PEACE
NEGOTIATIONS WATCH
Thursday, February 1, 2007
(Volume V, Number 34)
Contents:
Armenia
Foreign mediators of Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute diverge on Kosovo
precedent
All mediators voiced optimism regarding the resolution of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Co-Chairs of Minsk Group urged confidence-building measures and maintenance of cease-fire.
Report: Azerbaijan president does
not rule out use of force to seize Nagorno-Karabakh
But President Ilham Aliev says he
prefers a peaceful solution.
Burundi
Burundi president shuffles
cabinet
The move followed last week’s
firing of planning minister.
Burundi's party chief leaves embassy
refuge
Hussein Radjabu
returned home on after fears for his security were allayed.
Chechnya
European court rulings on Chechnya
abuse rile Russia
Russia continues to block reform
of the court while lawyers for Chechens push for appeals.
Think tank: Human rights in Chechnya
"monstrous"
Moscow-based human rights organization
reports that nothing has been normalized in the region.
Democratic
Republic of Congo
Kabila cements control in DR Congo
President’s political coalition won all but one governorship including
the cpaital.
Democratic Republic of Congo Negotiation Simulation Click here to access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation.
Georgia
Georgia still plans to solve Abkhazia problem by force
– Bagapsh
Abkhazia President says that because Georgia continues
its provocations, Abkhazian forces have been put on alert.
Georgian president calls for improved
ties with Russia
Saakashvili voiced hope of enlisting
Russia's help in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, back under Tbilisi's control.
Tensions flare in Georgian breakaway
region after attack wounds three police officers
Separatists blamed the attack on
the central government.
Indonesia
Former Aceh rebels torch cars in protest over compensation
Protesters were demanding payment of their reintegration funds.
Aceh Negotiation Simulation Click here to access the Aceh Negotiation Simulation.
Ivory
Coast
Ivory Coast rebel chief announces
talks with president in February
The
face-to-face talks will be mediated by the President of Burkina Faso.
Ban gives qualified backing to Ivory
Coast talks
UN Secretary General will back the
talks as the dialogue takes place in the framework of an internationally-backed
peace process.
Kashmir
10 injured as police break up
religious gathering in Indian-held Kashmir
Large public gatherings have been
banned in Indian Kashmir for the last 18 years because of security concerns.
Kashmir Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Kashmir Negotiation Simulation.
Kosovo
Kosovo Wins Support For Split
From Serbia; U.S., European Allies Agree to Secession With Ongoing International
Supervision
Formal creation of the new
nation could happen as early as this summer.
Final act in the fate of Kosovo
begins
The Serbian government said that
its prime minister would not meet the chief UN mediator for Kosovo when
he visits Belgrade to present his recommendations.
Kosovo Negotiation Simulation Click here to access the Kosovo Negotiation Simulation.
Liberia
Charles Taylor's Defense Team
Eyes Delay
Judge made it clear that war crimes
trial will begin on schedule.
Nepal
Nepal's Maoists urge US to wipe
them off 'terrorist' list
Claim that US is ignoring the new
political developments that have occurred in Nepal.
New ethnic violence in Nepal
Violence flared as authorities lifted
a curfew on Saturday in three towns and maintained it in two others.
Philippines
P.I. troops capture bomb-making
facility
Munitions storage
cave used by the communist New People's Army and doubled as a meeting
place for top communist leaders in the area.
Somalia
Ethiopians begin withdrawing
from Somalia, testing faction leaders' commitment to peace
This will lead to the 14th attempt
to re-establish a central authority in Somalia.
U.S. Conducts a Second Airstrike
Inside Somalia
Targets were Islamic fighters.
Sri
Lanka
Sri Lanka Told to Probe Child
Conscription
Human Rights Watch said the
government is alleged complicit in wide-spread child abductions.
Myanmar promises support to fight
Tamil Tiger separatists in Sri Lanka
Foreign Minister also promised support
to combat the manufacture and circulation of weapons.
Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation Click here to access the Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation.
Sudan
French aid group says
it is withdrawing from Sudan's Darfur because of violence
Medecins du Monde has suspended
its activities for an unlimited amount of time.
Sudan push to chair African Union
raises concerns about Darfur mission
Observers and rebels warned that this move would jeopardize the
body's efforts to pacify conflict-torn Darfur.
Genocide in Darfur: A Legal Analysis
Click here to access the PILPG Report.
Peace Negotiations
Watch is prepared by the Public International
Law & Policy Group
in cooperation with American
University
and is made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation
of New York
and the Ploughshares
Fund.
Foreign mediators of Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute diverge on Kosovo precedent
Associated Press, 1/25/07
Foreign mediators trying to
resolve a long-standing territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan
voiced optimism, but appeared to diverge Thursday on whether the resolution
of Kosovo's final status would be a firm precedent.
Diplomats from Russia, France
and the United States have headed efforts by the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe's so-called Minsk Group to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh
problem. The mountainous territory inside Azerbaijan has been controlled
by ethnic Armenian forces since the early 1990s, and tensions remain
high between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In Kosovo, Russia backs demands
by the Serbian leadership that it should stay part of Serbia while the
United States favors independence for the province. President Vladimir
Putin has suggested that should Kosovo be granted independence, that
would have a direct effect on how other lingering separatist disputes
in the former Soviet Union are resolved.
Chief U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari
plans to disclose recommendations on Kosovo's future to Western governments
and Russia on Friday.
Following a visit Thursday
to Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian diplomat Yuri
Merzlyakov said Kosovo's final status would be a precedent for the Armenia-Azerbaijani
dispute.
"I consider naturally
that it will set a precedent. The decision could be one thing or another
because the talk is about the status of autonomy for a province in Kosovo.
Naturally, there could be other opinions," he said.
Diplomats from the United States
and France disagreed.
"There isn't any sort
of universal precedent and each situation, every conflict differs from
every other conflict," said Matthew J. Bryza,, a U.S. deputy assistant
secretary of state.
"Each conflict has its
own difficulties and it's necessary to resolve conflicts on the basis
of the particular aspects that each has," said French diplomat
Bernard Fassier.
A shaky cease-fire in 1994
ended six years of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh that left 30,000 people
killed and about 1 million driven from their homes and left Karabakh
and Armenian forces in control of the territory. Gunfire breaks out
regularly along the border between the two ex-Soviet countries and in
the regions near Nagorno-Karabakh.
The lack of resolution of the
territory's status has tied up development in the energy-rich South
Caucasus.
International group calls for compromise on Nagorno Karabakh
Agence France Presse,
1/29/07
The OSCE Minsk group, helping
Armenia and Azerbaijan in talks to resolve the dispute over the separatist
region of Nagorno Karabakh, on Monday asked both countries to prepare
for compromise.
"The Co-Chairs urge all
parties to sustain this momentum in the negotiations and to prepare
their publics for the necessary compromises," the group said in
a statement released following a meeting between the concerned parties
last week.
The co-chairs of the OSCE's
Minsk group are Russia, the United States and France.
"The Co-Chairs urge continued
pursuit of confidence-building measures and maintenance of the ceasefire
to increase the level of trust and understanding between the sides,"
the statement said.
Nagorno Karabakh's break from
Azerbaijan in 1991 precipitated a full-blown war between fellow former
Soviet republics Armenia and Azerbaijan, claiming some 25,000 lives
before ending with a ceasefire in 1994.
The region's status remains
unsettled, despite years of diplomatic talks.
The Minsk Group was created
in 1992 by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
to bring about a peaceful resolution between the two countries.
Report: Azerbaijan president does not rule out use of force to seize Nagorno-Karabakh
Associated Press, 1/30/07
Azerbaijan's president said
he prefers a peaceful solution to a dispute with Armenia over the territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh, but is not ruling out military means, a French
newspaper reported.
President Ilham Aliev, in an
interview in Le Monde daily before arriving in France for a three-day
visit, was quoted as saying the disputed territory is "issue No.
1" for his oil-rich Caucasus Mountains country, which is growing
bolder as its economic strength grows.
