done within the tenures of (Indian)
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and myself."
Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in
1999 and later held parliamentary elections, is due to complete his term as
president in 2007, although the ruling party has said it wants him to remain in
power beyond that. Singh's term as prime
minister ends in 2009. Musharraf, who
was addressing a gathering of journalists in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad,
said resolving the Kashmir issue would help ensure durable peace in South Asia.
Kashmir, a former princely state in the Himalayas,
was divided between India and Pakistan shortly after they gained independence
from Britain in 1947. Both neighbor countries claim the entire territory, and
have fought two of their three wars over it.
Pakistan and India have recently held talks aimed at resolving all
issues between them, including Kashmir. After
more than five decades of bitter hostility, they recently started a bus service
between the capitals of their respective portions of Kashmir so that divided
families can meet with relatives and friends.
Pakistan invites separatist leaders in
Indian Kashmir to visit
Sadaqat
Jan, Associated Press, 5/23/05
Pakistan
has invited Muslim separatist leaders from India's portion of Kashmir for a
visit early next month, a government spokesman said Monday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani
said Pakistan expected the leaders from the All Parties Hurriyat Conference - a
separatist coalition - to arrive on June 2 by a bus that links the two parts of
Kashmir controlled by Pakistan and India.
"A very warm welcome awaits the Hurriyat leaders when they visit
Pakistan," Jilani said.
Pakistan
and India both claim Kashmir in its entirety. They have fought two wars over
Kashmir since their independence from British rule in 1947. India has denied permission to APHC leaders
to travel to Pakistan in the past and their passports are
"impounded," said Farooq Rahmani, a leader of Pakistan's chapter of
APHC, a conglomerate of separatist political and religious groups in Kashmir.
"Pakistan
has displayed large-heartedness by inviting the APHC leaders. But let's see
whether India will allow them to travel here," he said. In Srinagar, the capital of
Indian-administered Kashmir, leaders of the APHC, which has two factions, said
they will take a decision about Pakistan's invitation soon. "Only when we receive the formal
invitation, will we be able to decide the future course. We will be meeting on
Wednesday to discuss the matter and decide," said one faction leader,
Molvi Abbas Ansari.
The
other faction leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, also said they hadn't received a
formal invite but would "take a decision very soon." Mehbooba Mufti, a lawmaker whose People's
Democratic Party leads the governing coalition in Indian-adminstered Kashmir,
said the Pakistani move will "greatly help the ongoing peace
process." More than 66,000 people,
mostly civilians, have been killed in a Muslim-led insurgency in India's
portion of Kashmir since 1989. The dozen or so rebel groups are either seeking
Kashmir's independence or its merger with Pakistan.
More
than a year ago, Pakistan and India began efforts to normalize relations and
try to resolve the Kashmir issue. The thaw in relations has seen restoration of
severed transportation links, diplomatic ties and a series of negotiations to
resolve the Kashmir issue and other minor disputes between the two countries.
Pakistani
and Indian defense officials are scheduled to hold talks later this week on a
possible pullback of troops from Siachen, the world's highest battle field
between the nuclear-armed neighbors. Meanwhile,
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said at a meeting of a council supervising
Pakistan's part of Kashmir that the process for peace with India is
"irreversible." "We
remain committed to the dialogue process, which we believe is
irreversible," Aziz said.
Kashmir
Negotiation Simulation
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here to access the Kashmir
Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law &
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Serbia welcomes U.S. Kosovo initiative, but
rules out province's independence
Dusan Stojanovic, Associated Press, 5/19/05
Serbia-Montenegro on Thursday welcomed the latest
U.S. initiative to resolve the future status of Kosovo, but ruled out
independence for the volatile province. Calling
2005 the "year of decision for Kosovo," U.S. Under Secretary of State
Nicholas Burns called Wednesday for increased efforts to resolve the political
status of the ethnic Albanian-dominated region.
Burns said Kosovo's final status must be based on multi-ethnicity with
full respect for human rights, including the right of all refugees and
displaced persons to return home in safety. He ruled out any solution based on
unilateral decisions by either side or through the use of force.
The province's ethnic Albanian majority, which
fought a war against Yugoslav government troops in 1998-99, insists on full
independence, but Serbs sees the province as an integral part of Serbia. "We have no single reason to be
unhappy" with the U.S. plan, Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk
Draskovic told the independent B-92 radio. But the American stand on Serbia's
borders "remains unclear," he added.
