PEACE NEGOTIATIONS WATCH
Monday, July 25, 2005
(Volume IV, Number 27)
PEACE NEGOTIATIONS WATCH
Monday, July 25, 2005
(Volume IV, Number 27)
Contents:
Azerbaijani soldier killed in Nagorno-Karabakh shootout
Soldier's death blamed on Armenian troops.
Thirty-four seats up for grabs in upper house election.
Burundi's police raid radio station that defied latest ban on broadcasting
Radio station license revoked by Burundian government.
Gunmen attack Russian forces in Chechnya; 14 killed
Putin encourages security improvements in Chechnya.
U.N. official says bringing peace to Congo is world body's toughest task yet
Voter registration has begun in DR Congo, despite limited infrastructure.
Man who confessed to throwing grenade toward Bush rally in Georgia faces separate murder charge
Georgian man does not have connections to the Russian military.
Aceh peace deal latest chapter in province's bloody history
Insurgency in Aceh has roots dating back to European colonization.
Indonesian president orders end to offensive in Aceh
Indonesian government has agreed to begin withdrawal of forces from Aceh in September.
Unidentified assailants attack Ivory Coast security forces, army says
Station house near Abidjan attacked.
Kashmir separatist, Hindu leaders meet for first time in 15 years in reconciliation bid
Conference aims to rebuild bridges between groups in Kashmir.
Soldiers kill three teenagers in Indian portion of Kashmir, sparking protests
Teenagers reportedly killed at wedding.
Kosovo
Kosovo's push toward democracy has suffered setback, EU's Solana says
Solana wants improvement of minority conditions in Kosovo.
UN launch local government reform in Kosovo
Five municipal units testing ground for new laws.
EU sets November date to decide on accession talks for Macedonia
Skopje needs to improve its administrative capacities.
Transdniestr cautiously backs Ukrainian plan on future status
Ukrainian plan would give Transnistria a special status within Moldova and replace Russian troops.
Small political party in Nepal uses nonviolent campaign against communist rebels
Organization split from Maoist party because of violence.
U.S. and Philippines Join Forces to Pursue Terrorist Leader
Abu Sayyaf reportedly has killed American missionaries.
NATO chief presses Serbia-Montenegro to do more to hand over top war crimes suspect
De Hoop Scheffer puts more pressure on Belgrade to capture and turnover Mladic
Serb War Crimes Fugitives Still at Large
Karadzic reportedly met with wife in 2001.
Sri Lankan president appoints allies to key ministries after government split
Marxist party withdraws from governing coalition.
Sri Lankan village elder shot dead, two security forces troops wounded in attack
Grenade thrown at tsunami aid center.
Sudan's new first vice president sets up interim administration for south
Referendum to be held in six years on secession.
Sudanese Guards Rough Up U.S. Aides and Reporter as Rice Visits
Relations between Sudan and U.S. challenged after Rice aides shoved by Sudanese guards.
Genocide in Darfur: A Legal Analysis Click here to access the PILPG Report.
Azerbaijani soldier killed in Nagorno-Karabakh shootout
Associated Press, 7/21/05
An Azerbaijani soldier was killed during an exchange of gunfire with Armenian-backed forces from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, a defense ministry spokesman said Thursday.
Pvt. Rafael Jafarov, 19, was shot Tuesday and died en route to the hospital, said spokesman Ramiz Melikov. He blamed Jafarov's death on Armenian-backed forces.
Armenian officials could not be immediately be reached for comment.
Nagorno-Karabakh has been under control of ethnic Armenians since a six-year war against Azerbaijan ended with a 1994 cease-fire. The war killed some 30,000 people and drove a million from their homes. The enclave's status remains unresolved and tensions remain high along the cease-fire line with both sides regularly exchanging fire.
Meanwhile, in meetings with President Ilham Aliev in Baku, Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul pledged to help Azerbaijan reform its army and make it more efficient. Gonul also met with Azerbaijan's foreign minister to discuss cooperation with NATO and ways to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.
Turkey is Azerbaijan's closest ally in the region.
Some 120 candidates to run for Burundi's upper house
Agence France Presse, 7/21/05
Some 120 candidates have registered for to the 34 seats up for grabs in the election next week of Burundi's upper house of parliament, the UN Operation in Burundi (ONUB) said Thursday.
The senators will be selected on July 29 by municipal councils that were elected last month in polls largely won by Burundi's former main rebels, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD).
According to the new constitution approved in February, each of Burundi's 17 provinces will be represented by two senators, with the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis to be equally represented.
In addition, the constitution calls for the inclusion of the country's former presidents in the upper house as well as three members for the Twa tribe, who account for one percent of the country's population.
If Burundi's four ex-presidents are all named to the Senate, the chamber will be composed of 41 members, out whom 30 percent will be women.
ONUB election official Ahmedou Seck said the July 29 polls will be an important step as it brings to an end the election of legislators and senators, who will select the country's next president on August 19.
Analysts have predicted that the FDD leader Pierre Nkurunziza will clinch the country's first post-transitional presidency owing to the party's victory in both the municipal and legislative polls.
Since June 3, the tiny central African state has been locked in a marathon electoral process, hoping to return stability after more than a decade of civil war, which has claimed the lives of some 300,000 people.
Burundi's police raid radio station that defied latest ban on broadcasting
Aloys Niyoyita, Associated Press, 7/22/05
Armed police forced an independent radio station off the air Friday as it continued broadcasting a week after Burundi's communication council banned it for allegedly insulting the council.
Scores of police officers ordered workers out of the radio station and sealed off access to African Public Radio as more than 100 curious onlookers gathered to watch. "This is not the time to talk to the press," said Col. Ildephonse Mushwabure, commander of a special anti-crime police unit that carried out the operation.
The communication council banned African Public Radio on July 15 after criticizing its election coverage, prompting the station to insult the council, council chairman Jean Pierre Manda said last week.
The station's campaign coverage had been biased in favor of the former rebel Forces for the Defense of Democracy that won the ballot, Manda said.
The station initially refused to observe ban, calling it invalid because the National Council for Communication's tenure ended in February 2004 and the government had not renewed or extended it.
But officials agreed to go off the air for two days this week after receiving assurance that the council would meet during that time and lift the ban. The ban, however, was not revoked.
Senior police officers said the order to close the station by force on Friday was issued by President Domitien Ndayizeye, whose party lost heavily to the former rebels in local government and parliamentary elections, said Alexis Sinduhije, director of African Public Radio. "My president decided to give the order to the police to close down my radio station by force," Sinduhije told The Associated Press. "They want to close down the station and we are resisting. They are using force."
Officials from the council and the president's office were not immediately available for comment.
The police action on Friday marks the fourth time the government has closed African Public Radio. It has also jammed the signal in the past.
In February, the council closed African Public Radio for two days, saying the station had broken the law by broadcasting details of the rape of an 8-year-old girl.
In September 2003, the information minister closed the station for two days for defying a government ban on interviewing rebel officials. A second independent station, Radio Isanganiro, was also ordered to cease operations for a week.
Gunmen attack Russian forces in Chechnya; 14 killed
Sergei Venyavsky, Associated Press, 7/19/05
Insurgents set off a bomb near a police minibus in warring Chechnya, killing 14 people, including two children, and wounding more than 20 others, regional officials said.
Tuesday's guerrilla attack, one of the bloodiest in recent months, occurred in an area of Chechnya under firm Russian control, once again demonstrating Moscow's inability to end the decade-long separatist insurgency in this mainly Muslim southern province.
Chechnya's Moscow-backed President Alu Alkhanov said 14 people had died and more than 20 others were wounded in the attack in the village of Znamenskoye, the Interfax news agency reported.
Interfax quoted a top Chechen Interior Ministry official, Akhmed Dakayev, as saying three civilians - including teenagers aged 13 and 14 - were among those killed. He said 19 civilians and five policemen were wounded.
Russian news reports citing unnamed officials said one child was killed while riding a bicycle past the scene.
The head of the Chechen Security Council, Rudnik Dudayev, said that the attackers had set a trap, firing at a corpse left in a stolen police jeep to make security forces believe a gun attack was taking place and to lure them to the scene. "When the security detachment arrived at Znamenskoye, the bomb went off," he was quoted as saying by Interfax. Earlier, officials had said that the attackers opened fire on a vehicle carrying security forces and then set off a bomb when a second vehicle came to help.
Alkhanov accused Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev of ordering the attack but insisted the situation was under control. "Terrorists under Basayev's command are trying to destabilize the sociopolitical situation in the republic," he was quoted as saying by the RIA-Novosti news agency. "The situation is under the full control of the Chechen leadership."
Russian forces had withdrawn from Chechnya in 1996, when the first Chechen war against separatist rebels ended in a stalemate. They returned in 1999 and quickly took control of Chechnya's northern plains, but have been unable to drive rebels from the mountainous south.
Television pictures showed the twisted and charred metal remains of one vehicle and investigators picking through fragments on the ground nearby.
An official from the Interior Ministry for southern Russia, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his position, said the minibuses were carrying Interior Ministry forces.
He said one child was killed, but did not have details.
Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov said the bomb was equivalent to eight kilograms (17.6 pounds) of TNT, according to ITAR-Tass.
Zaina Akherukhanova, an ambulance doctor from Znamenskoye, told The Associated Press by telephone that the attack left the town in fear. "There were 20 wounded in our hospital and some wounded were taken to other hospitals. The residents are in panic. Many are leaving the place," she said.
A truck-bomb attack on a government compound in Znamenskoye in May 2003 killed at least 60 people.
Znamenskoye is in northwestern Chechnya, a region that has been under the control of Russian forces since the first months of the second Chechen war. There have been comparatively few attacks in that region since then.
President Vladimir Putin told a Cabinet meeting Tuesday that the "latest tragic events" showed the need to accelerate measures to beef up security in the troubled Caucasus region, where violence from Chechnya is increasingly spilling over into neighboring southern provinces. "What we have planned there, we need to do it and as soon as possible," he said in televised remarks.
U.N. official says bringing peace to Congo is world body's toughest task yet
Bryan Mealer, Associated Press, 7/18/05
Its peacekeepers have been accused of cowardice in battle and standing idle as execution squads killed and raped in Congo's dusty streets.
Its well-paid bureaucrats have been called out of touch and indifferent, pushing paper in air-conditioned bubbles while unspeakable horrors unfold in the forests.
But as war-ravaged Congo shows small signs of embracing peace and democracy, the United Nations is taking on the colossal job of clearing thousands of militia and holding landmark elections.
"This is the most complex task the United Nations has ever undertaken," Ross Mountain, the U.N. deputy special representative in Congo, told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "We're about to go into the great beyond."
Voter registration has begun in a country the size of Western Europe, with little in the way of roads, electricity, telephone lines or functioning local governments, but a past heavy with war, corruption and colonial depredations.
The United Nations is working with local election officials and international donors on elections. U.N. peacekeepers are using effective, modern warfare against thousands of marauding militia, and international pressure is heavy for government reform.
Officials say elections aren't possible without first securing the vast, lawless east, which involves eradicating tens of thousands of gunmen left over from years of war, who continue to be financed and armed from outside the country.
According to an agreement between rebels and government at the end of Congo's destructive 1998-2002 war, elections should have been held before June. They are now scheduled for next March. Insecurity and parliamentary foot-dragging were behind the delay. Voter registration began June 20 in the capital Kinshasa, and has already registered over a million voters, election officials say.
About 27 million people nationwide still need to be registered, which involves deploying 45,000 election officials to manage 9,000 laptop computers, fingerprint scans, and cameras, plus the generators to run them, since much of Congo is in the dark. There are few roads in Congo, so most of the equipment must be delivered by air. "In terms of organizing elections, this dwarfs Iraq and Afghanistan," said Mountain, who served as Kofi Annan's acting special representative in Iraq during elections there last year, before arriving in Congo in December 2004.
Officials hope registration will reach the volatile east by August. There, peacekeepers aided by Guatemalan special forces troops and attack helicopters are attempting to clear out 8,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels known as Interahamwe from South Kivu province on the Rwandan border.
The rebels are accused of raping and killing hundreds every month. They fled to the dense forests of eastern Congo after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. They vowed in march to disarm and return home, but have shown little effort.
Rebels who defy the ultimatum to return will face elite troops and helicopter gunships, U.N. officials have vowed.
The United Nations is attempting to shed its image of being ineffective. In 2003, peacekeepers stood by in the northeastern town of Bunia while militia killed 500 people in one week. In June 2004, U.N. troops stepped aside and allowed renegade government soldiers to seize the lakeside town of Bukavu, which sparked anti-U.N. riots in the capital Kinshasa. Peacekeepers have also been accused of raping young girls in Bunia's squalid displaced camps.
Congo is the U.N.'s largest, most expensive peacekeeping mission in the world, with 16,700 soldiers and an annual budget - combining the 13 U.N. agencies - of nearly US$2 billion (€1.66 billion).
While many of Congo's residents welcome the military security the United Nations brings, others say the world body hasn't accomplished enough after six years. "There's still Interahamwe and different militia who continue to commit inhumane acts against the population to the view and knowledge of MONUC," said Davy Shabani, a student in the capital Kinshasa, referring to the French acronym of the UN mission.