"It's clear that our political
weight will give us one day the means to liberate our lands," Aliev,
who met Monday with French President Jacques Chirac, was quoted as saying.
"We'd prefer to do it peacefully, without going to war. But if
there are no other means ... we'll see."
Chirac, in a speech to guests
at a state dinner in Aliev's honor, made it clear that he favors a peaceful
solution.
"France would like to
believe that the time for peace has come," the French leader said.
"Getting there requires a final step."
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous
territory inside Azerbaijan but populated largely by ethnic Armenians,
has been controlled by ethnic Armenian forces since the end of a six-year
war in 1994. Tensions remain high between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Diplomats from Russia, France
and the United States have headed more than a decade of efforts by the
so-called Minsk Group part of the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.
In a statement Monday, the
group said it was encouraged by what it called the "constructive"
approach of the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan as they work toward
resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Azerbaijan has been building
up its military with an influx of revenues from oil. It controls portions
of the Caspian Sea, on its eastern fringe, which has some of the largest
oil and gas fields in the former Soviet Union.
Aliev was quoted as telling Le Monde that he was looking to deepen bilateral economic ties between Azerbaijan and France.
Burundi president shuffles cabinet
Agence France Presse,
1/24/07
Burundi's President Pierre
Nkurunziza reshuffled his cabinet on Wednesday following the sacking
of the planning minister last week.
Nkurunziza moved trade and
industry minister Jean Bigirimana to the planning ministry, naming cabinet
newcomer Donatien Nijimbere as Bigirimana's replacement.
Another newcomer, Jean de Dieu
Mutabazi, was handed the agriculture portfolio, in the place of Elie
Buzoya who stood down from the government.
"As the planning ministry has been vacant after the removal of Diuedonne Ngowembona, the president took the opportunity to change two posts in order to maintain efficiency in the government," a senior government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The reshuffle comes amid a growing rift within the ruling Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), with party leader Hussein Radjabu temporarily seeking refuge in the South African embassy in Bujumbura this week after his security detail was changed without his knowledge.
Burundi's party chief leaves embassy refuge
Agence France Presse,
1/24/07
Burundi's ruling party chief,
who took refuge in the South African embassy when his bodyguards were
switched without his knowledge, has left the mission and gone home,
officials said Wednesday.
Hussein Radjabu, leader of
the ruling Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) party, had been
holed up in the mission in Bujumbura since Monday.
But the tiny central African
country's police chief said Radjabu had agreed to return home on Tuesday
night after fears for his security were allayed.
"The change of Hussein
Radjabu's bodyguards, which had scared him given what is currently going
on in his party, was totally normal," said Alain Guillaume Bunyoni,
the director of police.
"Everything is now in
order. He has returned home. There were no negotiations."
A senior police official, speaking
on condition of anonymity, said that Radjabu's security detail had been
reduced from 20 to 12 guards.
Radjabu has attracted increasing
controversy within the ranks of the FDD and has been blamed for a number
of recent setbacks, including an unsuccessful prosecution of ex-head
of state Domitien Ndayizeye on charges of coup plotting.
Six cabinet ministers made
an appeal on Monday for intervention from President Pierre Nkurunziza
in order to address what they called "deep concerns at the attempts
at internal division" within the party.
A Western diplomat said Nkurunziza
was actively working to undermine the increasingly high-profile Radjabu.
"President Nkurunziza is behind the dispute. He wants to get rid of Hussein Radjabu who has cast a shadow on him," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Burundi is currently struggling to emerge from a 13-year, ethnically driven civil war that has claimed some 300,000 lives.
European court rulings on Chechnya abuse rile Russia
Dario Thuburn, Agence France
Presse, 1/26/07
Lawyers helping Chechens bring
cases of abuse before the European Court of Human Rights face official
pressure as Russia continues to block reform of the body, campaigners
said on Friday.
"Chechnya is not a popular
subject in Russia, I think that is a special reason to be a little bit
harsh on us," said Jan ter Laak, head of the Russian Justice Initiative
(RJI), a non-governmental group based in the Netherlands.
The treatment of the Russian
Justice Initiative, which was refused registration in Russia for a second
time this week, has fed concern that Russian authorities are pressuring
organisations that aid a growing number of appeals to the European rights
court from Russia.
"The last year for us
has been tragic" because of increased checks by the authorities,
said Karinna Moskalenko, head of the Centre of Assistance to International
Protection in Moscow.
The centre handles around 60
cases brought to the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights
every year, mainly involving prison conditions in Russia. RJI has brought
a total of more than 100 cases on Chechnya to the court.
The rights court has come under
an avalanche of appeals from Russian citizens, including many from Chechnya
who say that Russian courts are ignoring allegations of torture, murder
and other war crimes.
More than 9,000 cases from
Russia are pending at the court, far more than any other country.
Russian official circles, however,
see the European court with deep suspicion.
In December last year, Russian
lawmakers voted against ratification of a key reform document, protocol
number 14, aimed at speeding up procedures at the court, making Russia
the only country not to have done so.
"The reason for the de
facto block on the 14th protocol appears to be the Chechen cases,"
Moskalenko said.
Russian President Vladimir
Putin earlier this month condemned "the politicisation of court
decisions" and Russian deputies have said the body is working against
Russian interests.
"It's not acceptable that
this organisation is used for attacks against the Russian Federation,"
Sergei Baburin, head of the nationalist Rodina (Motherland) party and
a deputy speaker of the parliament, said in December.
Earlier this month, the head
of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, Rene van der
Linden, travelled to Moscow to lobby Russian authorities for approval
of the reform.
"I have the feeling that
some people in your country think the court only deals with Russian
cases," van der Linden told reporters, explaining that the high
number of cases from Russia was due to the country's large population.
Moskalenko said her centre
has seen a sharp rise in the number of appeals in recent years, from
dozens in the 1990s, to hundreds in the early years of this decade to
around a thousand a month now.
"It will be used more
and more," said Moskalenko, who attributed the rise to greater
knowledge about the European court among Russian citizens and continuing
failures of the Russian justice system.
Applicants must first exhaust
all forms of legal recourse in their own countries before they are allowed
to appeal to the European court, which is part of the 46-member Council
of Europe.
In a case brought by the Russian
Justice Initiative, the rights court last week ruled against Russia
in the first torture case from Chechnya, involving the treatment of
Adam and Arbi Chitayev, who were detained without charge for six months
in 2000.
In one of the first rulings
by the court involving the Chechen conflict, also brought by the Russian
Justice Initiative, Fatima Bazorkina in July 2006 won damages from the
Russian government over the disappearance and presumed death of her
son Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev.
The cases are among more than 200 that have been brought before the court involving forced disappearances, torture and extra-judicial executions in Chechnya.
An ongoing armed struggle in Chechnya and the North Caucasus between Russian forces on one side and separatist rebel fighters and Islamist radicals on the other has killed tens of thousands since hostilities began in 1994.
Think tank: Human rights in Chechnya "monstrous"
Maria Danilova, Associated
Press, 1/29/07
Russia's war-scarred province
of Chechnya continues to be plagued by abductions, torture, killings
and other violations, a think tank said in a report published Monday,
calling the scale of human rights violations there "monstrous."
Despite the Kremlin's effort
to portray the region, devastated by more than a decade of fighting
between federal forces and separatist rebels as returning to normal,
"nothing has really been normalized," said Tatiana Lokshina,
head of Demos, a Moscow-based human rights think tank.
Some 3,000 to 5,000 people
have been abducted since the start of the region's second post-Soviet
war in 1999, mostly by federal forces or their local allies, Demos said
in the 13-page report. Most abductions took place in Chechnya, but some
in neighboring provinces such as Ingushetia.
The statistics were obtained
by analyzing data provided by several human rights groups operating
in Chechnya, Lokshina said. She contrasted the reported abuses with
a rebuilding campaign that is transforming Chechnya's main cities.
"Yes, we can and we should
be happy for the new freshly painted buildings and the clean streets
and the fountains built in Grozny .... but despite all that the human
rights situation there remains monstrous," Lokshina told The Associated
Press.