Kosovo formally remains part of Serbia-Montenegro,
Yugoslavia's successor state, but has been an international protectorate since
the 1999 NATO bombing halted Serbia's crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians
and forced Belgrade to relinquish control over Kosovo to the United Nations and
NATO.
Tens of thousands of Serbs and Roma fled the
province after the war due to reprisals by ethnic Albanians. In March 2004, two
days of ethnic violence in which mobs of ethnic Albanians targeted the Serb
minority and their property left 19 people dead and more than 900 injured. Burns said Belgrade's suggestion of
"more than autonomy but less than independence" for Kosovo is
unclear.
"Our stand is that Serbia's borders cannot be
changed. We are ready to sign that those borders be symbolic, transparent and
completely open," Draskovic said. "We won't say that we have
sovereignty over Kosovo, but the Albanians should not say they have
independence."
Serbian President Boris Tadic, Prime Minister Vojislav
Kostunica and Tomislav Nikolic, a leader of the ultranationalist Radical Party,
met late Wednesday in Belgrade, issuing a statement that "international
borders in the region must remain unchanged to preserve and strengthen regional
stability."
U.S. Is Seeking to Speed Up Talks on
Kosovo's Status
Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times, 5/20/05
The Bush administration, opening an initiative to
stabilize the troubled Balkan states, is seeking to speed up talks to grant
greater independence for Kosovo in return for strides by the Kosovo government
to protect the rights of Serbs and other minorities, State Department officials
have announced. As part of the effort,
R. Nicholas Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, will travel
in the coming week to Europe and to the Balkan region to meet with officials
about Kosovo and various steps that the United States wants the leaders of
Serbia and Bosnia to take.
Mr. Burns said Wednesday that the eventual goal was
to heal one of the largest remaining wounds from the cold war in Europe. Kosovo
has remained a United Nations protectorate as part of the deal ending the
ethnic wars in the mid-1990's that followed the breakup of the former
Yugoslavia. ''We and our allies are
entering a new stage in our policy toward the Balkans, one that will accelerate
the region's integration into the European family and Euro-Atlantic
institutions,'' Mr. Burns told the House Committee on International Relations,
adding that ''2005 is a year of decision for Kosovo.''
The official United States position has not moved to
an outright endorsement of Kosovo as an independent nation, but it has not
ruled that out. Some State Department
officials acknowledged that the nearly intractable ethnic hatreds in the
Balkans have been a side issue for the Bush administration, in part because of
its concern about global terrorism. Clinton
administration officials, particularly the former United Nations ambassador
Richard C. Holbrooke, have suggested that the Bush administration was averse to
trying to build on an achievement of the Clinton years, namely the bombing of
Serbia and the setting up of Kosovo as a semi-independent protectorate.
A senior State Department official gave credit to
Mr. Holbrooke for pressing the need for greater involvement in the Balkans and
also to Senator George V. Voinovich, an Ohio Republican who is of Serbian and
Slovenian descent. In his testimony, Mr.
Burns described three main areas for the initiative. First, he said, is the need to begin
immediately discussing the future status of Kosovo.
Kosovo, a Muslim-dominated province of the former
Yugoslavia, revolted after suffering a crackdown by Serbia under Mr. Milosevic.
But after evidence of abuses against Kosovo's own Serbian minority, the region
was put under a United Nations protectorate with its future undefined.
The new country of Serbia and Montenegro insists
that Kosovo should remain part of its territory, but Kosovo's Muslim majority
wants independence. Until now, the European and American approach has been that
Kosovo must improve its democratic institutions and treatment of ethnic
minority groups before independence can be discussed.
Mr. Burns said the United States now favored
discussing the future status of Kosovo simultaneously with improvements in its
democratic standards, with the hope that the improvement can become an
incentive for achieving independence. Mr. Burns said the aim was to settle
Kosovo's status by the end of 2005.
The second goal, Mr. Burns said, is to get the
government of Serbia and Montenegro to hand over people charged with war crimes
dating from the outset of the Balkan wars, particularly the Serbian leaders
Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, who were associated with the massacre at
Srebrenica in Bosnia.
Finally, Mr. Burns said, steps must be taken by
Bosnia to establish a unification government that integrates the ethnic
divisions in its country. He suggested that a future special envoy from Europe,
assisted by a deputy from the United States, might assist in negotiating these
arrangements. Since 1999, a United
Nations peacekeeping force has been stationed in Kosovo. From a peak of 40,000
troops six years ago, there are now 18,000 troops from 34 countries, including
about 1,800 Americans.
