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RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 2, No. 148, 98-08-05Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Newsline Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty <http://www.rferl.org>RFE/RL NEWSLINEVol. 2, No. 148, 5 August 1998CONTENTS[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA
[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
[C] END NOTE
[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA[01] PROMINENT AZERBAIJANI POLITICIAN SET TO REGISTER AS PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATESupporters of National Independence Party of Azerbaijan chairman Etibar Mamedov have collected 65,000 signatures in support of his registration as a candidate for the 11 October presidential elections, Turan reported on 4 August. The election law requires candidates to submit a minimum of 50,000 signatures in order to qualify for registration, which is to take place between 15-22 August. Nine candidates have announced their intention to run, and several initiative groups or political parties have proposed the candidacy of incumbent Heidar Aliev. LF[02] WORK OF ARMENIAN CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM COMMISSION CRITICIZEDSelf-Determination Union chairman Paruyr Hayrikian has expressed dissatisfaction that the commission set up in May by President Robert Kocharian to draft amendments to the constitution has rejected his party's proposal that the posts of Armenian president and prime minister be combined, RFE/RL's Yerevan bureau reported on 4 August. Hayrikian told journalists in Yerevan that the existing semi-presidential system makes the president dependent on the parliament. But Hayrikian said that he will continue to take part in the work of the commission, even though it is "impossible" to implement the constitutional changes his party wants by working with the commission. LF[03] ABKHAZ PRESIDENT SAYS GEORGIA UNWILLING TO COMPROMISEVladislav Ardzinba told journalists in Sukhumi on 4 August that Abkhazia made "many concessions" during the most recent round of UN mediated talks in Geneva in late July. But he added that the Georgian delegation refused to sign the documents that had been agreed on, Interfax reported. Ardzinba also noted that the 30 July UN Security Council resolution on the Abkhaz conflict for the first time explicitly condemns attacks by Georgian guerrillas on the CIS peacekeeping force in Abkhazia. UN special envoy for Abkhazia Liviu Bota traveled to Sukhumi on 4 August for talks with Ardzinba aimed at breaking the deadlock in peace talks. LF[04] GEORGIA MARKS ANNIVERSARY OF SUBSERVIENCE TO TSARIST RUSSIAGeorgian politicians on 4 August marked the 215th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Georgievsk, whereby the kingdom of eastern Georgia became a protectorate of the Tsarist Empire. Deputy Parliamentary Chairman Giorgi Kobakhidze said the signing of that treaty by King Irakli II was "a tragic page" in Georgia's history, adding that its repercussions continue to be felt today. Tamaz Nadareishvili, chairman of the Abkhaz parliament in exile, similarly told Caucasus Press that the signing of the treaty resulted in the loss of Georgian independence for 200 years. Nadareishvili added that "even now Russia cannot change its imperial attitude toward Georgia." LF[05] GAMSAKHURDIA ALLY REPORTEDLY STABS GEORGIAN POLITICAL PRISONERLoti Kobalia, former commander of deceased president Zviad Gamsakhurdia's national guard, attacked and seriously injured Petre Gelbakhiani in a Tbilisi prison on 19 July, according to the German branch of the International Society for Human Rights press release of 5 August. A second political prisoner, Irakli Dokvadze, was injured trying to protect Gelbakhiani. Gelbakhiani was arrested shortly before the 1992 Georgian parliamentary elections for criticizing the Georgian leadership. He was sentenced to death in 1995, but that sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. Prison director Shota Kobadze told Caucasus Press on 23 July that Kobalia denied stabbing Gelbakhiani and Dokvadze, although he admitted that there was "a little incident" between them. LF[06] RUSSIAN, UZBEK OFFICIALS DISCUSS AFGHANISTANAs the Taliban movement reportedly advanced on Mazar-i- Sharif, the only remaining major city it does not yet control, the head of the Russian General Staff, Anatolii Kvashnin, and First Deputy Foreign Minister Boris Pastukhov were in Tashkent on 4 August, ITAR-TASS reported. Uzbek Defense Minister Hikmatulla Tursunov and Foreign Affairs Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov met with the Russian officials and later released a statement calling on the Taliban to stop their advance. The statement also said that Russian and Uzbek representatives are ready to meet with representatives from the opposing Afghan factions to mediate a settlement. The Russian and Uzbek officials also reserved the right to take all necessary measures to preserve the integrity of the CIS border. BP[07] UZBEKISTAN DENIES AFGHAN WARLORD ON UZBEK SOILSources at the Uzbek Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs denied on 4 August that Afghan warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum has fled to Uzbek territory, ITAR-TASS reported. Dostum's headquarters in Sheberghan were overrun by forces of the Taliban movement on 2 August. Subsequent reports suggested that Dostum had crossed into Uzbekistan. Last year, Dostum fled to Turkey via Uzbekistan following a mutiny within his ranks. BP[08] GAS SUPPLIES RESUME TO KYRGYZSTANThe head of the Kyrgyz state oil and gas company, Shalkar Jaysanbayev announced in Bishkek on 4 August that gas supplies from neighboring Uzbekistan have been restored, RFE/RL correspondents reported. Uzbekistan cut off supplies on 1 August because of unpaid bills. The Kyrgyz government has paid $900,000 of the debt and sent a letter to the Uzbek