Meanwhile, Dmitry Kozak, President
Vladimir Putin's envoy to the part of southern Russia that includes
Chechnya and neighboring provinces, acknowledged Monday that the region
remains volatile and put much of the blame on corruption.
"The main factor destabilizing
the situation in southern Russia today and containing economic growth
is corruption," Kozak said at a meeting with scholars in the southern
city of Rostov-on-Don.
"Nobody is concerned any
longer about terrorist activity and crime levels everybody is afraid
of extortion on the part of authorities, their prejudice, their bias,"
Kozak said.
But deadly violence persists
in Chechnya and other parts of the poor, largely Muslim region known
as the North Caucasus.
In Chechnya, three Defense
Ministry troops on patrol in an eastern district were killed when they
came under heavy fire from between eight and 10 militants, Chechen law
enforcement officials said.
One of the militants later
killed himself with a grenade blast that also fatally wounded another
soldier, the Interior Ministry said. Troops were searching for the remainder
of the group, it said.
In Dagestan, on the Caspian
Sea adjacent to Chechnya, police and security agents clashed with gunmen
holed up in a village early Monday, a law enforcement official said.
A group of two to four militants
were believed to have entered Kosyakino from Chechnya, regional Interior
Ministry spokeswoman Anzhela Martirosova said.
Fighting broke out before dawn when police and security agents confronted the gunmen and ordered them to surrender, she said. She initially said at least one gunman was killed, but later retracted that statement.
Kabila cements control in DR Congo
Agence France Presse,
1/27/07
Joseph Kabila cemented his
control of Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday in the final stage
of a mammoth electoral process, winning all but one governorship including
the capital.
Candidates from the president's
political coalition, the Alliance of the Presidential Majority (AMP),
won in the first round in eight of the nine provinces, according to
partial results posted in voting bureaux.
Apart from being president,
Kabila's camp already dominates both houses of parliament as well as
seven out of the 11 provincial assemblies.
The Independent Electoral Commission
(CEI) was due to announce provisional results on Sunday which then have
to be confirmed in the courts.
Voting in the central African
country's remaining two provinces was earlier postponed until February
10 following uncertainty about the nationalities of two opposition candidates.
"The election ... passed
off without incident," CEI head Apollinaire Malu Malu said.
Kabila's victory in Kinshasa
was a surprise, however.
The capital is seen as a stronghold
for Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former rebel turned vice-president who lost
to Kabila in last year's presidential election.
The city has been tense throughout
DR Congo's months-long electoral process, with clashes between Bemba
and Kabila supporters leaving 23 people dead in August and a further
four in November.
"The results for Kinshasa
do not augur well," a Western diplomat posted in Kinshasa told
AFP on Saturday. "Logically, the MLC (Bemba's Congolese Liberation
Movement) should have won."
Andre Kimbuta, Kinshasa's new
governor and a Kabila loyalist, "will have difficulties imposing
himself in a city that is hostile to the presidential camp," the
diplomat added.
The only province to choose
a Bemba loyalist was Equateur in the north-west, where former public
works minister Jose Makila will be governor.
Sixty-two candidates were contesting
the nine provincial posts up for grabs, which are for a mandate of five
years. Governors and vice-governors can serve a maximum of two terms.
The election marks the final stage in what is hoped will be a definitive return to multi-party democracy after four decades of kleptocracy and war that left millions of people dead and the vast mineral-rich country in ruins.
Democratic Republic of Congo
Negotiation Simulation
Click here to
access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International
Law & Policy Group.
Georgia still plans to solve Abkhazia problem by force – Bagapsh
RIA Novosti, 1/25/07
Georgia has not given up its
plans to resolve the conflict with Abkhazia by force, the president
of the self-proclaimed republic said Thursday.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said earlier that "it is time for Georgia's complete reunion by means of returning [the self-proclaimed republics of] Abkhazia and South Ossetia."
Sergei Bagapsh told RIA Novosti: "We have always told the international community that Georgia is a military oriented state. Georgia is an aggressor. Their only purpose is to resolve the problem of territorial integrity by force."
Bagapsh said that if Saakashvili
takes that path, he will destroy his own country. He said that since
Georgia refuses to stop its provocations, all Abkhazian forces have
been put on alert.
"We will take all measures
to prevent the worst scenario," the Abkhazian leader added. He
said the situation was very serious, not only for Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, but also for the Caucasus as a whole.
He said Saakashvili only begins
uttering threats when his popularity rating is falling, and that his
statements on democracy are meant only for the international community.
Bagapsh said he hopes that Georgia still has reasonable people who "understand that a military scenario is unacceptable to all sides."
Abkhazia broke away from Georgian
government control in a bloody war in the early 1990s. Some 7,000 civilians
of various ethnicities were killed in the war, according to official
Georgian sources.
Abkhazia claimed that several thousand people died fighting for the region's independence, and that hundreds of thousands were displaced.
Saakashvili, who swept into power on the back of a "color" revolution in 2003, has pledged to bring Abkhazia and South Ossetia back under Tbilisi's control.
Georgian president calls for improved ties with Russia
Agence France Presse,
1/27/07
Georgia and Russia need to
improve ties, Georgia's president said Saturday, pledging Tbilisi's
"heartfelt warmth, openness and readiness for dialogue."
"It would be tragic if
the historical tradition of friendship was broken, and we all must understand
that this leads nowhere," Mikheil Saakashvili said in an interview
with Russia's Moscow Echo radio.
Saakashvili said that "naturally,
as there were mistakes made on all sides, probably Georgia allowed some
mistakes too," but insisted that "overall our line was correct."
"We must strengthen our
independence without antagonising our neighbors, but our neighbors also
must accept and understand that we are independent," he argued.
Relations have been rocky between
Moscow and Tbilisi since 2003, when the pro-Western Saakashvili came
to power, and hit a new low when Tbilisi arrested four Russian army
officers on suspicion of spying in late September.
This prompted Moscow to withdraw
its ambassador, impose financial sanctions against its southern neighbor
and deport hundreds of Georgian citizens.
The Georgian leader hailed
Moscow's recent decision to return its ambassador to Georgia, saying
that Tbilisi was ready to answer with "heartfelt warmth, openness
and readiness for dialogue on all issues that piled up."
"We are glad to see Russian
rhetoric softened, and we would like to develop our ties. In us the
Russian leadership will always find a very pragmatic, open and flexible
partner," Saakashvili said.
Saakashvili also voiced hope
of enlisting Russia's help in bringing Georgia's breakaway regions,
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, back under Tbilisi's control, citing Russia's
huge leverage in the region.
"Russia plays a historical
role in this region, and will always play, and we will not ignore this,"
Saakashvili said, adding however that "this role must be positive."
Moscow and Tbilisi have clashed
repeatedly over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Russia backs and which
Georgia has vowed to bring under central control.
Saakashvili reiterated the
offer of autonomy and "full self-government on all issues"
for the breakaway regions, but insisted that local referendums, where
the Abkhazian and South Ossetian population voted overwhelmingly for
independence, were "a parody of democracy."
The Georgian leader also argued
against the possibility that a status change for Kosovo, whose independence
is backed by the United States and its European allies, could become
a precedent for Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
"People must not be made
hostage to some world politics, because no world politics can ever help.
It must be decided locally, people must talk and decide together,"
he said.
Tensions flare in Georgian breakaway region after attack wounds three police officers
Associated Press, 1/28/07
Tensions in Georgia's breakaway
region of South Ossetia flared Sunday after separatist officials said
three police officers had been wounded in a nighttime attack and blamed
the incident on the central government.
A spokesman for South Ossetia's
government said that assailants opened fire from a Georgian-controlled
village on police posts in the regional capital Tskhinvali with mortars
and grenades. Three policemen were wounded, two seriously, said the
spokesman, Andrei Tatayev.
"This is a provocation
by a Georgian sabotage group," he said.