Even if the U.N. manages to bring enough calm for elections, much work remains for Congolese. Reforms are needed in Congo's public sector, justice system and labor market.
One of the most important changes must involve revamping Congo's security apparatus, where soldiers and police are paid a paltry US$12 (€9.94) per month, and often resort to pillage and extortion to supplement their wages. Earlier this month, over 200 government soldiers killed several people in a looting spree in the Congo River town of Mbandaka, government officials said.
The U.N. mission could be in Congo for several more years, Mountain said. If the United Nations brings Congo to the brink, only to let it slide back into war and corruption, the results could be irreversible, Mountain said. "If we fail, then it's Somalia, here we come," said Mountain, referring to another African country whose hopes at peace and democracy continue to be dashed by violence and poor governance.
Democratic Republic of Congo Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.
Man who confessed to throwing grenade toward Bush rally in Georgia faces separate murder charge
Misha Dzhindzhikashvili, Associated Press, 7/22/05
A man who confessed to throwing a live grenade toward President Bush during a rally in Georgia was charged with premeditated murder Friday in the killing of a policeman during a shootout that preceded his arrest.
Vladimir Arutyunian, who has been hospitalized since he was detained Wednesday, admitted in video footage shown Thursday that he threw the grenade that landed near a podium where Bush was speaking in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, in May, officials said. The grenade malfunctioned and did not explode.
Both Bush and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili were on the podium when the grenade landed about 100 feet away.
Investigators were searching for a motive for the grenade incident after determining that the 27-year-old suspect has no connection with Russian forces, despite reports that Russian military uniforms were found in his house. "I confirm categorically that he never served in our structures," said Col. Vladimir Kuparadze, deputy commander of Russia's forces in Georgia. "As to the Russian military uniforms, getting those in Georgia doesn't present any difficulty."
Russia has troops at two military bases in Georgia and their withdrawal, now scheduled for 2008, had been a tense issue. Georgia and Russia agreed in June on a withdrawal date.
A spokeswoman for the Georgian prosecutor's office, Khatuna Khvediashvili, said Arutyunian had been formally presented with the charge, although it was not immediately clear why it was for premeditated murder.
Arutyunian fled into nearby woods after the shootout Wednesday in which one policeman was killed in a village on the outskirts of the capital Tbilisi. The suspect was captured about an hour later and taken to a hospital for treatment of gunshot wounds.
In footage broadcast by Rustavi-2 television from the hospital, Arutyunian signed a document relating to the charge in the presence of a state-appointed lawyer. "I'll do my best to make his fate easier," said the lawyer Khatuna Kutateladze.
Arutyunian faces up to a life sentence under the charge.
There has been no indication of a possible motive for the throwing of the grenade, which cast a shadow over a visit meant to showcase the former Soviet republic's progress.
Arutyunian was refusing to answer investigators' questions, Tbilisi prosecutor Georgy Gviniashvili said.
The Interior Ministry said Friday that Arutyunian was believed to have been a member of the Agordzineba party, which supported the leader of a region largely outside central government control.
Aslan Abashidze, the recalcitrant leader of the Adzharia region, fled to Russia last year amid rising street protests against his authoritarian rule.
The unrest erupted after Abashidze destroyed bridges linking Adzharia with the rest of Georgia and claimed that Saakashvili was preparing a military invasion.
Aceh peace deal latest chapter in province's bloody history
Agence France Presse, 7/18/05
The peace deal between the Indonesian government and rebels in Aceh province is the latest chapter in a battle over the fate of the staunchly Muslim region dating back to Dutch colonialists 130 years ago.
While December's devastating tsunami disaster may have provided the push to end a separatist conflict that has left nearly 15,000 people dead since 1976, the people of Aceh have long resisted attempts to subdue them.
Located on the northern tip of Sumatra island, Aceh emerged as a sovereign state in the 16th century. It remained an influential political and economic entity and centre for Islamic learning under the leadership of a sultan.
The Netherlands and Britain signed the London Treaty in 1824, which allowed the Dutch to gain control of all British possessions on Sumatra.
Although in the same treaty the Dutch agreed to allow independence for Aceh, in 1871 the British authorised the Dutch to invade Aceh, possibly to prevent a French annexation.
Two years later the Netherlands issued a formal declaration of war and invaded Aceh. It took 30 years of bitter war before the Dutch managed to subdue the Acehnese, although guerrilla activity continued until at least 1914.
The war was the longest fought by the Dutch, costing them more than 10,000 lives.
They eventually abandoned their occupation of Aceh in 1942, shortly before the Japanese invaded Indonesia, and the region was incorporated into the nascent Indonesian republic in the late 1940s.
Aceh, rich in oil and gas, gave enormous material support to the young Indonesia. In 1949, the Aceh people donated two airplanes, one of which was the famous Seulawah plane that later became a pioneer in the establishment of national flag-carrier Garuda Indonesia.
But resentment began when Jakarta merged Aceh into the neighbouring province of North Sumatra, with Acehnese accusing the government of reneging on its promises to accord Aceh special status.
The precursor to the independence movement arose in the 1950s when Islamists on the major Indonesian island of Java rebelled in an attempt to establish a Muslim state.
Acehnese lent support to the rebellion and in 1953 staged their own revolt against Jakarta, forcing the government to give Aceh the status of "special territory," which ostensibly conferred a degree of autonomy.
The rebellion was crushed but the desire for an independent state did not die out, firing up again in 1976 when Hasan di Tiro founded the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) as an armed resistance group.
The bloodshed intensified when Aceh was designated a special military operation zone between 1989 and 1998, during which time thousands were killed, went missing or were physically abused.
After the fall of longtime dictator Suharto in 1998, tentative peace moves began.
Talks with GAM representatives overseas since 2000, mediated by the Geneva-based Henry Dunant Center, had in the past brought only a series of short-lived truces with each side accusing the other of bad faith.
The situation plummeted to a low in May 2003, when the province was placed under martial law and the military began a major operation which continued even after the December 26 tsunami.
On Sunday, both sides announced a memorandum of understanding to end the conflict would be formally signed on August 15.
Indonesian president orders end to offensive in Aceh
Evelyn Rush, International Herald Tribune, 7/22/05
The Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has ordered armed forces in Aceh to cease an offensive against separatists in an effort to help the peace process, according to officials here. The government also announced that it would start to withdraw security forces from Aceh in September.
The presidential order, disclosed on Wednesday evening, comes as violence intensifies in the province that was devastated by the tsunamis of Dec. 26. As many as 11 people have been killed since a tentative peace agreement was reached in Helsinki last weekend. According to the separatists, who call themselves the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, according to the initials in the Indonesian language, two civilians, five rebels and four soldiers have been killed.