''President Bush has made clear that having gone in
to Kosovo with our allies, we will stay there with them until the job is
done,'' Mr. Burns told the House committee. ''We seek, of course, to hasten the
day when peace is self-sustaining and our troops can come home.''
But the larger goal, Mr. Burns said, is to stabilize
the Balkan region so that it can take advantage of benefits achieved by other
parts of Europe that lived in the Soviet sphere of influence during the cold
war, but which have now established new ties and membership in NATO and the
European Union.
OSCE chairman urges dialogue between Kosovo
Albanian leaders, Belgrade
Katarina Kratovac, Associated Press, 5/22/05
The chairman of Europe's leading security
organization said after meeting Serbia's pro-Western president Boris Tadic on
Sunday that talks between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders and Belgrade should
begin as soon as possible. "It is
indeed extremely important to start this direct dialogue," said Jan Kubis,
Secretary-General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Kubis said his meeting with Tadic provided an
opportunity to "hear opinions" on Kosovo ahead of negotiations later
this year on the troubled U.N.-run province's future status.
Efforts to open dialogue between the two sides have
intensified lately. Talks between Tadic and Kosovo leader Ibrahim Rugova would
be the first direct meeting of top Serbian and Kosovo leaders since the 1998-99
war. Kosovo formally remains part of
Serbia, but has been run by the United Nations since the 1999 NATO air war
halted Serbia's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists and forced it to
relinquish control of Kosovo to a U.N. mission and NATO peacekeepers.
Tadic earlier this week refused an offer to meet
Rugova on the sidelines of an international conference next month in
Switzerland. The Serbian president had
originally extended the invitation for the talks to Rugova last month,
suggesting they take place either in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, or the
Kosovo provincial capital of Pristina. Rugova
initially refused the offer but later proposed a neutral venue - the gathering
of Balkan presidents in Geneva in June. Tadic
said on Sunday that "international conferences are for independent
countries, while Serbia cannot accept Kosovo as an independent country."
"But from my side, the door is always open for
a dialogue without prejudice," Tadic told reporters. "I see no reason
to avoid such a dialogue." Tadic
said he had discussed with Kubis in detail the opportunities for top level
meetings, both between himself and Rugova, and between the prime ministers of
Serbia and Kosovo, Vojislav Kostunica and Bajram Kosumi.
"We should be able to talk as representatives
of two peoples, the Serbian and the (ethnic) Albanian people, not two states,
about the many daily problems and concrete issues in Kosovo," Tadic said. Tadic stressed that the OSCE plays a
paramount role in safeguarding the security of the entire Balkan region. Kosovo's Albanian leaders insist on full
independence for the province while Belgrade wants to retain at least formal
authority over its territory and adamantly opposes any change to Serbia's
borders.
Also Sunday, Kostunica said that "Belgrade was
fully prepared to resolve the question of Kosovo based on compromise and
internationally accepted democratic principles." "Those principles safeguard the
territorial integrity and sovereignty of any state," Kostunica said.
"We must find a solution acceptable to all, a compromise that will have no
winners and no losers."
Kosovo Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Kosovo
Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law &
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_____________________________________________________________
Liberia
Report: Send Liberia's Taylor to
Tribunal
Nick
Wadhams, Associated Press, 5/18/05
Former
Liberian President Charles Taylor is funding a small army and meddling with his
country's politics ahead of upcoming elections, a clear violation of the terms
of his exile in Nigeria, an independent watchdog group said Wednesday. There is evidence to suggest that Taylor's
confidantes and sometimes their wives are smuggling him money that he illicitly
stashed away during the years he plundered Liberia's diamond and timber
industries, as well as its national treasury, the Coalition for International
Justice said in a report.
Taylor
has used that cash to arm a "small but potent" military force that
threatens to destabilize all of West Africa, according to the report by the
Washington-based group that supports war crimes tribunals. The report recommended he be sent to a
U.N.-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone, where he has been indicted on 17 counts
of war crimes, crimes against humanity and violations of international
humanitarian law.
"Instead
of facing a judge, or life in a cell, he lives in luxury, continues to poison
regional politics and contrives still to invest his money and to arm his
men," the report said. Nigeria gave
Taylor asylum in 2003 to induce him to step down as president of Liberia amid a
deadly siege of his capital, Monrovia, by Liberian rebels. He helped tip
Liberia into war in 1989 and is accused of playing a central role in West
Africa's interconnected conflicts.
Taylor's
exile agreement states that he won't be handed to the Sierra Leone court