Georgian authorities denied
any involvement in the attack. "There is a version that this is
an internal settling of scores between South Ossetian illegal armed
groups," said Mamuka Kurashvili, commander of Georgian peacekeeping
forces in the region. He added a joint group involving the separatist
and Georgian sides, Russian peacekeepers and international monitors
would investigate the incident.
Since a 1992 cease-fire ending
fighting between Georgian and South Ossetian forces, the territory has
been in a tense limbo officially part of Georgia but under the control
of an internationally unrecognized government that seeks to make South
Ossetia part of Russia.
Pro-Western Georgian President
Mikhail Saakashvili has vowed to bring South Ossetia as well as another
separatist region, Abkhazia, back under Georgian control; South Ossetia's
officials vow just as firmly that that will never happen. Allegations
frequently flare up that Georgia is planning to retake South Ossetia
by force.
In summer 2004, clashes erupted
after a military buildup on both sides that followed a Georgian operation
to combat the smuggling of goods through South Ossetia. Sixteen people
were reported killed.
The Georgian government accuses Russia, which has deployed peacekeepers to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, of supporting the separatists in a bid to prolong its centuries-old domination of Georgia and derail Tbilisi's hopes for NATO membership.
Former Aceh rebels torch cars in protest over compensation
Agence France Presse,
1/24/07
Hundreds of former separatist
rebels in Indonesia's Aceh province ransacked buildings and torched
cars to demand compensation payments to help them reintegrate, police
said Wednesday.
"Around 500 ex-combatants
from nine districts around Bireun demonstrated at round 11:00 am Tuesday
demanding payment of their reintegration funds," an Aceh police
spokesman told reporters in the provincial capital Banda Aceh.
The protesters negotiated with
two former Free Aceh Movement (GAM) leaders but burned their cars when
they failed to reach an agreement.
"The area is still closed
off by the reintegration officials," said spokesman Jodi Harijadi,
adding that police had been unable to reach the area since the incident.
Local reporters said they were
also barred from the area, 140 kilometres (87 miles) southeast of Banda
Aceh.
At least 3,000 former combatants
are entitled to compensation of 25 million rupiah (2,750 dollars) each
to help them reintegrate into normal life following a peace deal signed
by the rebels and the Indonesian government in 2005 to end decades of
bloodshed.
In addition, around 6,200 non-combatant GAM members are eligible for 10 million rupiah in compensation.
A former GAM rebel was elected governor of Aceh last month in the first direct elections after the signing of the peace accord.
Ivory Coast rebel chief announces talks with president in February
Agence France Presse,
1/25/07
Ivory Coast's rebel leader
Gillaume Soro said Thursday that direct talks with President Laurent
Gbagbo could start early February to promote a stalled peace process
in the country.
"The start of the direct
dialogue could be at the beginning of February," Soro told reporters
in an interview at the New Forces rebel headquarters, which has been
in the central city of Bouake since conflict split the country in two
in 2002.
The face-to-face talks are
to be mediated by Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore, who last week
took over the rotating presidency of the 15-nation regional bloc Economic
Community for West Africa (ECOWAS).
Compaore "informed us
about it", added Soro.
A Burkina Faso government official
Wednesday told AFP in Ouagadougou that Compaore, would convene "at
the beginning of February" a meeting in the Burkinabe capital on
the crisis in Ivory Coast, but gave no specific dates.
"I don't want to be pessimistic.
As long as there is dialogue, I think that we will one way or the other
find ways to peace," Soro said, when asked about the chances of
success in a fresh bid to end the crisis that divided the country.
But he also stressed that he
would "neither be deceived, nor be naive" with respect to
the peace talks.
"We have been discussing
and negotiating for four years, and and I do not believe that we shall
be left surprised," he added.
A peace process in the world's
largest cocoa producer and former economic hub of the region began in
January 2003 and has thus far led to the formation of a transitional
government headed by ex-banker Charles Konan Banny, after the deployment
of UN and French peacekeepers on ceasefire lines.
However, the tasks of disarmament,
voter registration for planned elections and national reunification
have been blocked for more than two years, with each side accusing the
other of creating obstacles.
Ban gives qualified backing to Ivory Coast talks
Agence France Presse,
1/30/07
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon
gave his backing Tuesday to peace talks between Ivory Coast President
Laurent Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro as long as the dialogue
takes place in the framework of an internationally-backed peace process.
Soro said last week direct
talks with Gbagbo could start in early February to promote the stalled
process under the mediation of Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore,
head of the Economic Community for West Africa (ECOWAS).
However, the talks appear to
envisage no role for Charles Konan Banny, the prime minister of the
UN-backed Ivorian transitional government.
"It would be desirable
if the proposals would be in line with the security council resolution"
1721, which granted the premier large powers, said Ban, who met here
with Gbagbo on Monday on the sidelines of an African Union summit.
A peace process in the world's largest cocoa producer and former economic hub of the region began in January 2003 and has thus far led to the formation of the transitional government after the deployment of UN and French peacekeepers.
But the tasks of disarmament, voter registration for planned elections and national reunification have been blocked for more than two years, with the government and rebels each accusing the other of creating obstacles.
10 injured as police break up religious gathering in Indian-held Kashmir
Associated Press, 1/28/07
Police used tear gas and batons
to break up a religious procession in India's portion of Kashmir on
Sunday, injuring 10 people, one of them seriously, officials said.
Security forces also detained
40 of the near-400 strong crowd that had gathered in Srinagar, the main
city in Jammu-Kashmir state, to mark the Muslim month of Muharram, said
Feroz Ahmed, a local police officer.
Large public gatherings have
been banned in Indian Kashmir for the last 18 years because of security
concerns.
Kashmir is split between India
and Pakistan, but both claim the Himalayan region in its entirety.
Nearly a dozen Kashmiri rebel
groups have been fighting since 1989 for independence or merger with
Pakistan. More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, have been
killed in the conflict.
Saturday evening, the police
placed a Shiite cleric Maulana Abbas Ansari under house arrest. Ansari
is a senior leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference an umbrella
group of Kashmiri political and religious groups.
"It is interference in
religious matters. I don't understand why the government is not allowing
us to perform our religious duties for the last so many years now,"
Ansari told The Associated Press over the telephone.
The police often place key
Kashmiri religious and political leaders under house arrest to keep
them from leading public gatherings.
Muharram is significant for
Shiite Muslims because the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hussein,
died in the 7th century on Ashoura the 10th day of that month in the
Islamic lunar calendar.
Sunday was the eighth day of Muharram, but the religious gathering usually begins a few days before Ashoura.
In predominantly-Muslim Kashmir, Sunnis are a majority but they commonly take part in Muharram commemorations.
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Kosovo Wins Support For Split From Serbia; U.S., European Allies Agree to Secession With Ongoing International Supervision
R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington
Post, 1/26/07
Nearly eight years after NATO
warplanes intervened in a bitter ethnic conflict between Serbs and rebellious
Kosovo Albanians in the former Yugoslavia, the United States and its
European allies have agreed to support Kosovo's permanent secession
from Serbia under continuing international supervision, according to
senior U.S. and European officials.
The decision is likely to lead,
possibly as early as this summer, to the formal creation of a new Connecticut-size
country in southeastern Europe with membership in the United Nations
and, eventually, its own army, the officials said. But a foreign diplomat
posted in the capital would retain authority to fire officials and rescind
legislation deemed divisive, while leaving routine matters of government
to local control.
Under the plan, NATO troops
would continue to patrol the new state to ensure peace and help protect
minorities, but would gradually withdraw as Kosovo neared membership
in NATO and the European Union.
Putting Kosovo on a path toward
eventual full independence is meant to close a chapter of Balkan history
marked by war, political upheaval, widespread loss of life and the destruction
of billions of dollars' worth of property.
Historically a province of
Serbia, Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999. That year,
a 78-day air campaign by NATO forced out the Serb-dominated Yugoslav
army, ending its brutal war against guerrillas fighting for self-rule
for the province's ethnic Albanian majority. Many members of Kosovo's
Serb minority have since fled Albanian retribution.