authorities guaranteeing future payments. BP[09] ANTHRAX OUTBREAK IN CENTRAL ASIASome 50 cases of anthrax have been registered during the last two weeks in southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan, according to RFE/RL correspondents and ITAR-TASS. Two villages in the Jalalabad region of Kyrgyzstan are affected, as are a number of villages in the Gorno- Badakhshan region of Tajikistan. In all cases, the cause is reported to be contaminated beef and milk. BP[10] DRUG SMUGGLER SENTENCED TO DEATH IN TAJIKISTANA drug smuggler has been sentenced to death by a Tajik court, ITAR-TASS reported on 4 August. Bobo Boboyev was found guilty of seeking to smuggle more than 300 kilograms of raw opium into Russia. He is the first person in Tajikistan to receive the death penalty for drug smuggling. BP[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE[11] HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN IN KOSOVA MASS GRAVELocal eye-witnesses took several foreign journalists on 4 August to the site of at least two mass graves near Rahovec, which fell to Serbian paramilitary police and Yugoslav army forces after clashes with the Kosova Liberation Army in mid-July (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 23 July 1998). The Vienna daily "Die Presse" wrote that Kosovar grave-diggers have already opened one of the graves and found "the corpses of more than 500 people, of whom 400 were children. The second grave may contain about 1,000 bodies." The grave-diggers said that the paramilitary forces of Zeljko Raznatovic "Arkan" committed the killings, but Western observers hold the Serbian police responsible, the newspaper added. Kosovar spokesmen recently told "RFE/RL Newsline" that the police include many veterans of the "ethnic cleansing" campaigns in Croatia and Bosnia. PM[12] UNHCR WARNS OF 'ETHNIC CLEANSING'The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees sent a relief convoy from Prishtina to the Malisheva area on 4 August, but the vehicles had to stop at Qirez in the Skenderaj region because of heavy fighting. Relief workers could see Lausha and other nearby ethnic Albanian villages on fire. The UNHCR's Chris Janowski said in Geneva that the convoy "cannot go into a battlefield." He compared the latest developments in Kosova to the Serbian ethnic-cleansing campaigns in Bosnia and added that if this is an attempt to drive Kosovar Albanians out of Kosova, "that would be total lunacy." PM[13] RED CROSS FEARS EPIDEMICSIn Prishtina, UNHCR spokesmen estimated that some 200,000 people, or 10 percent of Kosova's total population, have been displaced since Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched his crackdown in February. Officials of the World Food Program added that some 70,000 have taken to the roads since the current offensive began just over one week ago. Red Cross officials warned that "serious epidemics" could break out on Mount Berisha in central Kosova, where several thousand people are living in the open, AFP reported. PM[14] SCHUESSEL SAYS SITUATION 'TOO CONFUSED' FOR AIR STRIKESAustrian Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schuessel, whose country holds the EU chair, told the Hamburg weekly "Die Woche" that the situation in Kosova is "too confused" for any air strikes there to be effective, dpa reported on 5 August. He added that only ground troops could help secure a cease-fire but that the UN would not agree to outside intervention because of Russian and Chinese opposition. Meanwhile in Belgrade, Tanjug quoted Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic as saying that attempts to put down the UCK's insurgency are a justified defense of national sovereignty. "We will suppress any violence in [the province].... We shall win this battle," he added. PM[15] HILL VISITS DEVASTATED AREAChristopher Hill, who is U.S. ambassador to Macedonia and Washington's principal negotiator in Kosova, said after visiting central Kosova on 4 August that he is "particularly concerned about the activities of the security services that are out there now.... We observed a number of structures in villages and towns that were burning as of today. We did not see any signs, however, of any fighting today," Hill told Reuters. He said he visited one village where male inhabitants who had returned for food and water for families hiding in the hills said tanks had fired on houses. "They brought me a shell from a T-55 tank and said they had many more like that. I saw some tank rounds on the ground in another village." Kosovar spokesman Veton Surroi added that he saw one house go up in flames seconds after two uniformed police emerged from it. "We saw police burning houses and looting shops," Surroi noted. PM[16] WESTWARD FLOW OF KOSOVARS CONTINUESSome 600 persons, half of whom are Kosovar refugees, leave Albania by boat each day to try to enter Italy illegally, Deutsche Welle reported on 5 August. Of that number, only about 200 are caught at sea and sent back (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 4 August 1998). Those Kosovars who reach land are interned in detention camps. Meanwhile in Bonn, Bavarian Interior Minister Martin Beckstein said that camps for Kosovar refugees should be set up in Italy and northern Albania as part of a "European system of burden-sharing," the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" wrote. He said that Germany will not deport any Kosovars currently living there "except for law- breakers," but he warned against any general recognition of Kosovars as refugees from a civil war. Beckstein added that such recognition would lead to an influx of refugees into Germany, as was the case during the Bosnian war, and that Germany cannot agree to that. PM[17] SERBIAN PEACE GROUP CALLS FOR PROTECTORATEThe Serbian peace organization Women in Black appealed to the international community in a statement in Belgrade on 4 August to establish a protectorate over Kosova "as soon as possible." The text called on the international community to exert "all possible pressure on all warring parties to desist from using armed force and [carrying out] ethnic cleansing" and from violating human rights, the Belgrade daily "Danas" wrote. Women in Black is one of the best known and oldest peace groups in the former Yugoslavia. Meanwhile in Podgorica, the People's Party, the Social Democrats, and the Democratic Socialist Party are opposed to the recent proposal of Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement that the authorities declare a state of emergency in Kosova. Leaders of the three parties feel that such a move would bind Montenegro all the closer to Milosevic's policies there, an RFE/RL correspondent reported from the Montenegrin capital. PM[18] ROMANIAN PREMIER MEETS WITH ARAFATPrime Minister Radu Vasile, who is on a four-day visit to Israel, met with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat in Ramallah on 4 August and offered his country's "good services" to mediate in the dispute with Israel over the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank, an RFE/RL correspondent in Tel Aviv reported. Vasile also met in Modiin with Romanian workers in Israel, who complained about working and housing conditions as well as unpaid wages. He promised to appoint an embassy official to examine their complaints. The same day, Vasile and Israeli parliamentary deputies agreed to establish a joint commission to examine the restitution of Jewish property seized by the fascist and communist regimes. Mediafax reported that Vasile was "angered" by remarks of a National Religious Party deputy who accused Romania of "indifference" toward "vandalism" in desecrated Jewish cemeteries. Vasile said the accusation was based on "misinformation." MS[19] MOLDOVAN COALITION LEADERS TRY TO MEND FENCESParliamentary chairman Dumitru Diacov on 4 August said on Moldovan television that the ruling Alliance for Democratic Reforms "is viable and will carry out its goals," BASA- press reported. He expressed "regret" that the intra- alliance agreement was violated when the For a Democratic and Prosperous Moldova Bloc voted jointly with the opposition Party of Moldovan Communists on the transit of Bulgarian nuclear waste to Russia and on the nomination of the new prosecutor-general (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 3 August 1998). He said this was "the last time" that this will happen. Iurie Rosca, parliamentary deputy chairman and co- chairman of the Democratic Convention of Moldova, told journalists on 4 August that all disputes within the alliance "will be overcome," but he added that voting with the Communists remains "unacceptable." MS[20] BULGARIAN OPPOSITION DAILY TEMPORARILY SUSPENDS PUBLICATION"Duma," the daily of the opposition Socialist Party, will not be printed for the next two weeks, BTA quoted party spokeswoman Iliana Yotova as saying on 4 August . The previous day, the Rodina publishing company announced that the newspaper will not be printed owing to debts totaling 186 million leva (some $100,000). "Duma" editor in chief Todor Koruev told Bulgarian national radio on 4 August that the crisis within the newspaper reflects the "overall financial and ideological crisis within the party itself." He said some 10 journalists have quit the daily in the last months because of the financial crisis and that the remaining journalists do not want to transform "Duma" into a "tabloid," as "some people inside the BSP" are urging them to do. MS[C] END NOTE[21] KOSOVA'S ETHNIC ALBANIAN REFUGEES CLOSE TO CATASTROPHEby Kitty McKinseyThe scenes across much of the southern Serbian province of Kosova in recent days are reminiscent of the worst days of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia- Herzegovina. Long lines of tractor-drawn carts slowly carrying terrified women and children away from the smoldering remains of their shelled and burned homes. Refugees cowering in forests with only the clothes on their back, little food or water, no medicine, and no shelter. Contrary to promises made by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic last week, the Serbian and Yugoslav offensive in Kosova is not over. In fact, observers on the scene say that the offensive has escalated, driving another 35,000-70,000 ethnic Albanians from their homes in recent days. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the total number now displaced from their homes in more than five months of fighting could top 200,000. That figure includes those who have sought refuge in neighboring Albania and the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, as well as those on the move inside Kosova. With the escalation of the Serbian offensive, ethnic Albanians say the Serbs are no longer battling the separatist Kosova Liberation Army (UCK) but are concentrating on driving ethnic Albanian civilians from their homes. They say that Serbian forces are shelling and burning homes of ethnic Albanians who have already fled to ensure that they will not return. Moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova charged that "Serbian forces kill civilians, burn and destroy settlements and entire villages, and carry out ethnic cleansing." Mans Nyberg, spokesman for the UNHCR in Prishtina, said he and his fellow aid workers have seen "countless houses burning in practically every village we passed through." He adds: "It is very difficult to see any sound military objective for such behavior by the Serbian police forces." Only in the last few days have international relief agencies been able to reach any of the fugitives hiding in the mountains and dense forests of Kosova. They have found desperate people camping in the open, sleeping under trees and even in dry river-beds, without any blankets, mattresses or tents. In one area, relief workers discovered that five women had given birth within the last four days. It is, