PEACE
NEGOTIATIONS WATCH
Thursday, February 22, 2007
(Volume VI, Number 3)
Contents:
Burundi
Burundian group meets on monitoring
cease-fire between government, rebels
This was the first meeting of
the group set up as part of the September cease-fire agreement.
Last rebel group in Burundi joins
panel to monitor truce
Thus ending the several months-long
boycott.
Chechnya
Chechen strongman Kadyrov appointed
to top post
This move formalized the rise of
a man credited by the Kremlin of crushing an insurgency.
Democratic
Republic of Congo
DR Congo supreme court upholds
election of provincial governor
Opposition had wanted a run-off
vote in this western region.
Democratic Republic of Congo Negotiation Simulation Click here to access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation.
Georgia
Moscow hoping for restart of stalled Georgia-Abkhazia talks
Russian minister assessed the results of the UN’s Group of Friends
of Georgia meeting as being positive.
Indonesia
EU mediator urges Aceh's
guerrilla-turned-governor to implement reforms
But
he praised the progress so far in the region.
Aceh Negotiation Simulation Click here to access the Aceh Negotiation Simulation.
Kashmir
Rights group urges India to
address Kashmir disappearances
Human Rights watch alleges that
"disappearances" and staged executions are a commonplace occurrence.
3 Indian soldiers killed, 2 hurt
in Kashmir attacks
The attacks were waged by Muslim
rebels fighting Indian rule in the region.
Kashmir Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Kashmir Negotiation Simulation.
Kosovo
AP Interview: U.N. envoy says
compromise on Kosovo roadmap 'unlikely'
Special envoy Martti Ahtisaari
says “a thousand things … could go wrong”
Serbia's new parliament rejects
U.N. plan for Kosovo
This move means that any
resolution to the dispute will likely have to be imposed by the U.N.
Security Council.
Kosovo 'guerilla group' claims attack
on UN vehicles
A group calling itself the "Kosovo
Liberation Army" said the explosions were aimed at damaging UNMIK
vehicles, not at the loss of life.
Kosovo Negotiation Simulation Click here to access the Kosovo Negotiation Simulation.
Nepal
UN confirms Nepal's Maoists
disarmed, registered
This step signals completion
of a key part of the peace deal.
Japan to join UN mission in Nepal
The soldiers will help monitor weapons
and soldiers under the peace deal.
Philippines
Three dead in Philippine guerrilla
attacks
Communist rebels killed two
policemen and a soldier.
Somalia
Somalia's infamous warlords
re-emerge from shadows to threaten relief work, UN says
UN estimates that around
1 million Somalis need humanitarian aid.
Witnesses: 12 killed in heavy shelling
in Somalia's capital
More than 40 others were wounded
during the mortar rounds and rocket attacks.
Sri
Lanka
Military says air force bombs
Tamil rebels' artillery position in Jaffna
LTTE offered no independent
confirmation.
Sri Lanka says guerilla bases targeted;
rebels say village hit
In a separate attack, LTTE says
that the military killed two civilians.
Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation Click here to access the Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation.
Sudan
U.N., AU envoy say Darfur
peace agreement can be changed to bring more factions on board
Two members of the envoy say they
were encouraged by meetings with rebel leaders and Khartoum officials.
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.
Burundian group meets on
monitoring cease-fire between government, rebels
Aloys Niyoyita, Associated
Press, 2/19/07
A new group monitoring the five-month cease-fire between Burundi's government and rebels met for the first time Monday, with officials saying it was key to ending 12 years of conflict.
The group was set up as part of a September cease-fire agreement between Burundi's government and the National Liberation Force the last rebel group to sign a peace deal with the government.
"All Burundians have waited for this step," Internal Affairs Minister Brig. Gen. Evariste Ndayishimiye said.
"You are home. Feel at home," he told the representatives, appointed by the rebels, government, Burundian military, United Nations, African Union and donors.
Earlier peace agreements with other rebel groups led to 2005 national elections that established the current government. The National Liberation Front had boycotted that vote.
The new peace deal, however, calls for an end to fighting and for some rebels to join the national army.
Jean Berchmans Ndayishimiye, one of 16 rebels in the cease-fire monitoring group, said the rebels wanted the peace deal to be implemented quickly.
"The time for discussions is over. Today, we only want the implementation of the accords," he said. He has no relation with the interior affairs minister.
The meeting was taking place in the capital, Bujumbura, after parliament voted in November to grant the rebels immunity, allowing some to return to the country from safe havens abroad.
Earlier they had faced arrests for attacks launched sporadically in western Burundi. The National Liberation Army is estimated to have 1,500 to 3,000 combatants.
Burundi is still reeling from the war, which started in 1993 when Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's president, a Hutu, and led to the deaths of 250,000 people, mostly civilians.
Last rebel group in Burundi
joins panel to monitor truce
Agence France Presse,
2/19/07
Burundi's last active rebels joined the government on a panel overseeing a landmark ceasefire agreement Monday, ending a boycott of several months.
Senior officials of the National Liberation Forces (FNL) took their places on the Joint Verification and Monitoring Committee to begin implementing the agreement, signed with Bujumbura last September.