The new plan, a culmination
of lengthy diplomatic consultations between nervous continental Europeans
and more enthusiastic Americans and British, is meant in part to alleviate
continuing intense pressure from the Albanians for independence. Western
officials fear that without official action on the issue, new violence
might break out this summer.
Officials say that finally
allowing Kosovo to stand mostly on its own also has a major economic
impetus: They anticipate it would open the door to private investment,
new Western lending and aid, supplanting more than $2.5 billion already
poured into the province by foreigners since 1999 with only a slight
impact on a faltering and highly corrupt economy.
Kosovo has Europe's largest
deposits of lignite coal. Economic planners hope that the new state
might build power plants and emerge as a primary supplier of electricity
to its Balkan neighbors.
Some diplomats caution that
achievement of consensus by the Western powers might not be the end
of the tale: Serbia's leaders have persistently and heatedly campaigned
against any forced separation of one of their country's provinces. Many
Serbs now look toward Moscow to protect their interests with a veto
when the matter is presented to the U.N. Security Council for a vote,
likely this spring.
Moscow has privately hinted,
however, that it is prepared to support the plan in exchange for U.S.
and European acquiescence to the formal secession of two Russian-backed
regions of Georgia. Washington and its allies oppose that Russian bid,
and officials said this week they are uncertain how quickly this diplomatic
dance will play out.
The eventual formal redrawing
of Serbia's border by foreign powers has been widely expected since
1999. Nonetheless, the prospect of Kosovo's independence has sown anxiety
among some of Kosovo's ethnically divided Balkan neighbors and even
caused hesitation in Spain, where unresolved secessionist pressures
persist in the Basque region.
Moreover, diplomats say no
Western nation is eager to see Serbia so alienated by an imposed Western
solution that it is driven more deeply into Russia's arms and excluded
from eventual embrace by NATO and the European Union.
But senior Western officials
affirmed at a meeting in New York in September that Kosovo's status
is ripe for settlement, and diplomats are slated to gather today in
Vienna to put final touches on the plan, for presentation to Serbian
and Kosovo Albanian delegations Feb. 2.
Senior U.S. officials, who
asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss details
of the sensitive plan, conceded the moment is politically awkward: Serbian
parties are struggling to form a new government after elections Sunday
in which nationalists won the largest number of votes. At the same time,
many Kosovo Albanians are angry that their most influential politician
-- former rebel commander Ramush Haradinaj -- is slated to leave shortly
for The Hague, for trial on war crimes charges.
But U.S. and European diplomats
say former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, a special envoy of the
U.N. secretary general, is ready after 14 months of discussions to make
the plunge. He will recommend that Kosovo no longer be governed by the
United Nations under a 1999 Security Council resolution that pledged
to uphold the "principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity"
of Yugoslavia, a nation that no longer exists.
The diplomats said withdrawal
of that U.N. resolution would allow Kosovo's estimated 1.7 million Albanians,
90 percent of the population, to declare independence from Serbia. The
United States, Britain and Albania would quickly recognize that step
but with the continuing international controls.
Although officials in Serbia
are expected to protest loudly, their government "lost control
of Kosovo in the 1990s. It was theirs to keep or lose, and they lost
it. We're dealing now with the aftermath of actions by Slobodan Milosevic,"
a senior U.S. official said this week, referring to the late Yugoslav
president. Likewise, diplomats believe Albanian leaders will publicly
clamor for full independence but accept this package as the best they
will get for now.
Germany, which holds the rotating
E.U. presidency through June, has insisted that no decision be taken
without Russian approval. But its diplomats also oppose striking a deal
with Moscow to support the secessions from Georgia and permanent separation
of the Transnistria region from Moldova.
The sources said Ahtisaari
is likely to recommend establishment of a new U.N. mission in Kosovo
under the direction of a longtime friend, Dutch diplomat Peter Feith.
He previously headed a U.N. monitoring mission in the Indonesian province
of Aceh and worked on ethnic conflicts in Bosnia and Macedonia.
The aim of the new mission
would be to help the majority Albanian population build a country where
Serbs and others "can live a dignified, safe and economically sustainable
life," Ahtisaari told the 46-country Council of Europe on Wednesday.
Total unemployment in the province is estimated at 35 to 50 percent
but is higher among Serbs.
Under Ahtisaari's plan, Feith
-- whose low-key title would be international civilian representative
-- would have what one U.S. official called "edict power"
to remove officials or invalidate legislation, similar to the authority
of the high representative who still helps govern Bosnia under terms
of the 1995 Dayton peace accords. Feith's deputy is expected to be an
American, and his staff would number about 100.
A separate international "rule
of law" monitoring mission, under the control of the European Union,
would number roughly 1,000 and exercise authority over Kosovo's troubled
local police force and corrupt local judiciary. Officials said the Kosovo
Protection Corps, a shadow local military force, would probably be disbanded
and replaced by a NATO-trained civil defense force that would form the
nucleus of an eventual Western-allied army.
Kosovo's Serbs, estimated to
number 114,000, would be given control of a handful of new municipalities
sprinkled across the territory. There, they could draw on money from
Serbia to help finance their own health clinics and schools. Serbian
religious sites, repeatedly targeted by Albanian extremists, would gain
new protections, and Serb lawmakers would have the right to invoke a
"vital interests" claim to block noxious legislation, officials
said.
Final act in the fate of Kosovo begins
Daniel Dombey, Neil MacDonald,
Financial Times, 1/27/07
Eight years after a war that
pitted Nato against Slobodan Milosevic's regime in Belgrade, the endgame
for Kosovo has begun. The strategy of the west is now clear: a United
Nations resolution to put Kosovo under the tutelage of the European
Union and recognition of its independence soon after.
Belgrade is dead set against
Kosovo independence, and Moscow, which would veto any attempt to declare
Kosovo independent at the UN, is none too happy about the prospect either.
The Serbian government said
yesterday that Vojislav Kostunica, the prime minister, would not meet
Martti Ahtisaari, the chief UN mediator for Kosovo, when he visits Belgrade
next week to present his recommendations. Russia has called for a three-month
delay.
The argument voiced by Serbia
and the Kremlin is that Mr Kostunica would have no mandate to meet Mr
Ahtisaari until a new government is formed. But the US and a number
of its allies are keen to press on and resolve the long-running dispute
over Kosovo's status.
Furthermore, Boris Tadic, Serbia's
pro-western president, is on hand to meet Mr Ahtisaari. US diplomats
say they cannot afford to let Serbia delay the process when the ethnic
Albanians, who form 90 per cent of Kosovo's population, have waited
for independence so long.
But they also acknowledge that
administrative shortcomings and a failure so far to protect the rights
of the Serb minority mean that even an independent Kosovo cannot be
trusted to run its affairs alone. Instead, the UN resolution would put
Kosovo under the supervision of the EU, in a similar set-up to nearby
Bosnia-Herzegovina
At present, the provisional
UN administration in Kosovo is reducing its staff but it cannot be replaced
by EU administrators and police until the UN resolution is agreed. Many
western officials feel a strong security presence is needed because
of the risk of unrest and protests provoked by any deal on the province's
fate. Foreign ministers from the EU and Nato, which stations more than
16,000 soldiers in Kosovo, discussed the issue in Brussels. They lent
their support to Mr Ahtisaari's approach, which would pave the way for
Kosovo's independence without explicit UN backing for its new status.
In Vienna, Mr Ahtisaari presented
his proposals to the contact group of leading powers on Kosovo - made
up of the UK, France, the US, Germany, Italy and Russia. On February
2, he plans to travel to the Kosovan capital of Pristina as well as
Belgrade, beginning the process of negotiation over final details that
he hopes will be followed by a UN Security Council resolution in March.
European countries, led by
France, Italy, Spain and central and southern European nations, are
sympathetic to Russia's call for a delay. But their concern is based
on the timeline rather than the proposals. They worry that if a decision
is perceived to be imposed while Serbia is in a political vacuum, Belgrade
might attempt to hold on to parts of the province populated by ethnic
Serbs.
