PEACE NEGOTIATIONS WATCH
Tuesday, August 8, 2006
(Volume V, Number 19)
Contents:
Armenia/Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan: 2nd soldier in 1 week killed by Armenian gunfire
The two shootings underscore the rising tensions in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh.
Kadege and seven others arrested for alleged coup attempt.
UN asks Burundi
to allow rights groups to visit detainees
Plea follows complaints of torture of coup plot suspects.
Russian rights
group slams 'arbitrary rule' in Chechnya
Group particularly worried about continuing disappearances.
Material for
up to five "dirty bombs" recovered in Chechnya
Russian forces took materials from petrochemical production site.
Congo Presidential Hopeful Claims Fraud
Candidate pledged his protest would remain peaceful.
Postelection
challenge for Congo: Keeping the peace
Final results of elections are not expected for several weeks.
Democratic Republic of Congo Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation.
The current offices of government-in-exile are a 'world away' from the lives
of the residents of Abkhazia.
Ex-rebels in Indonesia's Aceh to lodge complaint over autonomy law
Ready to submit grievances to foreign peace monitors over new law.
Aceh Negotiation Simulation Click
here to access the Aceh Negotiation Simulation.
Five rebels, soldier killed as new fighting flares in Indian Kashmir
Troops also shot dead three militants in separate clash.
Kashmir police
begin overhaul, more policemen accused of militant links shifted
Policemen have been transferred or put under surveillance since three army
soldiers and two policemen were detained for allegedly helping militants.
Kashmir Negotiation Simulation Click here to access the Kashmir Negotiation Simulation.
Kosovo
Diplomats urge Serbs, Albanians to quell tensions in Kosovo's
troubled north
International envoys expressed concern about the situation in northern Kosovo.
"Chuckie" Taylor is currently in jail, awaiting trial on passport
fraud charges.
Nepal probe summons army chief for questioning
Gen. Thapa will be first top military official to face questions about allegations
that soldiers used excessive force against Gyanendra demonstrators.
Philippines says three guerrillas killed
Three others also wounded in clashes with government forces on Mindanao.
President delivered order to residents of the only government-controlled
town.
Sri Lanka says Tigers killed 100 civilians as fighting
subsides
Latest incident raises number of people killed in 11 days of violence to 426.
U.N. chief calls for strengthening of African force in Sudan's
Darfur
Annan urged the Security Council to more than double forces if a U.N. takeover
of peacekeeping duties is approved.
Genocide in Darfur: A Legal Analysis Click here to access the PILPG
Report.
####
Azerbaijan: 2nd soldier in 1 week killed by Armenian gunfire
Associated Press, 8/4/06
An Azerbaijani soldier was shot and killed by ethnic Armenian forces near the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani officials said Friday the second such incident reported by Azerbaijan in less than a week.
Armenian defense officials could not be reached for comment on the report.
Babek Mirzaliyev, 20, was killed Thursday morning near the northeast boundary of Nagorno-Karabakh, Defense Ministry spokesman Ilgar Verdiyev told The Associated Press. It is the same region where Azerbaijan said another soldier was shot to death Saturday.
The shootings underscore the rising tensions in the mountainous territory that is in Azerbaijan but has been controlled along with some surrounding areas by Karabakh and Armenian forces since 1994. Nagorno-Karabakh has been governed by a shaky cease-fire shaky that in 1994 ended a six-year separatist war.
Some 30,000 people were killed and about 1 million driven from their homes during the fighting.
The lack of resolution over the Nagorno-Karabakh's final status has hampered development in the strategic South Caucasus region.
The two countries' presidents have met twice this year with no progress made on the issue, and mediators have expressed frustration over both sides' intransigence.
Azerbaijan officials on Friday rejected a call by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for a referendum on Nagorno-Karabakh's final status. At least one mediator has suggested that people who fled or were driven out of the territory during the fighting most of whom were Azerbaijani might be offered the chance to vote.
"It won't work," Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told reporters.
"If we really want to solve this question within a democratic framework,
to see some progress, it's vital first of all that Azerbaijanis return to Nagorno-Karabakh."
Former Burundi Vice President Arrested
Associated Press, 8/1/06
A former vice president of Burundi was arrested Tuesday with seven other suspects for allegedly orchestrating a coup attempt, a police official said.
Alphonse Kadege, four former government officials and a former rebel leader were seized at Kadege's home after holding a series of meetings aimed at toppling the current regime, Brig. Gen. Adolphe Manirakiza, chief of Burundi intelligence, told The Associated Press.
Two other suspects were also held, and police were searching for the President Pierre Nkurunziza's spokesman, Pancrace Cimpaye.
This central African country is emerging from a dozen years of conflict between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis. The Tutsis have dominated government, the economy and the military since Burundi's independence from Belgium in 1962.
The violence has killed more than 250,000 people, most of them civilians dying from conflict-related disease and hunger.
Burundi's war started in October 1993, when Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected president, a Hutu.
UN asks Burundi to allow rights groups to visit detainees
Agence France Presse, 8/3/06
The United Nations on Thursday called on Burundi to grant human rights groups access to people detained in a government crackdown against coup plot suspects, following complaints of torture, officials said.
The UN Operation in Burundi (ONUB) made the call after the wife of former deputy president Alphonse-Marie Kadege, who is among six people in detention following the arrests that began on Monday, complained that her husband was being tortured in jail.
"Yesterday afternoon, the jail door was open and I saw my husband sleeping on the floor and a police officer stepped on his head while beating him," said Ruth Magerano, adding that her husband's hand had been broken.
The six detainees, who include high-ranking politicians and a top military officer, are accused of plotting a coup to overthrow the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza.