The FNL was the only one of Burundi's seven Hutu rebel groups to have remained outside a peace process that began in 2000.
The panel was originally scheduled to begin its work on September 14, a week after the truce was signed.
That work was postponed for a month because of demands made by the rebels, before starting without them on board.
The rebels were calling for the release by the government of some of their members, including one of their nominees to the panel.
They also wanted the government to formally grant temporary immunity to their fighters and to clear the way for them to obtain Burundian passports.
Earlier this month, Bujumbura freed six FNL members, handing them over to South African mediator Charles Nqakula, meeting a key requirement of the ceasefire agreement.
On Sunday, the rebels sent a 17-strong team, led by Rubens Tubirabe, to the panel. The government side is led by Interior Minister Evariste Ndayishimiye.
The committee started work after an opening ceremony in Bujumbura attended by Nqakula for South Africa, the head of UN Office Burundi Mahmoud Youssef and African Union envoy Mamadou Bah among others.
Last September's agreement led to the election of a new power-sharing government headed by a former Hutu guerrilla chief in 2005.
The war erupted in 1993 with the assassination of Melchior Ndadaye, a member of the Hutu majority and the country's first democratically elected president by elements of the then minority Tutsi-dominated military.
Chechen strongman Kadyrov
appointed to top post
Nick Coleman, Agence France
Presse, 2/16/07
President Vladimir Putin appointed strongman Ramzan Kadyrov to Chechnya's top job, formalising the rise of a man the Kremlin credits with crushing an insurgency and whom critics accuse of mass human rights abuses.
The Kremlin published a decree signed by Putin on Thursday relieving the incumbent, Alu Alkhanov, from the post and "naming as temporary acting president" the 30-year-old Kadyrov, who has held the prime minister's post since last March.
Kadyrov, whose 30th birthday last year made him officially old enough to stand for president, takes on the role in a temporary capacity pending a decision by the provincial assembly, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Presidential envoy Dmitry Kozak said Putin will name at least one other candidate, the Kommersant newspaper reported Friday, but no real opposition to Kadyrov's confirmation is expected.
"I don't see any alternatives to Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov," said the speaker of the provincial assembly, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, quoted by RIA Novosti.
He called Kadyrov a "symbol of Chechnya's stabilisation and of the rights of the unfortunate."
Alkhanov, who was reportedly caught up in a power struggle with Kadyrov in recent days, was appointed deputy justice minister by Putin and presented with a medal, the Kremlin said.
Located in the Caucasus mountains between the Caspian and Black Sea, the small province of Chechnya has long been a symbol of resistance to Moscow and in the post-Soviet era has been a thorn in the Kremlin's side, as rebels have fought for independence, with massive losses on both sides.
The son of a previous assassinated Chechen president, Kadyrov is instantly recognisable by his tufty beard and invariably low-slung tie, as well as the traditional round embroidered cap he often wears.
With his expensive personal tastes, appeals to Muslim sentiment and links to the rebels, Kadyrov is loathed by many in Russia's political and military elite.
For human rights campaigners Kadyrov is synonymous with the brutality of the counter-insurgency effort, including numerous disappearances blamed on the personal militia he led and its widespread use of torture, including at his personal jail at his home in Tsenteroi.
In a report last May, the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights alluded to the practice of kidnapping relatives of wanted rebels in order to persuade them to give themselves up and said that one of two illegal jails in Tsenteroi was still used for holding such relatives.
Other analysts say that by doing deals with rebels and taking many of them into the armed forces Kadyrov has done more to dampen dissent than could have been achieved by the Russian military.
Moscow has fought two full-blown wars in Chechnya in the post-Soviet era -- a 1994-96 war in which Russian forces suffered humiliating defeat and a second assault on the province that began in 1999 and continues today in the form of low-level skirmishes and attacks.
In addition to satisfying his own tastes -- Kadyrov boasts that he keeps a collection of sports cars as well as a lion, tiger, wolf and bear -- the Chechen strongman has kick-started reconstruction work after years in which federal funding vanished into the pockets of corrupt officials.
Moscow-based analysts said Kadyrov's rise was inevitable.
"Kadyrov controls Chechnya de facto and put pressure on Alkhanov to give up his post," said analyst Yury Korgunyuk.
"The conflict has become less intense. There are fewer abductions ... Russia has obtained relative stability in Chechnya, but at what price," demanded Alexander Cherkasov, of the Russian human rights organisation Memorial.
DR Congo supreme court upholds
election of provincial governor
Sofia Bouderbala, Agence
France Presse, 2/16/07
The Democratic Republic of Congo's Supreme Court upheld Friday the election of the governor of a western province, where the opposition had wanted a run-off vote and post-electoral bloodshed erupted.
"The Supreme Court of Justice proclaims Simon Mbatshi Batshia elected in the first round" of the January 27 vote in Bas-Congo, chief justice Tshibamba Ntoka ruled after a public hearing.
The opposition Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) led by Jean-Pierre Bemba had gone to court to challenge the independent electoral commission's official announcement of victory for Mbatshi, a supporter of President Joseph Kabila.