"The president made it very clear," Sofyan Djalil, the information minister, said to reporters. "TNI must take a defensive posture in case of attacks by GAM fights." TNI refers to the Indonesian military.
Clashes this week, which have led to accusations on both sides, revealed the difficulty of achieving peace in Aceh. Even as the Indonesian government and rebel leaders push forward with the peace plan, it is unclear whether both sides can encourage troops and rebels on the ground to follow suit.
Yudhoyono issued the order after a rebel spokesman accused the military of stepping up attacks, news reports said.
The withdrawal of forces from Aceh will be phased in. Officials said the government would reduce the number of troops from 35,000 to 13,000 and cut the number of police officers from 15,000 to 10,000, which would leave 23,000 security forces. The pullout, which the government hopes to complete by the end of December, hinges on the rebels' promise to lay down their arms.
Government officials said that the violence would not hurt the peace plan. But in a sign that the government is starting to acknowledge the difficulty of controlling its troops in Aceh, the government may keep troops in their barracks in until the withdrawal begins, said Djalil, the information minister. The president has also ordered army commanders to inform soldiers of the main points of the draft peace plan.
In Aceh, troops seemed to be wary about backing off. "When soldiers abandoned their posts as part of efforts to create a conducive environment, the rebels moved in, frightening villagers," Ery Sudiko, a military spokesman, said Wednesday.
In the past, the military, which is largely self-financed, has occasionally strayed from government orders, but top military commanders in Aceh will listen closely to Yudhoyono, a retired four-star military general with close ties to the military elite, analysts said.
Aceh Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Aceh Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.
Unidentified assailants attack Ivory Coast security forces, army says
Parfait Kouassi, Associated Press, 7/24/05
Unidentified assailants attacked two security force posts in Ivory Coast's main city, sparking gunfights that reportedly left at least four people dead, officials said Sunday.
Gunmen attacked a gendarmarie station house in Anyama, a northern suburb of Abidjan, late Saturday and four people reportedly died in the fight, said Capt. Bois Moreau, a press attache for the U.N. peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast.
Moreau said U.N. officials hadn't yet confirmed the deaths or from which side they may have come from.
An Ivory Coast army spokesman said there had also been a similar attack in the nearby neighborhood of Abobo, but there were no further details. Two residents of the sprawling, impoverished neighborhood said scattered gunfire continued to be heard Sunday.
Ivory Coast has remained tense and divided despite numerous peace deals meant to knit the West African nation back together after its 2002-2003 civil war.
Rebels continue to hold much of the north of the world's largest cocoa producer while government forces hold the south, including the country's biggest city, Abidjan. Nearly, 10,000 U.N. and French peacekeepers patrol front lines, keeping the forces apart.
Kashmir separatist, Hindu leaders meet for first time in 15 years in reconciliation bid
Mujtaba Ali Ahmad, Associated Press, 7/19/05
Kashmiri Muslim separatist and exiled Hindu leaders met for the first time in 15 years Tuesday in a reconciliation bid in this Himalayan territory, battered by a separatist insurgency since 1989.
About 40 Kashmiri Hindu leaders met representatives of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, or APHC - an alliance of Kashmiri separatist groups - in Indian-held Kashmir's Srinagar city, to discuss the safe return of Hindus to the territory.
Tuesday's meeting was the first attempt to bridge the divide between Kashmir's majority Muslims and the Pandits, as Hindus are called here.
Militant groups have been fighting since 1989 for Indian-held Kashmir's independence from the predominantly Hindu nation, or for its merger with neighboring Muslim-majority Pakistan. The conflict has claimed more than 66,000 lives.
Kashmir's Pandits, who once numbered more than 250,000, fled just after the insurgency began, fearing militant attacks. There are now fewer than 25,000.
Nearly 2,000 Hindus have been killed in the insurgency, according to Panun Kashmir, an organization that demands a separate state for Kashmiri Hindus.
Thousands of Pandits who left Kashmir now live in squalid conditions in makeshift camps and ghettos in several Indian cities.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan but claimed in entirety by both.
After Tuesday's meeting, APHC Chairman Umar Farooq said the return of Kashmir's Hindus "with a deeper sense of security and dignity, unmistakably requires a favorable environment which the APHC and others will endeavor for."
"The aim of the conference is to build bridges and re-establish communal harmony and the composite culture of the (Kashmir) valley that existed earlier," said prominent Hindu leader Krishen Kumar Khosa.
However, three Hindu organizations - including the largest, Panun Kashmir - had rejected the APCH's invitation to the meeting, saying its leaders' hardline positions would not help the Hindus' return to Kashmir.
Soldiers kill three teenagers in Indian portion of Kashmir, sparking protests
Mujtaba Ali Ahmad, Associated Press, 7/24/05
Hundreds of angry villagers attacked government buildings and fought street battles with security forces in the Indian portion of Kashmir on Sunday after soldiers killed three teenage boys, officials and residents said.
Protesters poured into the streets of Bungergund, a small village about 110 kilometers (68 miles) north of the Jammu-Kashmir state capital of Srinagar, set fire to an army-run computer training center, and hurled bricks and stones at police, said Sunil Dutt, a local police superintendent.
Police retaliated with tear gas and beat the demonstrators with bamboo sticks, Dutt said, adding that some protesters were injured in the clash.
One villager said the boys were attending a wedding Saturday in the remote hamlet when soldiers opened fire on them. Three died on the spot and another was wounded. Residents demanded that the soldiers be punished. "They (soldiers) knew that there was a marriage here. They didn't bother to find out who they were and just killed them," Fayaz Hamid, a villager, told The Associated Press by telephone.
Dutt confirmed that three boys were killed. Army officials weren't immediately available for comment.
The soldiers mistook the teenagers for Islamic militants because it was dark, Dutt said. "Militants move in this area at night and soldiers routinely lay ambushes to nab or kill them. Unfortunately soldiers could not ascertain the identity of victims in the dark," he said.
But Hamid said the army knew a wedding was taking place in the area. "The families had informed them that there will be late night movement because of the wedding," he said.
In another incident Friday, soldiers killed a teenager whom they also mistook for a suspected rebel in a small village, south of Srinagar, sparking violent protests.
A separatist insurgency has claimed more than 66,000 lives, mostly of civilians, in the Indian portion of Kashmir since 1989. The rebels demand Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with its a predominantly Muslim neighbor Pakistan.
India and Pakistan hold separate portions of the Himalayan territory, but both claim it in its entirety.
Kashmir Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Kashmir Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.
Kosovo's push toward democracy has suffered setback, EU's Solana says
Garentina Kraja, Associated Press, 7/20/05
Kosovo's drive toward a future political solution has slowed down just at the time it needs to be speeding up, the European Union's foreign policy chief said Wednesday.