"Torture cannot be condoned or go unmentioned. We demand that the authorities of this country allow visits to those who are detained by the intelligence service," said Ismail Diallo, head of ONUB's human rights office.
"If the international organisations cannot be allowed, we ask that local organisations be allowed," Diallo said.
Local and international rights groups have accused Bujumbura of human rights violations and rampant torture by the intelligence service since the government came to power last year. The government has denied the accusations.
The tiny central African nation is emerging from the devastation of 13 years
of civil strife that has claimed some 300,000 lives.
Russian rights group slams 'arbitrary rule' in Chechnya
Victoria Loginova, Agence France Presse, 8/3/06
The people of Chechnya face arbitrary rule by security forces, corruption and fear, a Russian human rights group claimed Thursday.
Despite Russia's claims to have brought stability to the mainly Muslim Caucasus mountain province calm has not returned, according to a report published by Memorial, one of Russia's oldest human rights organisations.
The group said the continued incidence of so-called disappearances was particularly worrying.
"The abductions continue. In the best of cases, abductees are ransomed, dead or alive, by their relatives," Memorial said in its annual report on Chechnya.
"In the worst of cases, they disappear without a trace," the report said.
Memorial accuses militias loyal to Chechnya's Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov of being behind many of the abductions, with separatist fighters responsible for the rest.
According to figures compiled by Memorial 316 people were abducted in Chechnya in 2005, compared to 448 people in 2004. Of these 23 were found dead and 127 are still missing, Memorial said.
But Svetlana Gannushkina, one of the authors of the report, said the figures could be far higher because "people are afraid to complain to the police and non-governmental organisations".
"They prefer negotiating the liberation of their loved ones through personal contacts," she explained at a press conference in Moscow.
Russian television, now under increased state controls, has largely ignored the conflict in Chechnya, instead devoting reports on the province to rebuilding efforts.
The Memorial report said Russian authorities had achieved a "Chechenisation" of the conflict by allowing the "arbitrary rule" of local pro-Russian security forces who sowed "fear and silence".
Gannushkina spoke of the kidnapping of 11 inhabitants of the village of Borozdinovskaya in June 2005 by armed men accused by locals of being pro-Russian Chechen militias.
Almost 80 armed men came in armoured cars and burned houses in the village, killing a 77-year-old man.
Around 1,000 inhabitants fled Borozdinovskaya and set up a tent camp in the neighbouring province of Dagestan. The fate of the kidnap victims is unknown.
Material for up to five "dirty bombs" recovered in Chechnya
Associated Press, 8/4/06
Radiological material that could have been used to make as many as five "dirty bombs" was safely removed from Chechnya and returned to the Russian government in July, the National Nuclear Security Administration said.
The materials were taken from a petrochemical production site in Chechnya and moved to the region near Moscow. "It is critical to international security that high-risk, radiological material is safely removed and secured before it falls into the hands of terrorists," NNSA head Linton F. Brooks said in a statement Wednesday.
The U.S. funded the operation, but Russians carried out the recovery mission in Chechnya accompanied by armed security forces, NNSA spokeswoman Julianne Smith said. "Because of the situation in Chechnya, we were not there," she said.
The NNSA is part of the U.S. Department of Energy and is responsible for military applications of nuclear science, including maintaining the country's nuclear weapons stockpile, responding to nuclear and radiological emergencies and providing the U.S. Navy with nuclear propulsion.
Congo Presidential Hopeful Claims Fraud
Edward Harris, Associated Press, 8/1/06
A former rebel leader-turned presidential candidate alleged massive fraud in Congo's historic elections, but pledged Tuesday that his protest would remain peaceful as preliminary results began to trickle in.
Official, final results from Sunday's elections were not expected for weeks. But a sample of results announced by U.N. radio suggested that sitting President Joseph Kabila and Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba had emerged as leading contenders for the presidency.
The United Nations tallied about 600,000 votes across Congo's provinces about 2 percent of votes in small town and 65 percent in larger cities. An AP analysis of the figures showed Kabila and Bemba leading, with Harvard-educated Dr. Oscar Kashala receiving strong support in opposition areas.
Voters elected a new president and legislature to replace Congo's transitional administration, which took power after back-to-back wars that lasted from 1996 to 2002. It was the first multiparty election in 45 years of strife and dictatorship in the country the size of Western Europe, whose people remain poor despite the country's diamond and mineral riches.
Azarias Ruberwa, a former rebel leader who became one of four vice presidents in Congo's transitional administration, denounced the poll and alleged "massive fraud."
Ruberwa said Rwandan Hutu militias in the lawless east threatened to cut off some voters' ears if they did not vote for Kabila, who negotiated the end to war in 2002 and leads the national-unity government.
"This is not democracy," Ruberwa told reporters in the capital, Kinshasa.
Electoral commission officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Rwandan militias, who helped orchestrate Rwanda's 1994 genocide, fled to Congo after the killings ended.
Ruberwa cited other problems with voter registration and said one incident in which electoral officials allegedly emptied a ballot box and replaced the sheets within.
He said the problems must be addressed before final results are announced and he would pursue any claims to Congo's Supreme Court. A new vote might be needed, he said. But he ruled out returning to arms.
"That's excluded," he said. "We're in the process in good faith. We took up arms for democracy."
Several leading election candidates are former rebels who still command private armed militias, and could pose a real threat to peace after the elections.
Ruberwa's party has strong support from a minority Tutsi community in Congo's east, but is otherwise unpopular and his fighters were accused of atrocities during the war. The party is considered a likely spoiler if it loses ground at the polls.
Voting was largely peaceful Sunday and the European Union and Congo's former colonial ruler, Belgium, said isolated violence had not kept the elections from being free and democratic.
Some 17,600 U.N. peacekeepers and 2,000 EU troops are deployed to help ensure peace during the vote in the Central African nation.
The Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center hailed the vote, saying although there were procedural problems, "on the whole, these appear at this point to be minor."
However, the Carter Center said it could not make a ruling yet on the overall fairness because vote counting continues and a run-off between the two top vote-getters in a field of 33 is possible. None of the presidential candidates was expected to win the outright majority needed to avoid a run-off, which would likely be in October.
The Carter Center, which deployed 58 international observers in Congo, said in a statement that security forces had "obstructed legitimate democratic activity" during the campaign and had restricted some candidates' movements.
But in "any first elections such as these, we are well aware that the most demanding aspects of international elections standards cannot be entirely met," the center said.
Postelection challenge for Congo: Keeping the peace
Michelle Faul, Associated Press, 8/1/06
Congolese electoral officials backed by riot police faced down stone-throwing boycotters to allow voters a second chance, underlining the challenge to democracy in Africa: keeping ethnic, regional and political disputes from reigniting into war.
While polls were opened an extra day Monday in central Congo, it appeared that few voters took advantage in what officials agreed was a massive boycott called by one candidate.
The party of another candidate, a former rebel leader, meanwhile claimed a lead in over 50 percent of the nation's provinces, while decrying alleged irregularities across the vast Central African country.
The Congolese Liberation Movement said Jean-Pierre Bemba, a vice president in the postwar administration, had a firm lead in six of Congo's 11 provinces and was confident of victory. "I can't say for sure, but it's an eventuality," party official Moise Musangana said.
Final results were not expected for several weeks, though none of the 33 presidential candidates was expected to win the outright majority needed to avoid a run-off, which would likely be held in October. No partial results were being announced, but local results were being posted in 60 districts, and various groups were doing their own tallies.
Electoral commission Chairman Appolinaire Malu-Malu called for restraint in the private compilation of results in the restive country.
"Be modest in your declarations," he said in a news conference. "Don't fool the population."
Several leading election candidates are former rebels who still command private armed militias, and could pose a real threat to peace after the elections.
Bemba has become a front-runner while campaigning on a message that he is a true son of Congo, while his main competition and current president, Joseph Kabila, was born in exile in neighboring Rwanda. The message touches on a sore point of ethnicity in a country that has nine neighbors carved out by colonial leaders who took no account of ethnic divisions in drawing borders.
Voting was largely peaceful Sunday, however, and the European Union and Congo's former colonial ruler, Belgium, said isolated violence had not kept the elections from being free and democratic.
Some 17,600 U.N. peacekeepers and 2,000 EU troops are deployed to help ensure peace during the vote in the Central African nation, where wars in 1998-2002 attracted troops from eight nations in a regional battle to control vast mineral resources, including diamonds, copper, gold and coltan, used for cellphone chips.
In Mbuji-Mayi, Congo's second-largest city and a diamond-mining center, officials said they were reopening 174 of the 1,041 polling stations Monday after registering a turnout of just 5-15 percent Sunday. But few voters were seen going to polls.
It was unclear how many had turned out throughout the rest of the country.
Presumed supporters of veteran politician Etienne Tshisekedi who had called the boycott burned polling stations and voting material Sunday.
On Monday, Militants stoned and beat one electoral official, who was hospitalized, and set fire to the car of another, election official Nicolas Kalambayi Wa Kalambayi said.
At least four other electoral workers were injured over the weekend, including a man whose hand was cut when he raised it to shield his face from an attacker wielding a machete.
Ballots from a voting station attacked by a firebomb were saved Monday by women electoral workers who smuggled them out in flour bags carried on their heads. They were mistaken for market vendors.
A power cut, frequent in Congo, caused vote counting to be delayed Monday evening in Mbuji-Mayi.
Though the presence of foreign peacekeepers appeared to have deterred election-related violence, militia fighters still rape and loot in the lawless east and the conflict kills 1,000 daily. The national army has been trying to integrate militia members.
These elections were the first multiparty elections in Congo after 45 years of strife and dictatorship. In addition to the presidential race, another 9,000 contenders vied for the 500-seat legislature to replace Congo's postwar, transitional administration.
Tshisekedi, who has his main support base in the central region of Kasai, argues he was not given a fair chance in his presidential bid.
Kabila, appointed president under a power-sharing agreement that opened the way to the vote, had been considered the front-runner.
In the capital, Kinshasa, the party of Vice President Azarias Ruberwa, a former rebel leader and presidential candidate, said some people were kept from voting because others had used their names to cast ballots. Party spokesman Osako Elongo also said some ballot boxes were not large enough for all the votes, and so were opened by election workers and emptied rather than delivered sealed.
The electoral chief, Malu-Malu, said it would take a week to investigate the reports of irregularities.
In Brussels, the Belgian government welcomed what it said was a well-organized and peaceful ballot, while EU foreign aid chief Louis Michel congratulated Congolese citizens for fulfilling their "civic duty."
In the aftermath of Congo's 1960 independence from Belgium, the people of Kasai and neighboring Katanga province seceded briefly before military strongman Mobutu Sese Seko seized power and reunited the nation after elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in 1961.
Mobutu led the nation he called Zaire as a personal fiefdom for 32 years, using
its mineral riches to fatten foreign banks accounts said to hold US$4 billion
when he died after being ousted by armed rebellions in 1997.
Democratic Republic of Congo Negotiation Simulation
Click here
to access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International
Law & Policy Group.