Mbatshi defeated MLC candidate Leonard Fuka by 15 votes to 14 out of those cast by the 29 elected members of the Bas-Congo provincial parliament and his party contended he should have got "a majority + 1", or 16 votes to win outright.
The election, unlike most other governorship polls in parliaments across the vast central African country, was a tense one whose outcome led to an explosion of violence in the following days in which the UN mission in DRC estimates that "about 134 people" were killed in several towns.
Members of a religious sect with political aspirations, Bundu dia Kongo, had supported Fuka in a province where the MLC is also strongly implanted and battled security forces in late January and early February.
The Supreme Court ruling means that allies of Kabila, who last year defeated Bemba in the first free presidential election in more than four decades since independence, now control 10 of the mineral-rich country's 11 provinces.
Also on Friday, the independent electoral commission officially released the outcome of governor's polls in the two central Kasai provinces, which were held on Thursday after two delays, and now await validation by the appeal courts.
Both Kasai Occidental and Kasai Oriental went to Kabila supporters. In the eastern province, Alphonse Ngoyi Kasanji, president of the Federation of Diamond Traders of the Congo, resoundingly won with 51 of the 66 votes.
Those two elections were postponed from January 27 because one party in Kabila's Alliance of the Presidential Majority had accused the two opposition candidates of holding dual nationality, which is illegal.
The opposition Union for the Nation (UN) coalition, led by Bemba's MLC, dismissed the claim as an attempt to stop a fair vote. He threatened to identify about 60 pro-Kabila politicians in breach of the rule.
Last week, the National Assembly extended the time allowed for elected representatives to bring their nationality status into line with the law.
Last year's presidential and parliamentary elections were the crowning moment of an arduous three-year post-war transition monitored by the United Nations. Kabila and his allies took a majority of seats in national institutions.
The continent's third biggest country extends from a strip of Atlantic coast to frontiers with east African nations. It currently has 11 provinces, but a decentralisation programme provides for a new demarcation into 26 provinces over three years.
Democratic Republic of Congo
Negotiation Simulation
Click here to
access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International
Law & Policy Group.
Moscow hoping for restart
of stalled Georgia-Abkhazia talks
RIA Novosti, 2/16/07
Moscow hopes that Georgia-Abkhazia talks, suspended last summer following Tbilisi's deployment of troops close to the breakaway province's border, will be resumed soon, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Friday.
Talks to resolve a long-running conflict between the post-Soviet Caucasus nation and its rebellious region broke off in July when Tbilisi moved security forces into the Kodori Gorge, the de facto border between Abkhazia and Georgia proper, and established a local administration formed with Abkhaz political exiles.
Officials from Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the United States met in Geneva Friday for a session of the UN Secretary General's Group of Friends of Georgia (GFG), focusing on progress in the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1716. The document calls for, among other things, the pullout of Georgian armed units from Kodori.
"Moscow assesses as positive the results of the GFG meeting held within the framework of the 'Geneva process'," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued after the meeting. "We hope they will help overcome the pause in the Georgian-Abkhaz negotiating process and lead to tangible shifts in that direction."
Abkhaz delegates to the GFG meeting reiterated the self-proclaimed republic's willingness to resume talks with Tbilisi, but not until it signs a non-aggression pact and withdraws its troops and government officials from Kodori.
Abkhazia's leadership claims Georgia's move into the gorge violated the terms of the ceasefire agreement signed to end a bloody war that broke out after the separatist region proclaimed its independence in the early 1990s.
Abkhaz Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba told a news conference in Moscow Friday that the talks will resume if Georgia begins the withdrawal of its forces from Kodori within the next month, in keeping with Resolution 1716.
"If Georgia begins implementing the UN Security Council Resolution before April, then we are in favor of the resumption of the negotiating process," he said, adding that the council is to hold a special session on Georgia that month.
Abkhazia has not been recognized as a sovereign state either by Tbilisi or by the international community. Moscow has been supporting the self-proclaimed republic's bid for independence all along, and has said that if the United Nations grants full sovereignty to the Serbian province of Kosovo, it should act the same way toward Abkhazia.
Georgia's pro-Western government, which came to power on the back of a "rose" revolution in 2003, is determined to bring Abkhazia back under its control.
EU mediator urges Aceh's
guerrilla-turned-governor to implement reforms
Slobodan Lekic, Associated
Press, 2/16/07
The envoy who brokered the peace deal that ended the long-running war in Indonesia's Aceh province called Friday on Aceh's new leaders to quickly carry out reforms.
Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, negotiated an end to one of history's longest wars by bringing together the Indonesian government and rebels from the Free Aceh Movement in 1995 on behalf of the European Union.
Their peace deal keeps Aceh a natural gas-rich province of 4 million people located on the northern tip of Sumatra within Indonesia but grants it substantial autonomy.
In December, former rebel leader Irwandi Yusuf was elected governor in Aceh's first free elections. He was inaugurated last week.
"It was a fair democratic election, and we all came through that process successfully," Ahtisaari said in his first public comment on Aceh since the successful transfer of power from the former Indonesian governor.
The peace process was launched immediately after the tsunami that hit the region on Dec. 26, 2004, killing at least 160,000 Acehnese.
Yusuf spent 18 months in an Indonesian jail but escaped after the tsunami hit his prison block.
On Friday, Ahtisaari praised progress so far in Aceh: "It is a case of so far, so good."
But he urged quick reforms which Aceh's new officials, most of them former separatists, have vowed to quickly implement to raise living standards in the province.
As part of the peace agreement, Aceh was allowed for the first time to retain the majority of income derived from its natural gas and other resources.
"I hope that wisdom will prevail and that the new governor will utilize all the available expertise in Aceh to carry out the reforms he and many others want to carry out," Ahtisaari told The Associated Press after a meeting with NATO's secretary general.
Rights group urges India
to address Kashmir disappearances
Agence France Presse,
2/15/07
India must clean up its act in Jammu and Kashmir, a leading human rights group said Thursday, charging that "disappearances" and staged executions were commonplace.
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) listed the case of Abdul Rahman Paddar, a carpenter who went missing in December, sparking major protests.
He was picked up in Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar, by a special police squad who branded him a Pakistani militant and claimed that he had been killed in an armed encounter.
His body was exhumed along with four others last month, including a street vendor and a Muslim priest, who all "disappeared" last year.
Eight policemen, including two senior officers, have been arrested for the murders and a judicial inquiry ordered into the "executions staged to look like self-defence," the group said.
"Recent revelations have confirmed what families in Kashmir have been alleging all along," said Brad Adams, the group's Asia director.
"The Indian security forces have disappeared' countless people in Jammu and Kashmir since 1989, and staged fake encounter killings while fabricating claims that those killed were militants."
The Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons in Jammu and Kashmir (APDP) alleges more than 10,000 people are missing.
The government admits to nearly 4,000 people, but says some may have crossed into Pakistan to join militant groups.
HRW said Indian security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted fake encounter killings were common and even encouraged through gallantry citations or promotions.
"We welcome judicial inquiries into encounter killings, but given the government's track record, there is reason to be sceptical," said Adams.
The group urged the authorities to establish an independent commission and called on the government to:
-- Strengthen and enforce laws that protect detainees from torture
-- Establish a register of detainees accessible to lawyers and family members, and respond promptly to habeas corpus petitions in cases of disappearances
-- Take swift action against all state officials who obstruct or ignore judicial orders to produce detainees in court
-- Grant the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all army and paramilitary interrogation/detention centres
-- Ratify and implement the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which India signed on February 6.
3 Indian soldiers killed,
2 hurt in Kashmir attacks
Agence France Presse,
2/20/07
Three Indian troopers were killed and two hurt in fresh attacks by Muslim rebels fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, police said Tuesday.
In Kashmir, two policemen were killed Tuesday when militants attacked their patrol on a key highway, a police spokesman said.
"The patrol was attacked from close range with pistols near the Sangam area," the spokesman said, referring to a small highway township 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the summer capital, Srinagar.
The policemen were deployed to guard security force convoys near Sangam, part of a 300-kilometre (186-mile) highway connecting Srinagar with the winter capital, Jammu, and other Indian cities.
An Indian army soldier was killed and two others hurt in another attack late Monday evening in Doda district, further south of Sangam, police said.
Kashmir is in the grip of a 17-year-old insurgency against Indian rule that has left tens of thousands dead.
Kashmir Negotiation Simulation
Click here to
access the Kashmir Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International
Law & Policy Group.
AP Interview: U.N. envoy
says compromise on Kosovo roadmap 'unlikely'
William J. Kole, Associated
Press, 2/15/07
Chances are slim that Serbia's nationalist leaders and their ethnic Albanian rivals in Kosovo will ever agree on a U.N. proposal setting the contested province on the road to independence, the plan's architect warned Thursday.
Special envoy Martti Ahtisaari's bleak assessment in an interview with The Associated Press and a fresh warning from Serbia's tough-talking premier about "dangerous" consequences increased the likelihood of a showdown this spring at the U.N. Security Council.
"I could give you a list of a thousand things that could go wrong," Ahtisaari said. "We have to calm down."
Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority demands full independence, while Serbia insists that Kosovo remain part of its territory.
Neither side is happy with Ahtisaari's plan. It envisages internationally supervised self-rule and the trappings of statehood such as a flag, anthem, army and constitution while giving Kosovo's minority Serbs more control over their day-to-day affairs.
With both sides "rather stuck" and refusing to budge on what Kosovo's future status should be, "it's highly unlikely that we can move on that issue," said the former Finnish president, who wants to present the plan to the Security Council by the end of March.
Underscoring the ferocity of Belgrade's claims on the breakaway province, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told a Serbian National Day rally that independence would represent a "dangerous precedent" and "violence against a democratic European nation."
"The reality is that Kosovo is part of our territory," Kostunica said Thursday, a day after Serbia's parliament overwhelmingly rejected the plan and adopted a resolution saying it "illegally lays the foundation for the creation of a new independent state on the territory of Serbia."
Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since mid-1999, when NATO airstrikes halted a Serbian crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians and forced Belgrade to relinquish control.
Serbia's resolution "will not change the international support that Ahtisaari's package got from the whole world, from the U.S., NATO and the EU," Kosovo's prime minister, Agim Ceku, said Thursday.