In Kosovo for a fact-finding visit, Javier Solana said there had been setbacks in ushering in international standards on democracy and minority rights.
"I've been really surprised to see what is to my mind a slow down on the process," Solana said. "I think that is a mistake."
"This is the moment in which the leaders of Kosovo, the government, should do the opposite, should move faster," he added.
Solana's criticism focused on local government reform, which has become a contentious issue between the government, the Serbs and U.N. overseers.
The process is aimed at giving minorities more power in running their affairs, a key condition Kosovo must meet before talks on its future can commence later this year.
However, the process has been plagued with delays following disputes over new municipal boundaries and criticism by the province's opposition parties, who argue that the way the government is carrying out the reforms might lead to the division of Kosovo along ethnic lines.
Kosovo officially remains a province of Serbia-Montenegro and has been administered by the United Nations over the last six years following NATO's air war aimed at stopping the crackdown of Serb troops on separatist ethnic Albanians.
Since then, the province remains split between ethnic Albanians who want it to be independent and Serbia, which opposes the province's independence.
Talks to determine the province's future are expected later this year, but only if Kosovo reaches internationally set standards.
UN launch local government reform in Kosovo
Agence France Presse, 7/22/05
The UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) on Friday adopted a law on local government reform, one of the key points of the UN-set standards for the province.
UN mission chief Soren Jessen-Petersen has set up five pilot "municipal units" where the new law would be applied -- among them two enclaves populated by minority Kosovo Serbs, UNMIK said in a statement. The pilot sites would be used "as a test for setting up new units of local self-government," it added.
The start of the project "represents a concrete step forward in the reform of local government in Kosovo," the UN mission said.
Last month, the United Nations began to review whether Kosovo authorities had met a set of democratic standards, a precondition for the opening of talks on the majority ethnic Albanian province's final status. One key issue is the reform of local administrations, notably in areas populated by minority Serbs.
The UN said that the project launched on Friday would be considered a "test case for good governance at the local level and outreach to the Kosovo communities concerned."
Improving coordination between the central and local levels of government in Kosovo, leading to a more effective and accountable system of local governance, could improve the return of refugees and provide full freedom of movement.
So far only about 12,500 of some 200,000 Serbs who Belgrade says have left the province since 1999 have returned home, fearing revenge attacks from Albanians for years of Serbian oppression.
The OSCE Mission in Kosovo welcomed the local government reform, saying "it is crucial that all stakeholders start working on pilot projects as soon as possible."
"Time should not be wasted because progress in this area is imperative for a positive evaluation of developments in Kosovo," said Werner Wendt, head of the OSCE mission.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who visited Kosovo on Wednesday, stressed the urgent need for the province's leaders to make rapid substantive progress on decentralization.
"This is a moment in which leaders of Kosovo, the government should move faster, should prove that really the process of standards and decentralization is something in which they believe whole-heartedly," he said.
Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since a NATO-led bombing campaign ousted Serbian troops from the mainly ethnic Albanian province in 1999 to end a Serbian crackdown on rebels.
Inter-ethnic tensions have remained high as Kosovo's ethnic Albanian authorities are keen for talks to open to push for independence, while Belgrade wants the territory to remain part of Serbia and Montenegro.
Kosovo Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Kosovo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.
EU sets November date to decide on accession talks for Macedonia
Agence France Presse, 7/18/05
The European Commission will recommend in November whether the EU should open membership talks with Macedonia, but Skopje must pursue crucial reforms, EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn said Monday.
The commission, the European Union's executive arm, will render its opinion on November 9, Rehn told reporters after talks attended by Macedonian Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva.
The commission's opinion must be submitted to the EU's 25 member states. If Macedonia is granted EU candidate status, the bloc would then prepare a framework for accession talks.
The decision on Macedonia could come at the same time as the commission's annual evaluations on reform in the Balkan states who aspire to join the union, like Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia-Montenegro.
Rehn warned Macedonian authorities not to be overly confident, saying the commission's decision would depend on the country's "political stability" and progress on economic and legal reforms.
The commissioner also called on Skopje to step up its efforts to crack down on corruption and improve its "administrative capacities" -- meaning that the country needs to hire the personnel needed to implement the ambitious reforms.
Transdniestr cautiously backs Ukrainian plan on future status
Agence France Presse, 7/21/05
Moldova's break-away Transdniestr region sees a way to resolve its future status in a plan put forward by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, a spokeswoman for Transdniestr's leader, Igor Smirnov, said Thursday. "The proposal by Kiev has been assessed... as a real basis for unblocking the negotiation process between Moldova and Transdniestr," the spokeswoman, Alla Volkova, quoted Smirnov as saying.
The announcement comes after a visit by Smirnov to Kiev during which he held talks with Yushchenko on resolving the status of Transdniestr, a sliver of territory that lies to the east of the Dniestr river in Moldova and on the border of Ukraine.
Volkova added however that Transdniestr remained opposed to the pull-out of Russian troops -- a key element of the Yushchenko plan.
The Transdniestr region was the scene of fierce armed conflict between Moldovan-speaking government forces in the west and Russian-speaking forces tacitly backed by Moscow in the east of the country in 1991 and 1992 following the Soviet Union's collapse.
The Yushchenko plan envisages replacing Russian forces with international military and civilian observers under the leadership of the Western-led Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and giving Transdniestr a "special status" within Moldova.
Moldova's parliament has already backed the plan, but this has prompted criticism from Moscow, which has promoted a less radical plan of its own.
More than 700 people were killed in the brief war which ended with the formal intervention of Russian peacekeeping troops who have patrolled a buffer zone between the two sides since 1992, with the result being a de facto independence for Transdniestr.
Critics have long considered Transdniestr an outpost of Russia's criminal underworld.
Moldova's leaders have of late taken a more pro-Western stance in their relations with Moscow, admitting that they have been inspired by movements in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics to break out of historic domination by Russia.
Small political party in Nepal uses nonviolent campaign against communist rebels
Binaj Gurubacharya, Associated Press, 7/22/05
In violence-wracked Nepal, where government forces have failed to defeat a nine-year Maoist insurgency, members of a small communist party have launched a nonviolent attempt to erode support for the rebels despite fears of attacks.
The People's Front Nepal split from the rebels 14 years ago, criticizing the guerrillas' violent campaign to topple Nepal's monarchy as extreme and against communist principles.
The group's members have recently fanned out into the rebels' strongholds in the countryside to paste up posters, distribute pamphlets and organize meetings to draw attention to abuses committed by the rebels and encourage people to peacefully defy them. "They call themselves Maoists, but they have deviated from the visions of communism. They have become more of an ultra leftist force," said Pari Thapa, a senior party leader.