Doubts as Georgian leader plans mountain base to rein in separatists
Simon Ostrovsky, Agence France Presse, 8/2/06
Georgia's government is planning a new administration to rein in the breakaway Abkhazia region on the lush Black Sea coast but even some of its officials worry about the plan's practicality -- and their own safety.
The current offices of Abkhazia's "government-in-exile" on Tbilisi's Rustaveli Avenue are a world away from the lives of the estimated 320,000 residents of Abkhazia, hundreds of kilometers (miles) to the northwest.
Georgia's pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili last week announced a plan intended to seize the initiative and rein in Abkhazia, which has run its own affairs -- propped up by Russia -- since fighting a war for independence in the early 1990s.
After state forces dislodged a local militia leader from the nearby Kodori Gorge last week, Saakashvili said that the government-in-exile would move from Tbilisi to the gorge.
Historically, the remote gorge, inhabited by some 2,000 members of the Svan ethnic group, is part of Abkhazia, but it lies beyond the territory of the separatist administration.
"We're called a government-in-exile, now the word 'exile' will be dropped from our title," said Timur Mzhavia, chairman of Abkhazia's exiled regional assembly.
From its vantage point high above Abkhazia but just 25 kilometers from the main city Sukhumi, Saakashvili hopes the new administration will find ways of bringing the rebel territory into line.
When he took office in 2004 after a popular uprising, Saakashvili said it would be a top priority to rein in two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, along with taking Georgia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union.
"For the first time since 1993, on the territory of Abkhazia, our Abkhazia, there will be a government which will enforce Georgia's jurisdiction and Georgian constitutional order in the heart of Abkhazia," Saakashvili said.
His strategy rests mainly on the hope that economic growth in Georgia proper will make ties with Tbilisi a more attractive prospect for Abkhazia's residents.
But in reality the economy is struggling, especially since Russia introduced embargoes on two key Georgian exports: wine and mineral water.
Georgia's statistics agency says the embargoes contributed to a trade deficit of 1.1 billion dollars in the first half of this year.
Economic growth has been steady, but World Bank projections say it will fall from 6.4 percent this year to five percent next year.
"The main thing for us is that we'll get more attention and we can say we're on the territory of Abkhazia," said an upbeat Mzhavia.
Saakashvili has pledged to undertake a wholesale reconstruction of the Kodori Gorge.
He has ordered the building of schools and clinics, a new administration building and the improvement of a local airport -- the only lifeline for the gorge when roads are blocked by snow in winter.
"All the infrastructure will be put in place and the local population will benefit," Mzhavia said. "They will participate in the construction and be able to earn money this way."
But amid angry denunciations by Russia and threats of force by the unrecognized administration in Sukhumi, others among the pro-Tbilisi administration's 1,200 members were worried about their safety.
"I just wonder how the government is going to ensure my security from the separatist government, from whom I barely managed to escape once," said one executive in the administration, Geno Kalandia.
There was also skepticism among the 300,000 refugees who fled Abkhazia during the conflict in the early 1990s.
Some pointed out that 80 percent of Abkhazia's current population have been given Russian citizenship, while far from suffering economic decline, the territory is doing well from Russian tourist trade.
"It is an interesting idea, but they're building castles in the sky. I
don't know if this will lead to the bright future that they are promising,"
said Georgi Machitidze, a 26-year-old refugee from Sukhumi.
Ex-rebels in Indonesia's Aceh to lodge complaint over autonomy law
Agence France Presse, 8/3/06
Former separatist rebels in Indonesia's Aceh are ready to submit to foreign peace monitors their grievances over a new law giving the province greater self-rule, their spokesman said Thursday.
The former members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) are unhappy with several articles in the law passed last month which they say are "not in line" with a peace pact signed with Jakarta, spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah told AFP.
The historic pact was signed in Helsinki in August 2005, ending a 29-year conflict between the separatists and the central government which had claimed the lives of some 15,000 people, mostly civilians.
Abdullah said that in particular GAM wanted the government to clarify an article on its role in Aceh, which he argued could be interpreted to allow it to interfere in Aceh's regional affairs.
"In fact, the memorandum of understanding (MOU, or peace pact) clearly outlined the separation of authority between the central government and the Acehnese government," he said.
He said the law also failed to include a figure for military troops that can be stationed in Aceh by Jakarta, a contradiction to the 14,700 soldiers stipulated in the peace pact.
Abdullah said the former fighters would take their grievances to the European-led Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM), which is tasked with overseeing the peace pact and mediating any disputes.
"We will give it to them as soon as possible. Hopefully we will give it to them today (Thursday) because the drafting of it has been completed," he said.
The head of the AMM, Pieter Feith, said last month that the law was "broadly in line with the MOU" but there were some parts the monitors wanted to see improved through amendments.
AMM spokesman Juri Laas told AFP nothing had yet been submitted. He said that a process of mediation was ongoing with both parties, with two meetings already specifically focusing on the new law.
"This will of course continue. We will continue to have consultations with the parties and we'll see where we get from there ... We're trying to get them to talk to each other, find solutions," he said.
So far, he added, "it has been done in a positive spirit and a good atmosphere".
Former rebels have already said that returning to arms is not an option they would consider.
The peace pact was was spurred on by the devastating 2004 tsunami which left some 168,000 Acehnese dead.
GAM agreed to drop its demand for independence in return for, among other concessions, the right to form local political parties which are banned elsewhere in Indonesia.
Local elections are expected to be held in Aceh in November and Indonesia has
asked the AMM to extend its mandate, which is currently due to expire in September,
until then.
Aceh Negotiation Simulation
Click here
to access the Aceh Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International
Law & Policy Group.