Diplomats say it is increasingly likely the Security Council which will have the final say may have to impose a solution. But that could open a rift between the United States, which strongly backs Kosovo's quest for independence, and Russia, a traditional ally of Serbia. Both the U.S. and Russia have veto power on the Council.
Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, Russia's special envoy for Kosovo, said Ahtisaari's draft fails to protect Serbian interests and needs more work in a final round of talks set to begin next week in Vienna.
"We have serious doubts about the plan's ability to become a good foundation of the negotiations if it contains provisions leading to Kosovo's sovereignty and independence," he was quoted by ITAR-Tass as saying. But the envoy appeared to play down the threat of a veto, saying it "wasn't a goal in itself."
Ahtisaari, who has successfully mediated an end to conflicts in Asia and Africa, called on pro-independence activists to refrain from violence like that which marred a rally in Kosovo's provincial capital, Pristina, on Saturday, when two demonstrators were killed and two others critically injured.
"I hope that those who have been planning this will think carefully about what they really want," he told the AP. "I hope the people use the right to demonstrate peacefully, but leave the stones and stone-throwing."
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, visiting Kosovo on Thursday, said the alliance would not draw down its 16,000-member peacekeeping force while the talks continue, and he also warned radicals not to resort to violence.
Both he and Ahtisaari insisted the international community will never allow Kosovo's division along ethnic lines. "People who would like to work for partition should realize that this is not the solution and this can never be the solution," de Hoop Scheffer said.
Serbia's new parliament
rejects U.N. plan for Kosovo
Dusan Stojanovic, Associated
Press, 2/15/07
Serbia's new parliament has overwhelmingly rejected a U.N. plan that would give virtual independence to the breakaway province of Kosovo.
Wednesday's result dooms hopes of a compromise between Serbian and ethnic Albanian officials at a final round of negotiations on the plan scheduled to start next week in Vienna, Austria. It is also means that a resolution to the dispute over Kosovo's final status will probably have to be imposed by the U.N. Security Council.
The 250-member parliament voted 225-15 to reject the plan, which was drafted by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari. Four lawmakers abstained and another six were absent from the vote in the inaugural parliamentary session after last month's elections.
The parliament adopted a resolution saying Ahtisaari's draft "breaches fundamental principles of international law" and "illegally lays the foundation for the creation of a new independent state on the territory of Serbia."
The plan was welcomed by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership. Although it does not specify that Kosovo will be independent, the U.N. draft envisages internationally supervised self-rule for the southern province, including a flag, anthem, army, constitution and the right to join international organizations.
Serbian pro-Western President Boris Tadic told parliament that Ahtisaari's plan "essentially opens the way for an independent Kosovo, which is a violation of the essential principles of the U.N. charter, which guarantees inviolability of internationally-recognized states."
Acting Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said the plan "wants to dismember Serbia and grab 15 percent of its territory."
Tomislav Nikolic, a leader of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party the biggest group in Serbia's new parliament hailed the parliament resolution, saying "no one can create a new country on Serbia's territory without Serbia's consent."
But Kosovo's Prime Minister Agim Ceku said Serbia's views would have no impact on the future status of the province.
"What matters is what the European Union and the international community are saying, and not what Belgrade is saying. That's their problem," Ceku said.
A few Serb politicians are not opposed to Ahtisaari's plan. Cedomir Jovanovic, of the Liberal Democrats, urged the parliament to "accept the reality that Kosovo has not been under our control since 1999."
Serbia lost control over the province in 1999 when NATO bombing halted former President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists and turned Kosovo into a U.N. protectorate.
Belgrade has offered broad autonomy for Kosovo, which it considers the medieval cradle of its statehood. But Kosovo Albanians demand complete secession.
After the final round of negotiations in Vienna, Ahtisaari plans to put his proposal before the U.N. Security Council by the end of next month.
Ahtisaari has already warned the council will likely have to impose a solution on the troubled province because any compromise on his plan, sought by the United States and the European Union, was unlikely in the Vienna talks.
Serbia's historic ally Russia, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the council, has long expressed reservations about Kosovo's separatist aspirations, saying it could become a model for other separatist movements elsewhere in the world.
Washington, which supports Kosovo's independence, maintains that Ahtisaari's plan is a "one-off" because the province has been under U.N. rule since the end of the war, which left about 10,000 ethnic Albanians and about 1,000 Serbs dead.
Kosovo 'guerilla group'
claims attack on UN vehicles
Agence France Presse,
2/20/07
A group named after the ethnic Albanian guerilla force that fought Serb troops in Kosovo's 1998-1999 war claimed responsibility Tuesday for a bomb attack on United Nations vehicles.
In an email message sent to Kosovo media, the group calling itself the "Kosovo Liberation Army" said Monday's explosions "were aimed at damaging UNMIK vehicles but not at the loss of life."
The original Kosovo Liberation Army was disbanded in 1999 after the United Nations mission (UNMIK) entered Kosovo.
They arrived in the wake of a NATO bombing campaign to end a Serb crackdown on the KLA and its civilian supporters.