The rebels have been accused of attacking and even killing people who oppose them, as well as forcibly conscripting villagers and extorting money from them, calling it a tax for the "people's government."
The front, Nepal's fifth-largest political party, is the only group that has dared to venture into rebel territory to campaign against them, despite fears of being detained and beaten.
"It may not sound like much ... but we want to bring to light what they really are," Thapa said. "They frequently tell their cadres that they are winning the war and they will be in full control of the country soon. It is the only way to motivate their fighters who have faced some major setbacks recently."
The Maoists, claiming to be inspired by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong, took up arms in 1996 to replace the monarchy with a communist state. The violence has claimed more than 11,500 lives.
Thapa said that his party believes in nonviolence and democracy - it supports Nepal's constitutional monarchy, in which the king is a figurehead and an elected government is supposed to rule the country. "We want to expose to as many people as we can all the wrong things which are going on within the Maoist group. Our campaign is a peaceful one," he said.
The campaign suffered a setback, however, when King Gyanendra seized absolute power in February and imposed emergency law. Three leaders of the People's Front were among hundreds of politicians arrested. Most were freed after Gyanendra lifted the emergency three months later, but some remain in jail.
Thapa hopes the People's Front can reach a much larger population in the country's rural interior, where the rebels have a strong presence. Hundreds of front members and supporters have been detained and beaten, and half a dozen have been killed by Maoist rebels in the past two years, Thapa said.
Even an attack on Thapa's wife in their rural home has not deterred them from their aim. "We don't want to finish off the Maoists. We want to see them correct their mistakes. After all they also are our Nepalese brothers and sisters," Thapa said. "Their violent movement will lead nowhere ... it will be futile," he said.
Nepal Negotiation Simulation
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U.S. and Philippines Join Forces to Pursue Terrorist Leader
Raymond Bonner and Carlos H. Conde, The New York Times, 7/23/05
American and Philippine military forces have launched a joint operation to capture the leader of Abu Sayyaf, a small terrorist group that has kidnapped scores of people and beheaded several, including one American, United States and Philippine military officials said this week.
The operation is in a marshy area on the island of Mindanao, parts of which are controlled by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a separatist group that has been at war with the Philippine government for two decades. Many American officials argue that the Moro group also should be declared a terrorist organization.
In a departure from the past, however, the Moro front is allowing the Philippine Army to operate in the region, since the two sides are now in peace talks, the officials said. More important, a brigade of the group's formidable army is helping to block Abu Sayyaf's possible escape routes, said a Philippine general who played a main role in planning the operation.
The general added, however, that the Moro group was not aware that American forces were involved in the military operation, or else they would probably not have participated. The general agreed to speak about the operation only on the condition that he not be identified because he was disclosing information that neither the United States nor the Philippine governments wanted known publicly.
The current operation to capture the Abu Sayyaf leader, Khaddafy Janjalani, is part of a much larger effort to stop international terrorist organizations from using Mindanao, much of which is covered by dense jungle, for training camps. The Moro group has long denied that it allows terrorist organizations train there.
Al Qaeda and its partner in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesia-based organization that carried out the attacks on Bali nightclubs that killed more than 200 people in October 2002, started using Mindanao for a training area in the late 1990's.
Philippine military operations to shut down the camps have had only limited success, contrary to the claims of Philippine officials.
Islamic recruits are still coming to Mindanao for training, probably 100 or so a year, American, Australian and Philippine officials said this week. Most of the terrorist recruits are Indonesian, and are being sent by Jemaah Islamiyah, which also attacked the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003.
An American military official, speaking on the condition that he not be further identified, said that the United States was providing intelligence and communications support for the current operation to capture Mr. Janjalani, and that there were Navy Seal and Army Special Forces units working in the area with the Filipinos. The American forces would not engage in combat, he said.
The American military has been operating on Mindanao since early 2002, ostensibly as part of training exercises, but there have been numerous reports that American forces have engaged in combat.
Intelligence for this operation and earlier ones is coming from a P3-Orion surveillance aircraft that flies missions from its base in Okinawa, and from small pilotless planes, commonly known as drones, American and Philippine officials said.
The American official said the operation had already pinpointed the location of Mr. Janjalani, and said that he could be captured within weeks.
The United States has offered a $5 million reward for his capture, but similar hopes in the past that he was about to be captured have been dashed. During an attempt in June 2003 to free Gracia and Martin Burnham, American missionaries who had been kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf, Mr. Burnham was killed.
An estimated 80 to 90 American military personnel operate in the southern Philippines, most of them in Army Special Forces units, the American military official said.
Villagers and human rights officials have reported that American troops have engaged in combat operations, and that former American soldiers now working under contract to the Pentagon operate there.
None of these reports have been confirmed, however, and the Pentagon has repeatedly denied that any Americans are engaged in combat in the Philippines.
NATO chief presses Serbia-Montenegro to do more to hand over top war crimes suspect
Katarina Kratovac, Associated Press, 7/18/05
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Monday pressed Belgrade to do more to deliver top war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic to the U.N. tribunal at The Hague, Netherlands.
The extradition of the Bosnian Serb wartime commander to the U.N. court remains a key condition for Serbia-Montenegro to join NATO's Partnership for Peace - an outreach program considered a stepping stone toward full alliance membership. "There is that big, formidable hurdle on your path," De Hoop Scheffer said after talks with President Svetozar Marovic in Belgrade. "We all know Mladic is the one who has to face justice at The Hague."
"My plea is: make that happen, this afternoon, tomorrow," he said. "I will only be able to say authorities here have done everything they can once Mladic is in The Hague."
Serbia-Montenegro, a loose two-member union that succeeded the former Yugoslavia, is struggling to build closer ties with the European Union and NATO after the 2000 ouster of former President Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic is now on trial before the U.N. court for war crimes stemming from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
The European Union has tentatively scheduled membership talks for Serbia-Montenegro for October, but only if Mladic is handed over to The Hague tribunal by then.
Belgrade leaders recently stepped up pledges to hunt him down.
Marovic said Mladic's case was weighing down the Balkan country, like a "swimmer burdened by lead around his neck trying to swim toward a bright, beautiful goal."
"I suggest we remove this lead as soon as possible, peacefully or through other means," Marovic said.
Mladic was charged by the U.N. tribunal with genocide for allegedly orchestrating the July 1995 slaughter of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, Bosnia. He is believed to be hiding somewhere in Serbia, the union's dominant republic.
The other top suspect indicted in the Srebrenica massacre, Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic, also remains at large but is thought to be in the Serb part of Bosnia.