Ivory Coast
Gbagbo's party changes tack on contentious ID scheme
Agence France Presse, 8/4/06
The party of Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo has had a change of heart, lifting its boycott of the contentious population identification scheme which it violently disrupted last month, it announced Friday.
The Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) said it took the decision following talks with transitional government Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny, who has been tasked with organising crucial presidential elections in the war-divided country by October 31.
The prime minister "has resolved to create transparent and security conditions" and has engaged the identification exercise "on a legal basis," Gbagbo's FPI said in a statement published in the media Friday.
Banny's transitional government this week drew up special guidelines for the pre-election voter identification scheme which it said were aimed at preventing disputes.
It said the guide would enable voter identification to be conducted "within the legal framework ... so as to avoid any possible dispute."
Issues of Ivorian nationality have been at the centre of the national political crisis after a prominent politician, Alassane Ouattara, was disqualified from running for election in 2000 because one of his parents was believed to be a foreigner.
Gbagbo's party said it was happy with new guidelines specifying the "goal" of the ID process and its targets.
The exercise aims to update voter rolls through the identification of some 3.5 million undocumented Ivorians among the country's 16 million inhabitants ahead of the elections.
The FPI said it was also delighted that political parties could now take part in the ID exercises as observers and make recommendations where necessary.
Violent anti-ID demonstrations left at least three people dead and dozens injured last month at the start of ID excercise after FPI leaders vowed to use "all possible means" to halt the exercise which it viewed as electoral fraud.
The country, once an economic powerhouse and bastion of stability of west Africa,
has been split into a government-controlled south and a rebel-held north since
the civil war with a buffer zone in between patrolled by UN peacekeepers and
French forces.
Five rebels, soldier killed as new fighting flares in Indian Kashmir
Agence France Presse, 8/2/06
Five Muslim militants and an Indian soldier died in clashes Wednesday in revolt-hit Kashmir where violence has been escalating in recent months, police said.
Police said two militants and a soldier were killed in a pre-dawn gunfight in Doda, south of Srinagar, summer capital of Indian Kashmir where an Islamic separatist insurgency has raged against New Delhi's rule since 1989.
"The fighting erupted when rebels raided a militant hideout in the forest area of Mughal Maidan," a police spokesman said.
He said troops also shot dead three militants in separate early morning clashes near Tral town, south of Srinagar and in northern Bandipora town.
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan each hold part of the Himalayan region of Kashmir but claim it in full. They have fought two of their three wars over the region since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.
An anti-Indian insurgency launched in 1989 by Islamic militants has left more than 44,000 people dead by official count.
Violence has mounted in Kashmir over the past few months with a series of deadly incidents including attacks on tourists.
Kashmir police begin overhaul, more policemen accused of militant links
shifted
Aijaz Hussain, Associated Press, 8/3/06
Dozens of policemen suspected of links to rebels in Indian-controlled Kashmir have been transferred or put under surveillance since three army soldiers and two policemen were detained for allegedly helping the militants, officials said Thursday.
Most of the policemen were stationed in the districts around the towns of Punch and Doda, two of the most violence-prone areas in Kashmir.
"I can't give you the exact number ... But yes, we have shifted some policemen out of Doda and Punch on the suspicion of being militant helpers," Inspector-General of Police S. P. Vaid, chief of the state's Jammu region, told The Associated Press. He said the action was taken on the recommendations of local police officers.
The men have not been dismissed or arrested because the suspicions have not be proven, he said.
But even as the allegations were being investigated, senior security officials say that in remote villages the families of soldiers and police officers often come under fierce pressure to help the rebels.
A senior intelligence official said 37 policemen had been moved from Punch and Doda to other police barracks in the state, and about 50 others were being kept under surveillance. The officer declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Punch is located near the Line of Control, the heavily militarized frontier separating India's and Pakistan's portions of Kashmir. Doda is in the southern hinterland of Jammu-Kashmir state. Rebels are highly active in both areas.
Three Indian Army soldiers and two state policemen were detained last month for allegedly being linked to the Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, which new Delhi blames for numerous bombings in India, including last month's Bombay train blasts.
The policemen have been suspended from their jobs. The army has not commented on the status of the soldiers.
Jammu-Kashmir state has some 65,000 policemen, along with about 25,000 Special Police Officers, who were recruited specifically to fight the insurgents.
A dozen-odd Islamic militant groups have been fighting Indian security forces
since 1989 to carve out a separate homeland or merge the Himalayan region, India's
only Muslim-majority state, into India's neighbor Pakistan. More than 68,000
people have died.
Kashmir Negotiation Simulation
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here to access the Kashmir Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International
Law & Policy Group.
Diplomats urge Serbs, Albanians to quell tensions in Kosovo's troubled north
Nebi Qena, Associated Press, 8/4/06
International envoys overseeing talks on Kosovo's future on Friday urged ethnic Albanians and Serbs to defuse tensions in the province's troubled north.
Diplomats from the so-called contact group United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Russia expressed concern about the situation in northern Kosovo, a Serb-dominated region in the predominantly ethnic Albanian province.
Local Serbian officials in northern Kosovo recently cut off contact with provincial institutions dominated by the ethnic Albanians following a number of violent incidents they blamed on ethnic Albanians.
Both NATO and the U.N. beefed up their presence in the area to quell fears of violence.
International officials fear enmities might flare up between the two communities as talks on the province's future status enter a critical phase.
"Both Belgrade and Pristina should take immediate steps to reduce tensions in northern Kosovo, particularly to encourage responsible leadership and build confidence among communities," the group said in a statement.
Kosovo has been under U.N. administration since 1999, when NATO launched a war campaign to stop a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians fighting for Kosovo's independence.