Police say they are still investigating the explosion, which occurred close to the centre of the provincial capital Pristina on Monday evening, damaging three UNMIK vehicles and another car.
On Tuesday, the leaders of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority condemned the attack as a threat to the international community's efforts to settle the future status of the province this year.
"Such criminal acts are absolutely unacceptable ... and completely harmful for the process to determine the status of Kosovo," said President Fatmir Sejdiu in a statement.
Prime Minister Agim Ceku, who himself was once a KLA commander, condemned the attack, saying such actions could damage the future of Kosovo.
In its email message the group said Monday night's attack was carried out in "revenge" for the deaths of the two protestors on February 10.
This was a reference to the death of two people from injuries sustained in clashes between police and protestors from "Self-determination," a youth movement that wants the withdrawal of UNMIK and immediate independence.
Though still a Serbian province, Kosovo has been run by the UN since mid-1999, after a NATO bombing campaign helped end a crackdown by Belgrade-controlled forces against ethnic Albanians.
Tensions have mounted in Kosovo since the start of February, when the special UN envoy to the province, Martti Ahtisaari, presented a plan that avoids the word independence but offers Kosovo Albanians self-rule.
Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland, will start a final round of talks on his blueprint in Vienna on Wednesday between Kosovo Albanian leaders and Serbian officials.
Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership welcomed the plan, but Belgrade has said it will reject parts that it says impinge on Serbia's sovereignty over the province.
Many Serbs consider Kosovo the cradle of the country's history, culture and religion.
Kosovo Negotiation Simulation
Click here to
access the Kosovo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International
Law & Policy Group.
UN confirms Nepal's Maoists
disarmed, registered
Agence France Presse,
2/18/07
The United Nations said Sunday it has finished registering soldiers and arms from Nepal's former Maoist rebels, a key part of a peace deal with the government to end a decade of civil war.
"The registration of the Maoist weapons and their soldiers in all the seven cantonment sites was completed on Saturday," said Kieran Dwyer, spokesman for the UN mission in Nepal.
The rebels agreed to UN monitoring at sites across the Himalayan nation in November last year as part of the peace deal to lay down arms and join the political mainstream.
The former rebels received 80 seats in a new 330-seat interim government's parliament in January, and the arms registration -- if accepted as accurate by the government -- is expected to pave the way for the Maoists to join the cabinet.
"The UN is preparing a full report on the result of the registration process and the report will be delivered to the government and the Maoists in a day or two," Dwyer said.
He declined to provide details about the number of registered People's Liberation Army soldiers and their weapons, saying the number would be revealed only after the UN had consulted with the former rebels and government.
But the Maoists on Sunday put the figure of soldiers registered at 32,000, well above other estimates that put the figure around 12,000.
"The verification of 32,000 PLA soldiers has been completed. And some 300 soldiers, including the personal security guards of the Maoist leaders, and those who are in hospitals after falling ill, are yet to be verified," deputy commander of the Maoist army, Nanda Kishor Pun, told AFP Sunday.
A second phase of the UN registrations will involve verification that the registered soldiers are over 18. The UN and rights groups have repeatedly accused the rebels of recruiting children.
Japan to join UN mission
in Nepal
Agence France Presse,
2/20/07
Japan said Tuesday it will send several troops to the UN military observer mission in Nepal in officially pacifist Tokyo's latest overseas deployment.
The soldiers will help monitor weapons and soldiers under the peace accord ending the Himalayan kingdom's bloody decade-long Maoist insurgency.
"It is meaningful for us to take part in international efforts led by the United Nations," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told a news conference.
The dispatch was in response to requests from the United Nations, government officials said.
"The number of personnel to be dispatched would be up to six, which is the number the United Nations is requesting from each country," a defence ministry spokeswoman said.
"Further details such as a timing of the dispatch will be announced after our government and the United Nations finish consultations," she said.
It will be the first deployment abroad since Japan last month upgraded the status of troops to list overseas activities as one of their missions. Deployments abroad had earlier been considered "extraordinary," leading the government to seek parliamentary approval.
The change coincided with Japan creating a full-fledged defence ministry for the first time since World War II.
Japan was stripped of its right to maintain a military under the US-imposed 1947 constitution. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has vowed to create a more assertive country and rewrite the constitution.
In its most prominent deployment, Japan sent a 600-troop reconstruction mission to Iraq.
Japan is a major donor to Nepal, whose government signed a peace deal in November to bring Maoist rebels into the mainstream.
The UN Security Council last month set up the UN Political Mission in Nepal, which said Sunday it had completed an initial task of registering the Maoists' soldiers and arms.
Nepal Negotiation Simulation
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Three dead in Philippine
guerrilla attacks
Agence France Presse,
2/16/07
Communist guerrillas killed two policemen and a soldier in ambushes in the central and southern Philippines, officials said Friday.
Four soldiers and two policemen were also wounded in the attacks near on Mindoro island on Friday and on the southern island of Mindanao on Thursday, they said.
New People's Army (NPA) rebels attacked the policemen when they answered a call for help from a contractor whose equipment had been burned by the NPA as part of their extortion activities, a police report in Manila said.