De Hoop Scheffer also met Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic and Serbian President Boris Tadic. They were expected to discuss the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, which has been patrolled by NATO peacekeepers since the alliance's 1999 war halted Milosevic's crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians and expelled Serb troops.
Serb War Crimes Fugitives Still at Large
Dusan Stojanovic, Associated Press, 7/24/05
Ten years after U.N. tribunal indicted Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic for the worst bloodshed since World War II, the two most wanted war crimes fugitives remain free.
So, where are they?
The two indicted masterminds of the brutal Bosnian Serb offensives against rival Bosnian Muslims remain at large despite an international outcry for their capture and $5 million per head promised by the United States for information leading to their extradition to the U.N. tribunal.
Karadzic and Mladic have evaded justice since they were indicted by the Netherlands-based tribunal on July 25, 1995 - frustrating international officials and U.N. war crimes prosecutors who want them captured and tried.
The two men top the U.N. tribunal's wanted list, and stand accused of numerous war crimes, including genocide in the July 1995 slaughter of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the U.N.-protected Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II.
Top Serbian and Bosnian officials and Western diplomats have told The Associated Press that Karadzic and Mladic are relying on disguises, hideouts and a shadowy network of supporters to remain free.
U.N. war crimes prosecutors believe Karadzic is hiding in the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia, while Mladic was last seen in neighboring Serbia. Both often cross from one Balkan state to another, frequently using the mountainous border area - and popularity they still enjoy among nationalist Serbs - to evade capture, the prosecutors say.
Those who have seen Karadzic say he has shaved off his trademark bushy hair, has grown a large beard and dresses in black robes like a Serbian Orthodox priest. He often changes his hideouts, Western officials say.
The commander of European Union's peacekeepers in Bosnia, British Maj. Gen. David Leakey, earlier this month said "the net is closing in." But U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the architect of the 1995 Bosnian peace agreement, dismissed this claim.
"Nets are for fishing expeditions. You don't capture war criminals whether it is Osama bin Laden, Radovan Karadzic or Saddam Hussein by going fishing," Holbrooke recently told the AP.
In the past, Karadzic traveled in ambulances with flashing lights to zip through NATO checkpoints undetected. Now, he travels only at night and avoids main roads, using forest paths through rugged Bosnian mountains, Western diplomats said.
His associates say Karadzic has often slipped into Pale, the Bosnian Serb wartime capital, for nighttime visits to his wife, Ljiljana. Mrs. Karadzic said last week that she met him once briefly in 2001 in a visit apparently organized at a secret location by his security. "I received a message, I saw him for an hour and left," Mrs. Karadzic said, adding that she did not know the location of their meeting.
"It's better that we don't know because we would be the weakest link. They (NATO, EU troops) know that we don't know because they follow us all the time. We have also found various listening and tracking devices on our cars."
Mladic, who is accused of leading the Srebrenica slaughter, lived freely in Serbia's capital Belgrade until 2002, showing up openly at soccer stadiums, dining in plush Belgrade restaurants and attending his son's wedding.
When, under Western pressure, Serbia's new pro-democracy authorities signaled that they might have to hand Mladic over to the tribunal, he disappeared from public view. The U.N. war crimes prosecutors have accused the Serbian military of sheltering Mladic.
Serbia is under relentless Western pressure to arrest Mladic. But its conservative leadership has been reluctant to act, fearing a backlash from an electorate which considers the tribunal anti-Serb and still rates Mladic and Karadzic their national heroes.
U.N. war crimes prosecutors are furious. "We are not interested in any negotiations" with Mladic or Karadzic, said Florence Hartmann, the spokeswoman for chief U.N. prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. "There should be no compromise over their capture and extradition."
"What we have here are indictments for the slaughter of thousands."
Sri Lankan president appoints allies to key ministries after government split
Associated Press, 7/18/05
Sri Lanka's president on Monday appointed her close political allies to key Cabinet posts, vacated when a Marxist party withdrew from the ruling coalition to protest a tsunami aid-sharing deal with the Tamil Tiger rebels.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga has appointed Cabinet ministers for land, irrigation, small industries and fisheries - posts formerly held by Marxist party members - a statement from her office said.
The Marxist People's Liberation Front in June withdrew its 39 lawmakers from the governing coalition, threatening Kumaratunga's government with collapse.
The government, reduced to a minority in Parliament, now depends on opposition support to pass legislation.
The Marxists withdrew as Kumaratunga prepared to sign a deal letting Tamil Tiger rebels, as well as the government, distribute billions of dollars' worth of tsunami aid to the victims in Tiger-controlled areas.
The Marxists say such an arrangement may give the Tigers - listed as terrorists in some countries - more international legitimacy.
Responding to a petition filed by the Marxists, the Supreme Court last week temporarily blocked the implementation of parts of the agreement, saying they would threaten the already-fragile cease-fire between the government and the rebels.
The government and Tamil Tigers signed a February 2002 truce, ending two decades of civil war that killed 65,000 people.
The guerrillas had been fighting to create a separate state for ethnic minority Tamils, accusing the majority Sinhalese of discrimination. The rebels still control parts of Sri Lanka's Tamil-majority northeast.
The Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami killed at least 31,000 people in Sri Lanka and left many more homeless.
Sri Lankan village elder shot dead, two security forces troops wounded in attack
Associated Press, 7/21/05
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a village counselor in eastern Sri Lanka, where growing violence threatens a delicate cease-fire between the Tamil Tiger rebels and the government, police said Thursday.
In a separate incident in the region, two men hurled a grenade at a tsunami aid center Thursday, wounding two anti-terrorist commandoes and a policeman, said Nimal Lewke, the deputy inspector general of the Special Task Force.
Lewke said the information he has received suggests that the Tamil Tiger rebels were involved in the attack. The policeman was seriously wounded and hospitalized. The STF soldiers suffered non-life threatening injuries. The incident took place in Akkaraipattu, about 60 kilometers (37 kilometers) south of the area's main town of Batticaloa.
The government often deploy commandoes at the relief centers to help local police to maintain order. Their presence is resented by the rebels.
In the other incident, Marimuthu Baskaran, 54, was shot dead by two men late Wednesday night in Kalmunai village, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Batticaloa, said police officer C.I. Sushantha. There was no claim of responsibility.
Batticaloa has been the scene of violence since a faction of the Tamil Tiger rebels split from the main group more than a year ago.
Officials were investigating whether the rebels killed Baskaran. The Tigers often target military and intelligence officials, but attacks on civilian government employees are rare.
The Tigers warned Wednesday that a cease-fire with the government could collapse unless authorities take steps to prevent attacks against the guerrillas in government-controlled areas. Both sides signed the Norway-brokered truce in February 2002, but rising violence in the island's volatile eastern areas in recent weeks has threatened it.