Talks to determine Kosovo's future are under way in Austria, with the next round starting Aug. 7. Ethnic Albanians are pushing for independence, but Serbs want to keep the Kosovo an area Serbs consider their historic heartland part of Serbia.
The contact group has set guidelines for the talks that reject returning to Belgrade's full control, its partition, or unification with another country in the region. It also has said the solution should be acceptable to Kosovo's people.
Western envoys are aiming for an agreement by the end of the year that at least would ensure the well-being of Kosovo's minorities, particularly Serbs.
U.N. officials recently proposed having a provisional international body supervise the northern Serb sector and integrate it into Kosovo's institutions once the status issue has been resolved.
The group pledged increased international engagement in Kosovo's north and called for the U.N.-run talks to include a solution for the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica.
"Solutions need to be found for the city of Mitrovica. New arrangements,
now under discussion, should be functional, realistic and guarantee the rights
of all residents," the statement said.
Kosovo Negotiation Simulation
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Activists want Charles Taylor's son tried for war crimes, torture
Curt Anderson, Associated Press, 8/6/06
Charles McArthur Emmanuel, the son of Liberia's former president and alleged warlord, sits in a jail cell awaiting trial on passport fraud charges. But human rights activists and Liberians say the man better known as "Chuckie" Taylor should face U.S. war crimes and torture charges from his days as a right-hand man for his father.
"Chuckie was a very feared and dangerous person," said Hassan Bility, a Liberian journalist and critic of former President Charles Taylor. Bility was jailed by the regime for six months in 2002. "There are a lot of stories, and the first thing they are going to talk about is his sheer wickedness."
Emmanuel was arrested March 30 at Miami International Airport after arriving on a flight from Trinidad. Prosecutors say he lied on his passport application about the identity of his father, who was arrested the day before in Africa and is awaiting a United Nations war crimes trial for alleged atrocities during neighboring Sierre Leone's civil war.
The elder Taylor also has been linked to killings, kidnappings, torture and other violence in Liberia, where his son headed an elite paramilitary unit blamed for many of the alleged atrocities that was widely known as the "Demon Forces."
Before joining his father in Africa, Emmanuel also had a lengthy juvenile arrest record in the early 1990s growing up in the Orlando area, according to records filed in the federal case. Among the charges: assault and battery, auto theft, robbery, resisting arrest and grand larceny.
One Florida mental health assessment of Emmanuel in 1994, when he went by the name Roy Belfast Jr. after his stepfather, said he had "an extensive history of aggressive criminal charges" and "problems with anger control." Echoes of those findings would occur later when he ran the 800-man Anti-Terrorism Unit for his father in Liberia, activists and Liberians say.
When he was arrested at the Miami airport, investigators found dozens of pages of Emmanuel's writings that appear to be rap lyrics and are filled with violent imagery and obscenities. There are several references to the ATU and such lines as "we ain't takin' no slack/ya'll try to tackle mine/layin bodies in stacks" and "take this for free/six feet under is where you gonna be."
A report by Human Rights Watch described the ATU as a a force created by Taylor shortly after he became Liberia's president in 1997 that was involved in abuse of civilians, extortion, looting, murders, recruitment of child soldiers and torture.
Bility, who currently lives in Boston and formerly worked for Liberia's The Analyst newspaper, cited several specific instances in which Emmanuel was allegedly involved or oversaw killings, rapes, beatings and torture. The ATU, he said, was essentially a "hit squad" that operated at Taylor's behest.
"Anything the president perceived as a threat to him or to the state, they took care of that," Bility said.
Some torture victims were held in water-filled holes in the ground, "beaten and sexually abused, and forced to drink urine and eat cigarette butts," the Human Rights Watch report found.
"Chuckie Taylor (Emmanuel) is implicated in heinous abuses against Liberians," said Elise Keppler, counsel for Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program. "The Department of Justice should investigate his links to these atrocities with a view toward prosecuting him."
Because he was born in the United States, Keppler said, Emmanuel could be prosecuted under federal laws making it a crime for a U.S. citizen to commit torture or war crimes abroad. These laws have rarely if ever been used, she said.
Justice Department officials in Washington and federal prosecutors in Miami declined comment on whether such charges will be brought against Emmanuel. His court-appointed lawyer in the Miami passport fraud matter, Miguel Caridad, also would not comment.
Emmanuel was born in 1977 in Boston to Taylor then an economics student at Bentley College and Bernice Emmanuel, who was Taylor's girlfriend. She later married a Trinidad-born man named Roy Belfast, leading young Emmanuel to adopt his stepfather's name after they moved to the Orlando area in 1987.
Efforts to reach Belfast and Bernice Emmanuel, who divorced in 2004, were not successful. But U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents say that Emmanuel joined his father in Liberia in 1997, a few years after his string of arrests as a teenager in the Orlando area. He then began using the name Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr.
On Emmanuel's application in March for a U.S. passport, he identified his father as "Steven Daniel Smith" rather than Taylor or Belfast, according to ICE officials. That led to the passport fraud charges.
Taylor's time in the United States ended in 1985, when he escaped from a jail in Massachusetts while awaiting extradition to Liberia to face embezzlement charges. He turned up in Liberia in 1989, leading a rebel group against President Samuel Doe and sparking a seven-year civil war that claimed some 250,000 lives.
Taylor was elected president one campaign slogan was "he killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him" and took office in 1997. He fled Liberia in 2003 after his indictment by the special Sierra Leone court.
Because of his role as chief of Taylor's ATU, Emmanuel or "Chuckie" was placed on a U.N. restricted travel list and is on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of some 3,500 people who are prohibited from doing business with U.S. citizens and whose assets in this country can be frozen.