The NPA also ambushed a convoy of Philippine army engineers in Mindanao on Thursday, said Colonel Benito de Leon, chief of staff of an infantry battalion assigned to the area.
"They were on their way to install a water facility in the community," de Leon told reporters.
Shortly before the ambush, "village leaders had been warned not to allow the army to push through with the project," he said.
The Communist Party of the Philippines and its 7,000-member NPA have been waging a nearly 40-year Maoist guerrilla campaign.
President Gloria Arroyo suspended peace talks with the group in 2003, concluding that the rebels were not interested in a political settlement.
Somalia's infamous warlords
re-emerge from shadows to threaten relief
work, UN says
Mohamed Olad Hassan, Associated
Press, 2/14/07
Somalia's infamous warlords are re-emerging and once again pose a threat to humanitarian aid deliveries to the needy, the United Nations warned Wednesday, as the government struggles to quell growing unrest.
Rising violence and a power vacuum caused by the ousting of Islamic forces by the transitional government backed by Ethiopia could lead to renewed anarchy and chaos that plagued Somalia for 16 years, the U.N. said in a monthly report.
The spiraling violence is also likely to undermine any attempts to deploy an African Union peacekeeping mission designed to protect the country's weak government and train a new army in the lawless nation.
"The re-emergence of warlords also raises serious concerns about the need to ensure principled humanitarian action and a do no harm approach," the U.N said, warning it was critical to avoid the "coercion and violence" perpetrated by warlords and their militias in the past who hoped to cash in on aid flowing into the country.
The U.N. estimates around one million Somalis need humanitarian aid and that flooding and the recent conflict in the war-ravaged country had worsened conditions.
Meanwhile in the restive capital, Mogadishu, Gunmen are being hired for US$2 (euro1.54) a day as vigilantes to help quell unrest that has killed at least 25 people in the last two weeks, businessmen and residents said Wednesday.
"The government has to take responsibility for security, before they get help from African peacekeepers," said Abdi Mo'ali Husein, a resident who organized private security because of the worsening security situation in the city of two million.
So far around 15 private checkpoints have been set up to prevent attacks on residential areas and armed militia are being employed at businesses to prevent attack, according to Mogadishu deputy mayor Ibrahim Omar Sabriye.
The city's police chief Ali Sa'id Abdi said they were working to contain the violence.
Mogadishu has been hit by daily violence where Islamic extremists opposed to the government have attacked official buildings and Ethiopian troops currently in the country. In December, Ethiopia sent thousands of soldiers into Somalia to help the U.N.-recognized government defeat an Islamic movement trying to take over the country.
The AU peacekeeping force would replace the Ethiopian soldiers that are widely despised by Mogadishu residents. However, it is not clear the peacekeepers would be any more welcome after demonstrations against their deployment over the weekend.
The U.N. Security Council is currently discussing in New York a draft resolution on Somalia, giving its blessing to an initial six-month long AU peacekeeping force.
Ethiopia had planned to withdraw its forces after a matter of weeks, although the growing unrest makes a full withdrawal unlikely until at least the AU arrive.
Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Minister Seyoum Mesfin met with Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf in the southern town of Baidoa, the temporary capital of the Somali government Tuesday where they discussed the worsening security situation and the resurgence of resistance groups, said a government official who declined to give his name because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, throwing the country into anarchy. A transitional government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help, but has little authority across the country because it has no real army or police force.
Witnesses: 12 killed in
heavy shelling in Somalia's capital
Mohamed Olad Hassan, Associated
Press, 2/20/07
Mortar rounds and rockets hit Somalia's capital early Tuesday in a series of attacks that killed 12 people, including a 4-year-old boy, and wounded more than 40 others, doctors and witnesses said.
The violence, which erupted after mortar attacks on three Ethiopian and Somali government barracks, was among the worst since Somalia's government moved into the capital late last year. Somali troops, with the help of soldiers from neighboring Ethiopia, drove out an Islamic group who wanted to rule the country by the Quran.
The presidential palace and seaport were also targeted in attacks. Ethiopian troops returned fire with artillery and heavy machine-gun fire throughout the night.
Families have begun fleeing the city in recent days as the violence escalated.
"We cannot keep our children in this violent situation," said Yonis Nor, a father of eight as he left the capital with his family. "It is the civilians who are the victims here. We want to go where we think our children are safe."
Doctors at two of Mogadishu's main hospitals said 42 injured people were hospitalized overnight, seven of them were children. Five were treated early Tuesday.
"Some of the wounded are in a very serious condition with shrapnel wounds all around their body," said Dr. Dahir Mohamed, of the city's Medina Hospital.
Mogadishu's mayor blamed the attacks on remnants of the Islamic movement that was pushed out of Mogadishu and parts of the country's south earlier this year. The Islamic group has been accused of harboring al-Qaida suspects, which it denies.
"It is a bad thing to watch our people dying in front of us and this would damage the unity of Somalia," mayor Mohamud Hassan Ali said on local radio.
The Islamic movement, which still has support in Mogadishu, has vowed to wage an Iraq-style insurgency, and attacks in the capital have happened almost daily in the past month.
But other residents said the casualties were the result of Ethiopian artillery. Many residents say the Islamic group brought a semblance of order to this anarchic nation.