Mr Ahtisaari's plans would open the way for Kosovo to be recognised as an independent state by other countries. "Ahtisaari will talk of a Kosovo government, emblems and a constitution, so it points in one direction," said a western diplomat. His proposed settlement is also likely to open the way for Kosovo to join international financial institutions and the UN. Veton Surroi, a Kosovo negotiator, said the Kosovan parliament's first act after a UN resolution would be to pass a constitution.
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Charles Taylor's Defense Team Eyes Delay
Mike Corder, Associated
Press, 1/26/07
Former Liberian President Charles
Taylor's lawyers need more time to prepare his defense against charges
he directed a campaign of murder, rape and enslavement in West Africa,
his lawyer told a judge Friday. Judge Teresa Doherty made it clear,
however, that Taylor's war crimes trial will begin June 4 as planned.
It is expected to take a year to 18 months.
Taylor has pleaded innocent
to charges linked to the killing and mistreatment of thousands of people
during the 10-year civil war in Liberia's neighbor to the northwest,
Sierra Leone. He faces a life sentence if convicted by the Special Court
for Sierra Leone, sitting in the Netherlands.
The indictment "covers
the gamut of the most horrendous things humans can do to one another,"
prosecutor Stephen Rapp told reporters after the hearing.
Taylor did not appear in the
courtroom in The Hague because he is being treated for back problems,
Rapp said.
Taylor's lawyer, Karim Khan, told the court the defense team would not be ready given the huge volume of prosecution evidence. He also protested the prosecution's refusal to permit him to distribute electronic copies of the evidence.
The charges against Taylor stem from his alleged arming and training of rebels in Sierra Leone during the later years of their insurgency, which began in 1991. Taylor's indictment covers crimes allegedly committed between November 1996 and January 2002.
Nepal's Maoists urge US to wipe them off 'terrorist' list
Agence France Presse,
1/26/07
Nepal's former rebel Maoists
called Friday on the United States to remove them from its list of foreign
terrorist groups, accusing Washington of ignoring the country's peace
deal.
After signing the landmark
deal last November, renouncing violence after a decade of war and taking
up seats in parliament, the Maoists say they are now an integral part
of the new political landscape.
"We are not terrorists
anymore in the eyes of government," Maoist spokesman Krishna Bahadur
Mahara told AFP.
"The US is ignoring the
new political developments that have occurred in our country. We request
the US to change its old policy."
The former rebel movement is
now registering fighters and weapons with the United Nations.
But the US ambassador to Nepal,
James Moriarty, told journalists last week that the Maoists were likely
to "cheat" in the registration process and urged them to disarm
completely before being allowed into government.
"I think everybody here
believes that the Maoists will try to cheat. They are trying to buy
primitive hand-made weapons from Bihar so that they can put crummy weapons
into the containers instead of their modern weapons," he said.
He also said the Maoists would
"retain their private army" until later this year when the
country is supposed to vote for a body that will redraw Nepal's constitution.
"They will use that to
create the condition for an election that is not free and fair,"
Moriarty said.
But another senior Maoist described
the US position as "contradictory."
"On one hand they have
welcomed the interim constitution and formation of (an) interim legislature
but on the other hand they have hinted they would not cooperate with
the ministries led by our party. This is contradictory," said Suresh
Ale Magar, a new Maoist member of the recently sworn-in parliament.
As part of the peace deal signed
last November, a new interim constitution has been passed and the former
rebels have been given 83 of the 303 seats in a temporary parliament.
Their transition from jungle
guerillas to lawmakers came after a decade of bloody civil war that
killed at least 13,000 people, during which the United States provided
millions of dollars worth of military aid to the government in Kathmandu.
Washington also urged mainstream political parties to reconcile with King Gyanendra during his 14-month period of absolute control of Nepal.
Gyanendra's direct rule ended after massive protests organised by sidelined parties in conjunction with the rebels crippled the nation in April last year, and the subsequent peace deal has left the monarch facing an uncertain future.
New ethnic violence in Nepal
Agence France Presse,
1/27/07
Protesters burnt tyres and
hurled stones in new violence in southeastern Nepal on Saturday following
clashes that left five people dead and dozens injured in the last eight
days.
The protests have erupted in
a country which only recently saw an end to ten years of civil war between
government forces and Maoist insurgents.
The violence flared as authorities
lifted a curfew on Saturday in three towns in the Terai region and maintained
it in two others, including Birgunj.
"Protesters are trying
to break the curfew by burning tyres," Shambhu Koirala, chief district
officer told AFP from Birgunj.
"Some protesters pelted
stones (at police) and tried to burn two police posts in the town. The
situation is tense and there are reports of clashes between police and
demonstrators but no arrests have been made," he said.
The protests began after a
teenage boy was shot dead on January 19 during a fight between Maoists
and activists belonging to the Mahadhesi community which is demanding
greater political representation.
Mahadhesi leaders have said
the group accounts for a third of impoverished Nepal's 27 million people
and that the Maoists are over-represented in the nation's new parliament.
The parliament was set up after
the Maoist rebels and coalition government signed a peace deal to bring
the rebels into government.
The Mahadhesi dominate the
Terai plains region, known as Nepal's bread basket, and have long complained
of discrimination by highland communities.
The protests, which began in
Lahan Bazaar town and spread into four other towns, became ethnic clashes
after the Mahadhesi began attacking people from the hill regions.
Nepal's Prime Minister Girija
Prasad Koirala has called on the group to begin talks and the Mahadhesis
have urged him to name a date.
On Friday, Koirala met with
Maoist chairman Prachanda to seek a way to settle the unrest in the
Himalayan nation.
The group organising the protests
has warned that unless Nepal's government addresses their complaints,
the violence would continue.
Nepal's Maoists have said pro-royalists
are involved in the protests and are trying to undermine the peace process
which has left King Gyanendra facing dismissal.
The UN chief's personal representative to Nepal's peace process called Friday for an end to the violent protests and said such bloodshed could disrupt crucial elections due to be held later this year.
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P.I. troops capture bomb-making facility
United Press International,
1/25/07
Philippine government forces
have captured a major bomb-making factory and munitions storage cave
on the eastern coast of Mindanao.
The cave in Surigao del Sur
was used by the communist New People's Army and doubled as a meeting
place for top communist leaders in the area, The Manila Times reported
in its Friday edition.
Military sources were quoted
as saying the cave, captured after "intense" fighting, had
"42 plastic containers of superdyne dynamite explosives that could
produce about 250 pieces of 8-kilogram (about 17.5 pound) landmines
and 18 pieces of claymore mines."
Additional dynamite was found
buried in the cave. Also found were rifles, rocket propelled grenades,
an ammunition reloading machine and detonator wiring.
"The capture of this CT
(communist terrorist) factory will definitely degrade their bomb making
capability in Mindanao," army spokesman Maj. Ernesto Torres Jr.,
said.
The NPA, the armed wing of
the Communist Party of the Philippines, has waged a 38-year struggle
against the central government and is active throughout the country.
In addition to the NPA, Philippine forces are also fighting Muslim separatists and al-Qaida-linked terrorists in Mindanao and elsewhere in the south of the country.
Ethiopians begin withdrawing from Somalia, testing faction leaders' commitment to peace
Chris Tomlinson, Associated
Press, 1/24/07
Ethiopian troops have begun
withdrawing from Somalia, keeping their leader's promise not to occupy
the strategic country and putting to the test promises made by powerful
faction leaders not to plunge the country into chaos.
While diplomats work out the
details for a peacekeeping operation, Somali leaders now find themselves
faced with a choice between taking advantage of a power vacuum to promote
sectarian interests, or cooperating with an unpopular and ill-prepared
government desperate to establish order after 16 years of anarchy.
In the days and weeks ahead,
government officials, warlords, Islamic leaders and clan elders will
determine if the 14th attempt to re-establish a central authority in
Somalia will succeed, or if clan and ideological differences will return
the country to chaos.
So far, it doesn't look good.
After Ethiopian troops defeated
Islamic militants threatening to take over the country, European, U.S.
and U.N. officials all urged Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf to build
bridges with his opponents to win acceptance. Diplomats told him at
a meeting in Nairobi on Jan. 5 that international support for his government
would depend on broad-based reconciliation talks.