As it currently stands, Emmanuel is scheduled to stand trial on the passport
charge in September.
Nepal probe summons army chief for questioning
Binaj Gurubacharya, Associated Press, 8/2/06
A judicial commission has summoned Nepal's army chief to question the military's involvement in crackdowns on pro-democracy rallies earlier this year, an official said Wednesday.
Commission member Harihar Birahi said Gen. Pyar Jung Thapa was due to appear on Thursday, becoming the first top military official to face questions about allegations that soldiers used excessive force against the demonstrators.
Thapa had initially been asked to come on Sunday, but he refused saying he had to leave the capital for a scheduled trip to west Nepal.
Birahi said both the army chief and the defense ministry have confirmed that Thapa and his deputies would attend the inquiry on Thursday.
Nepal's security forces are accused of using excessive force to disperse the hundreds of thousands who poured into the streets in April to protest King Gyanendra's rule.
At least 21 people were killed and hundreds more injured during the protests, which eventually forced Gyanendra to give up powers he seized more than a year earlier and to reinstate Parliament.
The commission has the power to investigate and recommend punishment for those found guilty of abuses.
The commission has questioned several of Gyanendra's aides and people who worked
in his authoritarian government.
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Philippines says three guerrillas killed
Agence France Presse, 8/4/06
Three communist guerrillas were killed and three others wounded in clashes with government forces on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao, the military said Friday.
The fighting occurred in two villages on the outskirts of Kiblawan town on Thursday, said Lieutenant-Colonel Julieto Ando, a spokesman for the army division whose forces took part. No government casualties were reported.
The 7,400-member New People's Army (NPA) is waging a 37-year Maoist rebellion in the Philippines.
President Gloria Arroyo shelved peace talks with the group in 2004 and has ordered a military offensive this year to rid the industrial belt around Manila of NPA extortionists.
Somalia's weak government delivers ultimatum on weapons
Mohamed Olad Hassan, Associated Press, 8/2/06
Somalia's president told residents of the only town his government controls that they have a week to give up their weapons, after which "every single gun in Baidoa" will be seized by force.
Meanwhile, an Islamic militia began expanding its influence into central Somalia, for the first time, stretching beyond the country's south and its capital, Mogadishu, where it has been tightening its grip since seizing control in June.
Hundreds of Islamic militia in dozens of pickups mounted with machine guns reached Adado district in the central region of Galgaduud late Monday, setting up an Islamic court, said Sahal Osman, a resident.
Though the Islamists had been in Adado for a day, information about the Islamists presence only came through late Tuesday because of poor communications between that region and the rest of Somalia.
President Abdullahi Yusuf on Tuesday told mourners gathered in memory of a Cabinet minister killed Friday that his government would pay people for any arms surrendered and that the details of the disarmament plan would be released Wednesday. Somalia's government has no military and relies on a militia loyal to Yusuf.
He did not say why his government had decided on the measure now, but two lawmakers have been shot here over the past week, one fatally, and more than 20 others have resigned in disgust.
"The government is taking strict security measures so everybody in Baidoa who has arms should bring them to the government," Yusuf said from his base in Baidoa, 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Mogadishu.
The administration was formed two years ago with the support of the United Nations to help Somalia emerge from more than a decade of anarchy, but it has established no real authority.
Foreign ministers from the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development who met Tuesday to discuss the situation in Somalia "urged countries within and outside the region to strictly adhere to the United Nations Security Council arms embargo."
An arms embargo imposed by the United Nations has been in place since 1992, but all sides in the Somali conflict have violated it.
On Tuesday, Kazakhstan said it was investigating reports that a plane bearing the ex-Soviet republic's national flag delivered weapons for Islamic militants in Somalia twice last week. Somalia's government alleges the deliveries were arms from Eritrea.
Officials in Kazakhstan, a vast, oil-rich Central Asian nation, had been involved in a string of illegal arms dealing scandals after the 1991 Soviet collapse that included sales of military equipment to countries including Ethiopia and Congo. Kazakh air operators also often make their planes available for charter.
The region's foreign ministers also said that their respective defense chiefs would meet soon to discuss plans for a peacekeeping operation in Somalia. The Islamic group in Somalia has rejected any peacekeeping mission, but the transitional government has repeatedly called for one.
IGAD mediated talks that began four years ago that led to the formation of Somalia's government. Besides Somalia, IGAD's members include Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and Kenya. The grouping seeks to promote peace and economic development in the region.
In Somalia, five ministers resigned Tuesday, bringing the total number of lawmakers who have stepped down to more than 21. Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi presides over more than 70 Cabinet ministers and their deputies.
Somalia has a 275-member parliament that was appointed along clan lines to accommodate disparate groups that have the support of ordinary Somalis.
Gedi barely survived a no-confidence vote in parliament over the weekend, but insisted Tuesday that government would continue to function.
The Arab League had been trying to arrange peace talks between the government and the Islamic group for Wednesday in Khartoum, Sudan, but Gedi said he had spoken to the leadership and the talks were being postponed until Aug. 17 so he can stabilize his government.
It was not immediately clear if the militants would attend. Both sides for the past few weeks have been vacillating on whether they would attend.
The Islamic militants who rule much of the south have imposed strict religious courts, raising fears of an emerging Taliban-style regime. The United States accuses the group of harboring al-Qaida leaders responsible for deadly bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
The United States and other Western powers have cautioned outsiders against meddling in Somalia, which has no single ruling authority and can be manipulated by anyone with money and guns. But there is little sign the warning has been heeded.