The sound of gunfire could be heard throughout the night.
"We spent the whole night under this concrete wall because I do not know where to run," said Ruqiyo Madobe Ahmed, a 34-year-old mother of four. Hodan Wali Nuure, a mother of a 6-year-old boy who was wounded by shrapnel from a nearby explosion, said it was the worst night of fighting she had seen in the capital.
On Monday, a Somali government anti-terror unit trained by Ethiopian troops went into operation to quell the growing unrest.
It is a government plan to fight terrorists and bring them to justice, Deputy Defense Minister Salad Ali Jelle told The Associated Press.
He refused to provide more details about the unit but another government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said it numbered around 700 soldiers.
Insecurity in Somalia has been growing since the transitional government drove out the rival Islamic movement with Ethiopian military help late last year. Since the government's return to Mogadishu, insurgents have staged near-daily attacks.
On Sunday, a car exploded in the capital, killing all four occupants. No one has claimed responsibility but witnesses said the car was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired from another vehicle.
Jelle said the occupants of the car were suicide bombers.
Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, throwing the country into anarchy. The transitional government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help.
Military says air force
bombs Tamil rebels' artillery position in Jaffna
Associated Press, 2/16/07
The Sri Lankan air force bombed a Tamil Tiger rebels' artillery gun position in northern Jaffna peninsula Friday, the Defense Ministry said.
"Our air force took the target as the LTTE was firing from that position at our troops in the area," said military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe, using an acronym for the rebels' formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
There was no independent confirmation of the report and there was no response from the rebels, who say they are fighting to create a separate homeland for the country's 3.1 million ethnic Tamil minority in the northeast.
Sri Lanka says guerilla bases targeted; rebels say village hit
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 2/20/07
The Air Force carried out airstrikes Tuesday in rebel-held northern Sri Lanka that it said were against Tamil rebel training bases but which the guerillas said were civilians settlements.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam said two civilians were killed and one injured in the airstrikes in the settlements in Parasankulam village near Puliankulam, which it said contained no military installations.
The Defence Ministry said, however, that the strikes targeted two LTTE training bases, one north of Puliyankulam and another north-east of the town, and both were destroyed.
Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation
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U.N., AU envoy say Darfur
peace agreement can be changed to bring more factions on board
Mohamed Osman, Associated
Press, 2/15/07
The United Nation and African Union envoys to Darfur said on Thursday that they were "encouraged" about prospects for peace in the country's troubled region after two days of talks with factions in Sudan.
The two U.N.'s special envoy tasked with re-energizing the Darfur peace process, Jan Eliasson, and AU's Salim Ahmed Salim have been in Sudan this week for meetings with Khartoum officials, rebel leaders and stops in Darfur.
"We are encouraged by the initial reaction of everyone we have met on this issue of reduction of the escalation of violence" in Darfur, Salim told reporters.
There was a "readiness" by all to improve the Darfur Peace Agreement signed last May in Abuja, Nigeria, but which had failed to end the fighting, he said.
"The ultimate goal was to reach peace on the ground, and since this has not been yet achieved, the various parties have to agree to improving it," Salim said, adding that the Abuja agreement was nevertheless "very important."
"It is not a perfect agreement and no agreement is perfect. It is not like the Quran or the Bible that you cannot change or modify," he said.
U.N.'s Eliasson said he expected a "visible sign of reduction of violence" after the mediation by the two and efforts to bring parties that did not sign the peace deal on board.
"The situation in Darfur is very serious," Eliasson said, but added it was evident that all factions recognize there can be no military solution to Darfur. "The only solution should be a political one."
Eliasson also warned against fatigue prevailing among humanitarian workers in Darfur.
"There is an element of urgency, that we think this is an opportunity which should be taken by all," Eliasson said. Missing such an opportunity would be a" very serious mistake."
Salim and Eliasson also expressed hope the government in Khartoum would allow a U.N. human rights team to enter the country on a fact-finding mission to Darfur.
That rights team said Wednesday it would cancel a planned visit to assess alleged atrocities in Darfur because Khartoum had failed to give them visas and they could not wait indefinitely in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, where they have been stuck since Feb. 11.
The Darfur conflict began in early 2003, when ethnic African tribes revolted against the Khartoum government, which was accused of unleashing Arab militiamen blamed for rapes and killings. At least 200,000 people have died. The U.S. government has described the violence as genocide.
A 7,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force has been trying to quell the ongoing violence, but the force is underfunded and ill-equipped.
Khartoum has rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for 22,000 U.N. peacekeepers to replace the AU force in Darfur but has sent mixed signals about a joint U.N.-AU force.
The Darfur Peace Agreement, signed in May in Abuja, Nigeria, called for a cease-fire, disarmament of militias and a protection force for civilians but did not specify the composition of such a force.
The deal was supposed to help end the conflict, but instead sparked months of fighting between rival rebel factions, although fighting between Sudanese armed forces and the Sudan Liberation Army, or SLA, the main rebel group, has decreased since the deal. Rebels who do not support the Abuja accord include a breakaway faction of the SLA and the Justice and Equality Movement.
Genocide in Darfur: A Legal
Analysis
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