But Yusuf doesn't appear to
have listened. Within days of arriving in Mogadishu, his government
intimidated the media by shutting down independent outlets for 24 hours.
It also declared three months of martial law.
Then on Jan. 17, he engineered
the impeachment of Parliament Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheik Aden, a popular
rival who has close ties to Somalia's fundamentalist Islamic movement.
The moves reinforced Yusuf's
reputation as a dictator, which he first earned as the president of
the semiautonomous region of Puntland. Adding to his problems, Yusuf's
role during the warlord years of the early 1990s made him deeply unpopular
in Mogadishu, and his Darood clan has little or no presence there leaving
him with no local allies.
The majority of Mogadishu residents
are from a rival clan, the Hawiye, which it itself divided into factions.
In the past, warlords from these factions divided up the city among
themselves.
Even though Yusuf's government
was formed in 2004, he could not enter Mogadishu because he feared the
warlords. But the warlords lost control of Mogadishu to the Council
of Islamic Courts in June, when key businessmen and clan elders switched
their allegiances.
Earlier this month, Ethiopian
troops drove out the Islamic movement and brought Yusuf back to Mogadishu,
along with the warlords. For now, Yusuf has persuaded the warlords and
the clan elders to cooperate with his government, but its unclear how
long this uneasy agreement will last now that Yusuf's Ethiopian muscle
is leaving.
There has already been rumbling
among some warlords unhappy with what they see as the government's highhandedness.
The departure will also test
whether the remnants of the Islamic movement really are ready to talk
to the government. Islamic leaders have said all along they were ready
to talk to Yusuf, but only after Ethiopian troops left the country.
At least one Islamic leader
called The Associated Press to support the Ethiopian pull out.
"The withdrawal of Ethiopia
would be the end of our ongoing insurgency," said Sheik Ahmed Muumin,
a member of the Islamic militia. "I hope peace will prevail in
Somalia after we solve our differences in a peaceful manner."
But a mortar attack on the
main Mogadishu airport Wednesday morning threw that commitment into
doubt.
All eyes are on one cleric
who is perceived to be a highly influential moderate leader in the Islamic
courts. Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed was taken into Kenyan custody on Sunday
when he left Somalia and surrendered.
Kenyan officials have kept
him under wraps. U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger met with him Wednesday
to ask him to renounce violence and join the reconciliation process
in return for a role in Somalia's future, but the results of the meeting
were not made public.
If he accepts, then the pressure
will shift to Yusuf, who so far has made no public plans for his promised
broad-based talks.
The job of the proposed 8,000
African peacekeepers, which many hope will deploy in the next few weeks,
will be to protect those taking part in the promised talks. The mission
is modeled on a force that went to Burundi, where it protected rival
faction leaders so they would feel safe serving in a power-sharing government.
But the African peacekeeping
force for Somalia will not deploy if the violence in Mogadishu continues
and it will not take responsibility for bringing stability to Somalia
as a whole. That will depend solely on whether Somalia's leaders keep
their promises and work together.
U.S. Conducts a Second Airstrike Inside Somalia
New York Times, 1/25/07
The United States has conducted
a second airstrike in Somalia, American officials said Wednesday. The
top American envoy in East Africa, meanwhile, urged an Islamist leader
to work for reconciliation with the Somali government.
The new airstrike came roughly
two weeks after a strike by an AC-130 plane killed what the United States
said were eight fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda who had been hiding
among Islamists pushed to Somalia's southern tip by Ethiopian and Somali
government forces.
One official said the targets
this week were Islamist fighters, who once controlled much of Somalia
but were defeated in a two-week war that started in late December. A
second source said the target was a Qaeda operative. A Pentagon spokesman
declined to comment.
''We're going to go after Al
Qaeda and the global war on terror, wherever it takes us,'' said the
spokesman, Bryan Whitman.
Washington says Somali Islamists
have protected Qaeda members accused of bombing the American Embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in
2002.
Al Qaeda's second in command,
Ayman al-Zawahri, vowed in a video posted on the Internet on Wednesday
that Islamist fighters would defeat Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia.
''The mujahedeen will break
their backs with God's power and help,'' Mr. Zawahri said in the video.
The United States and other
countries are pushing on diplomatic and military fronts to help the
newly empowered Somali government build on the gains it made in the
war, which enabled it to enter the capital for the first time since
it was organized in 2004. On Wednesday, the American ambassador to Kenya,
Michael E. Ranneberger, met with an Islamist leader, Sheik Sharif Ahmed,
who had fled Somalia and is being held by Kenyan intelligence agents
in a hotel on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Mr. Ranneberger has said Mr.
Ahmed is among those who could play a role in the reconciliation that
the United States and diplomats from some other countries say is necessary
to unify Somalia.
Mr. Ahmed, one of the most
visible faces of the Islamists during its six-month rule of most of
southern Somalia, surrendered at the Kenyan border. Diplomats say Kenya,
with United States support, has pushed the Somali government leaders
to sit down with Mr. Ahmed for talks.
''We will go back to our country,
sit with my cabinet and decide what to do with him,'' President Abdullahi
Yusuf of Somalia said in Kigali, Rwanda, where he met with Rwanda's
president, Paul Kagame.
A senior Kenyan official told
Reuters that Mr. Ahmed was seeking refuge in Yemen and that Kenya was
resistant to sending him to Somalia, because he could be killed there.
Even with a still strong Ethiopian military presence in Somalia, attacks continue in Mogadishu. The latest one struck the Mogadishu international airport, witnesses said. A hospital official said five people, including a 10-year-old boy, had been injured. Many blame Islamist remnants for a series of similar attacks .
Sri Lanka Told to Probe Child Conscription
Krishan Francis, Associated
Press, 1/24/07
Sri Lanka must investigate
allegations that its military helps a militia fighting separatist Tamil
Tiger rebels conscript child soldiers, or allow an independent international
investigation, a human rights group said Wednesday.
New York-based Human Rights
Watch said the government's alleged complicity in the child abductions
show its "hypocrisy" in condemning the use of child soldiers
by the Tamil Tigers.
"The government must stop
making excuses and launch a serious and impartial investigation of government
complicity," Brad Adams, the rights group's Asia director, said
in a statement. "If the government won't investigate, then it must
allow an independent, international inquiry."
Officials reacted sharply.
"The government is taking
this matter very seriously, but what we want from the Human Rights Watch
are credible evidence, not just statements. Only then we can take action
if needed," Chief government spokesman, Keheliya Rambukwella said.
Jo Becker, a child rights advocate
for the group, said the government, after condemning child recruitment
by the Tamil Tigers for years, "is now complicit in the same crimes."
"The government's collusion
on child abductions ... highlights its hypocrisy," she said.
In November, Allan Rock, the
U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict on Sri Lanka,
alleged that government forces were helping and at times participating
in child abductions by the Karuna militia, a splinter group that broke
away from the mainstream Tamil Tiger rebels.
The government has flatly denied
any military involvement.
The Karuna group, named after
its commander, once a regional leader of the Tamil Tigers, split from
the mainstream guerrilla group in 2004 with some 6,000 fighters.
The mainstream rebels attacked
the renegades and claimed they had crushed the rebellion. However, the
splinter group later began attacking the mainstream rebels and is widely
believed to be cooperating with government forces.
In a report titled "Complicit
in Crime: State Collusion in Abductions and Child Recruitment by the
Karuna Group," Human Rights Watch said the military has not taken
any steps to stop the abductions because it is "eager for an ally
against the Tamil Tigers."
Becker said the Karuna group
mainly targets poor families for conscription.
"Not only do government
forces fail to stop the abductions, but they allow the Karuna group
to transport kidnapped children through checkpoints on the way to their
camps," Becker said.
Human Rights Watch has also
called on the U.N. to impose "targeted sanctions" on the Tamil
Tiger rebels who are known to have used child soldiers for years because
of the group's status as a "repeat offender."