Associated Press writers Elizabeth Kennedy in Nairobi, Kenya, Mohamed Sheikh
Nor in Mogadishu and Bagila Bukharbayeva in Almaty, Kazakhstan, contributed
to this report.
Sri Lanka says Tigers killed 100 civilians as fighting subsides
Amal Jayasinghe, Agence France Presse, 8/5/06
Tiger rebels massacred at least 100 refugees in Sri Lanka, raising to 426 the number of people killed in 11 days of violence, the defence ministry said Saturday, amid fresh moves to end the bloodshed.
The ministry said rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) blocked civilians, mainly Muslims, fleeing the town of Muttur and killed at least 100 of them Friday night.
There was no immediate reaction from the Tigers to the ministry claim which came as Muslim legislators accused the guerrillas of holding over 100 Muslim civilians who tried to escape the fighting in Muttur in the island's northeast.
However, the official count of the fatalities has now risen to 426 with the 100 civilian victims. At least 20,000 civilians fled Muttur and sought shelter in the nearby Kantalai town.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said they had no access to the area and could not verify the report of the massacre and other civilian casualties.
"We still have no access to the area and therefore we can't say anything about these reports," ICRC spokesman Sukumar Rockwood told AFP.
However, he said the ICRC sent six trucks to a point south of Muttur Saturday to evacuate about 600 civilians who wanted to leave the area and travel to Trincomalee, capital of the northeastern province.
The LTTE said they had returned to their original positions after achieving their aim of using military force to stall a government offensive to capture a sluice gate within rebel-held territory.
The military launched air attacks July 26 to pressure the Tigers to open the waterway. The guerrillas resisted and said residents closed the waterway to get the government to improve drinking water supply to them.
"Our objective of the mission with a defensive character was accomplished and our forces returned to their positions as per the February 2002 ceasefire," LTTE military spokesman I. Ilanthiayan was quoted as saying by Tamilnet.com website.
He said 32 Tigers were killed during the fighting, far lower than the 152 rebel fatalities claimed by the defence ministry in clashes in and around Muttur late Friday alone.
The reports of the latest deaths came as Oslo's special envoy, Jon Hanssen-Bauer, travelled to the rebel-held town of Kilinochchi for what diplomats said were desperate talks to restore the collapsing ceasefire.
Diplomats feared the worsening violence in the island's northeast could lead to full-scale war although both the Colombo government and the Tamil Tigers had pledged to uphold the February 2002 truce.
Hanssen-Bauer, who held talks with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake and Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera on Friday, was expected to spend the weekend in rebel-held territory.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) spokesman Velayadun Dayanidi said Hanssen-Bauer was due to discuss the "warlike situation" with them.
Tamilnet reported the airforce bombed and destroyed a ferry inside rebel territory, southeast of Muttur, late Friday but gave no details.
The LTTE said Sri Lanka's army was shelling indiscriminately, causing heavy civilian casualties.
The army's "indiscriminate artillery shelling that has continued since July 31 has put civilians in great danger," the LTTE said, adding Muslim civilians were killed by security forces.
The main Muslim party, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), said Muslims were facing a "humanitarian disaster" and urged the two sides to halt attacks.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for a halt to the latest violence when the Tigers cut off the canal in the northeast supplying water to thousands of families downstream.
The ongoing Tamil insurgency has killed over 60,000 people in the past three
decades.
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U.N. chief calls for strengthening of African force in Sudan's Darfur
Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, 8/2/06
Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council to strengthen African Union forces in the Sudan's violence-wracked Darfur region and more than double it if a U.N. takeover of peacekeeping duties is approved.
In a 30-page report to the council circulated Tuesday, Annan laid out proposals for a much more muscular U.N. operation to protect civilians and support a peace agreement signed by the government and one rebel group in May.
The three options envision a U.N. force of between 15,300 and 18,600 troops, depending on the number of aircraft and rapid reaction troops. Annan also proposed more than tripling the 1,560-strong African Union police contingent to about 5,300 U.N. officers.
If approved by the council, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur would become the U.N.'s largest, surpassing the 17,500-strong U.N. force in Congo.
But Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, has vowed to never allow U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur and Annan said the U.N. can't take over without the government's consent and cooperation.
"Securing the consent of the government of Sudan will require continued intensive discussions with Khartoum," Annan said.
The conflict in Darfur began when members of ethnic African tribes rose in revolt against the Arab-led Khartoum government in early 2003. Over 200,000 civilians have died, more than two million have fled their homes, and millions more have had their livelihoods destroyed, Annan said.
More than 2.5 million people affected by the war are receiving food, health care, shelter and other essentials from over 13,000 humanitarian workers from over 80 organizations, the Red Cross and 13 U.N. agencies, he said.
Annan warned that "the window of opportunity" provided by the Darfur peace agreement to stabilize the region "could close if there is no extra effort to implement it effectively." If the ongoing violence isn't addressed, he said, the overall situation could deteriorate.
"Alternatively, there may be an attempt to implement the agreement through force, including the forced return of internally displaced persons," Annan warned. "If this should be allowed to happen, Darfur could descend into an even bloodier round of conflict that would be catastrophic for the people of the region."
With the Sudanese government blocking a U.N. force, the secretary-general called for the urgent strengthening of the African Union force.
In the short-term, he said, the United Nations could provide significant support and with other international help it could also add armored personnel carriers, heavy-duty vehicles, and additional aircraft to significantly enhance the AU's rapid response capability.
But the African Union has said it doesn't have the resources for a long-term peacekeeping mission and wants the United Nations to take over to help bring peace to Darfur.
The immediate strengthening of the AU force "and subsequent transition to a United Nations operation could reverse dangerous threats inherent to peace in Darfur and the region," Annan said.
Genocide
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