The Tigers began fighting in 1983 for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the country's north and east, claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. The conflict killed nearly 65,000 people before the cease-fire.
Subsequent peace talks broke down in 2003 over rebel demands for wide autonomy.
Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.
Sudan's new first vice president sets up interim administration for south
Mohamed Osman, Associated Press, 7/19/05
In his first decrees as Sudan's No. 2 leader, former rebel chief John Garang dissolved his guerrilla movement and dismissed all government officials in 10 southern states.
The moves implement measures called for under an interim constitution and peace agreement that ended a 21-year-year civil war between the Muslim north and mainly Christian and animist south.
The settlement made Garang first vice president - second only to President Omar el-Bashir - as well as president of southern Sudan, letting him set up an interim administration there until a referendum in six years on secession.
The decrees were announced by state-run Omdurman radio, which used to castigate the former rebel leader.
Garang led the Sudan People's Liberation Army in the war against the Khartoum government. The war in Africa's largest country ended in January with the signing of the comprehensive peace agreement, and he was sworn in as first vice president July 9.
Garang's decrees replaced the governors in the south who had been appointed by el-Bashir. The edicts also dissolved all the legislative councils in the region.
Garang set up a new administration, naming Salva Kiir Mayardit as vice president of the southern government. Kiir was Garang's second in the Sudan People's Liberation Army.
Garang also appointed 10 of his former senior army commanders and former aides as administrative supervisors for the southern states, replacing the governors.
The caretaker administrators will run the south until a referendum on secession, which will come six years from now under the peace agreement.
The accord provided for sharing of power and wealth with southerners but has been criticized for not including other marginalized peoples, including those in the western Darfur region.
The interim constitution allocates 52 percent of government and parliament posts to the current ruling National Congress Party, and 28 percent to Garang's former rebel movement, and the rest to other parties.
The civil war ravaged the infrastructure in oil-rich southern Sudan, a vast region that saw little or no development during the fighting.
Sudanese Guards Rough Up U.S. Aides and Reporter as Rice Visits
Joel Brinkley, The New York Times, 7/21/05
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's official visit with President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir of Sudan on Thursday turned ugly after Sudanese security officers manhandled members of her delegation and the news media, blocking their way to the meeting in the presidential palace.
Ms. Rice said she was ''outraged'' and demanded an official apology, which the Sudanese foreign minister delivered by phone a little more than an hour later. But it was clear the incident left her angry and worsened an already difficult relationship.
''They had no right to manhandle my staff,'' she said afterward, adding, the Sudanese ''still have a long way to go.''
As James Wilkinson, her communications director, tried to join the meeting, security officers shoved him against a wall. ''Diplomacy 101 says you don't rough up your guests,'' Mr. Wilkinson said afterward.
After Ms. Rice entered the meeting with Mr. Bashir, they sat in awkward silence for almost 10 minutes because Mr. Bashir speaks only Arabic and his security guards refused to admit Ms. Rice's interpreter.
Ms. Rice's deputy, Robert B. Zoellick, has visited Sudan three times in three months, pressing its leaders to end the violence in Darfur that has taken 200,000 lives in the last two years. The United States characterizes the deaths as genocide.
Andrew S. Natsios, director of the United States Agency for International Development, said government troops and government-backed militias have destroyed or heavily damaged 2,000 villages in the last two years. As a result, almost half of Darfur's five and a half million residents have been killed or fled to refugee camps.
When Ms. Rice, in her meeting with Mr. Bashir, asked him once again to disarm the government-backed militias responsible for most of the violence, he replied, ''If you disarm only one side in this conflict, the result is going to be genocide,'' said an aide to Ms. Rice who was at the meeting. Another aide said Mr. Bashir's voice had no hint of irony. The other side, as Mr. Bashir sees it, is the rebels who began the Darfur conflict two years ago.
After the meeting, American and Sudanese reporters and photographers were allowed to enter the room to take pictures and observe. Mr. Bashir was telling Ms. Rice about the historical significance of his ancestral home when Andrea Mitchell of NBC News shouted a question to him: ''Why should Americans believe your promises'' regarding Darfur, when ''your government is still supporting the militias?''
Two Sudanese security officers grabbed her from behind and dragged her from the room. Mr. Bashir did not respond to the question or otherwise comment. Ms. Rice boarded her plane a short time later for the 90-minute flight here, the site of the second largest refugee camp in Darfur. Her face grim, she said: ''I am about the only person they did not rough up. I expect an apology before we land.''
Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail called just before she landed to apologize for ''the mistreatment of our delegation,'' an aide to Ms. Rice said. But when Ms. Rice stepped off the plane in El Fashir a few minutes later she was still not smiling.
Relations between the United States and Sudan have been strained for more than a decade. In 1997 the United States withdrew its ambassador, accusing Sudan of sponsoring terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, who lived here for part of the 1990's. Last year, however, the United States helped broker a peace agreement in a 20-year civil war between the central government and rebels in the south. But Darfur has overshadowed that accomplishment.
Under the north-south agreement, John Garang, the rebel leader, joined the new government two weeks ago as first vice president. Ms. Rice visited him on Thursday morning in his big new office, complete with crystal chandeliers and overstuffed chairs.
In Darfur, Ms. Rice greeted several hundred Rwandan peacekeeping troops who were standing in formation in the sun. Two United States Air Force C-130 transport planes attached to NATO that had brought them here from Rwanda this morning were directly behind, their engines running. As Ms. Rice and her entourage approached, several of the soldiers look puzzled.
The African Union has promised to increase its peacekeeping presence in Darfur to more than 7,000 from 2,700 by September. Because none of the African nations offering the troops have the capacity to airlift the soldiers here, though, Ms. Rice and her aides arranged this first airlift through NATO, timed to coincide with her arrival. More airlifts are planned, but it is unclear when.
In the Abu Shouk refugee camp, home to 71,000 to 100,000 people, depending on whose estimate is used, 200 children greeted Ms. Rice. They sang in Arabic, ''Welcome, welcome, oh Condoleezza'' over and over again.
She met with private aid groups and then with women who had been raped or otherwise abused by militia members, rebels or government troops. Violence against women has become a volatile issue between Sudan and the United States, and Ms. Rice said the Sudanese gave her a ''white paper'' explaining how they would deal with it. But she said she was skeptical about their promises. Looking at children in the camp, she said, ''We want these children not to grow up in a nursery of a refugee camp.'' But neither she nor anyone else here offered much optimism that security would improve so that refugees could go home.
Neils Scott, director of the Darfur office for the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said ''there's still lawlessness out there.''
Genocide in Darfur: A Legal Analysis
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