The rebels have fought the
government for more than two decades to create a separate homeland for
ethnic minority Tamils following decades of discrimination by the majority
Sinhalese-dominated state.
More than 68,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
A Norwegian-brokered cease-fire exists officially but a resurgence of violence since last year has resulted in the deaths of thousands of fighters and civilians.
Myanmar promises support to fight Tamil Tiger separatists in Sri Lanka
Associated Press, 1/25/07
Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan
Win promised support to fight Tamil Tiger separatists and combat the
manufacture and circulation of weapons during a visit to Sri Lanka Thursday,
the Foreign Ministry said.
Win said that his government
will help "in the fight against terrorism and the manufacture,
transfer and circulation of small arms and light weapons which pose
a threat to peace, security and stability in the region," the ministry
said in a statement.
At a meeting with his Sri Lankan
counterpart Mangala Samaraweera in the capital, Colombo, Win said Myanmar
would never allow any group to use its territory to engage in hostilities
against any of its neighbors, including Sri Lanka.
"The two sides recognized
the need to establish institutional arrangements among security agencies
for intelligence sharing, consultation and coordination to prevent terrorist
activities," the statement said.
Win arrived in Sri Lanka early
Thursday and is scheduled to meet President Mahinda Rajapakse on Friday.
He will end his visit on Monday.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam rebels have fought to carve out an independent homeland for minority
Tamils in Sri Lanka after decades of discrimination by the majority
Sinhalese-controlled governments.
More than 68,000 people have died in the conflict that flared up in 1983.
A Norway-brokered cease-fire signed in 2002 exists on paper, but a resurgence of violence since last year has killed thousands of civilians and fighters.
Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation
Click here to
access the Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International
Law & Policy Group.
French aid group says it is withdrawing from Sudan's Darfur because of violence
Alfred de Montesquiou, Associated
Press, 1/29/07
A leading French aid group
said Monday it was pulling out of Darfur because the violence in the
western Sudan region posed too high a risk to its workers.
Medecins du Monde, or Doctors
of the World, has "suspended its activities in Darfur for an undetermined
period of time," said the group's director of international missions,
Eric Chevallier, in a phone interview.
"The balance between the
help we were able to provide and the risks our staff were taking had
reached breaking point," Chevallier said.
Several other aid groups have
reduced their staff in Darfur because of the violence, and warned that
they might be forced to withdraw completely. But Doctors of the World
is the first major aid group to pull out.
More than 200,000 people have
been killed in Darfur and about 2,5 million forced to flee their homes
during the past four years.
The French aid group has begun
pulling out more than a dozen international aid workers and some 200
Sudanese nationals working in the region, it's international director
said.
"It's a very difficult
decision, and we hope we will be able to go back in when security improves,"
said Chevallier.
The aid group had been assisting
some 90,000 refugees in the Kalma refugee camp of South Darfur, and
had operated a mobile clinic treating about 30,000 people in remote
villages in the Jebel Marra mountains where there was an outbreak of
cholera last year.
He blamed the spiraling violence
on all parties in Darfur, where multiple rebel groups fight the Sudanese
army and the janjaweed paramilitary groups.
Chevallier said vehicle hijacking
was making it impossible for the aid group to reach the remote villages
where their aid is most needed, and that increased violence made it
dangerous for staff to remain even in Darfur major towns. He pointed
to a raid of four refugee compounds in the Gereida refugee camp on Dec.
18 during which a female aid worker was raped and several others endured
mock executions while their vehicles and possessions were stolen.
"We decided it was better
to leave before facing a serious problem than afterward," Chevallier
said.
On Sunday, six other aid groups
warned in a statement that they were reaching the "breaking point"
in Darfur and called on the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers deployed
in the region to try harder to protect refugees.
"Aid workers are facing
violence on a scale not seen before in Darfur, leaving access to people
in need at the conflict's lowest point," said the joint statement
issued by Care International, the British Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee
Council and three other groups.
Attacks against civilians increased
this month, killing 350 people and chasing tens of thousand more people
from their home in January alone, the statement said.
The United Nations blames the
Sudanese government in Khartoum for the brunt of the atrocities in Darfur,
but the aid groups pointed out that "splits in the rebel movements
and a widespread lack of accountability" is largely contributing
to their worsening situation.
Ten AU peacekeepers have been
killed since the African Union deployed in Darfur in June 2004, and
the African mission says it needs more international support to pacify
this region nearly the size of Texas.
Sudan opposes a U.N. Security
Council resolution for some 22,000 U.N. peacekeepers to replace the
overwhelmed African force, but Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is
due to discuss a compromise deal for a mixed U.N. and AU force with
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon this week.
The U.N. says Darfur is the largest ongoing humanitarian operation in the world, with some 15,000 aid workers including more than 1,000 expatriates deployed in the region
Medecins du Monde was established
in 1980. It runs medical missions in various African and Asian countries,
but the mission in Darfur was one of the largest, with several million
euros (dollars) spent on it annually since it was established in 2004.
Sudan push to chair African Union raises concerns about Darfur mission
Alfred de Montesquiou, Associated
Press, 1/29/07
Sudan said Sunday it would
push for President Omar al-Bashir to become chair of the African Union
this week, a move observers and rebels warned would jeopardize the body's
efforts to pacify conflict-torn Darfur.
The 53-member AU meets this
week in Ethiopia to choose its new chairman among African heads of states.
The spiraling violence in Sudan's western Darfur region, where the AU
has 7,000 peacekeepers, is expected to top the agenda.
Many observers say al-Bashir
is a party to the conflict and should not chair the organization.
Khartoum says AU leaders already
agreed to select al-Bashir during last year's summit.
"African heads of states
will have to stick to their word, otherwise what is the point for the
AU to hold meetings and reach agreements?" said Sudanese Foreign
Ministry spokesman Ali Sadiq.
But several African countries
backed by Western nations oppose al-Bashir's bid to become chairman
despite the agreement reported last year, diplomats in Khartoum said.
Countries with peacekeeping
contingents in Darfur, such as Senegal and South Africa, are among those
opposed, said the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because
of the sensitivity of the talks.
The Darfur crisis began in
February 2003 when rebels from black African tribes took up arms, complaining
of decades of neglect and discrimination by Sudan's Arab-dominated government.
More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced.
The government is accused of
unleashing Arab tribal militia known as janjaweed against civilians
in a campaign of killings, rapes and arson.
The Sudanese government, which
denies backing the janjaweed, signed a peace agreement with one Darfur
rebel faction in May, but violence has worsened in the region, spilling
over into neighboring Chad and Central African Republic.
Darfur rebel leaders warned
they would stop considering the AU mission an honest peace-broker in
Darfur if al-Bashir was selected.
"We are fighting al-Bashir
and his army. ... There will be huge chaos in Darfur if he becomes AU
chairman," rebel chief Khalil Ibrahim warned in a phone interview.
Ibrahim heads the Justice and
Equality Movement, the backbone of a rebel coalition that has repeatedly
defeated government forces in North Darfur. The coalition recently threatened
it would treat AU peacekeepers as a "hostile force" if al-Bashir
becomes their nominal head.
"I hope all African leaders
understand that we are very serious about this," Ibrahim said.
"If they select al-Bashir, it will mean the AU instantly terminates
its mission in Darfur."
Sadiq dismissed claims that
a Sudanese chairmanship would put the African force in an awkward position
in Darfur, saying the regional body's chief does oversee day-to-day
peacekeeping operations.
The AU mission in Sudan declined
to comment.
Khartoum opposes a U.N. Security
Council resolution that calls for some 22,000 U.N. peacekeepers to replace
the overwhelmed African force.
Experts say there is mounting pressure on African leaders not to select al-Bashir. "However, I don't know how they'll get around it," said Tom Cargyll, an analyst at Chatham House, a British think tank.
The AU's chairmanship is largely symbolic and has little effect on peacekeepers in Darfur, Cargyll said. "But knowing how Sudanese diplomacy works, they would certainly extract the maximum political capital from it," he said.
Genocide in Darfur: A Legal
Analysis
Click here to access the Report
prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.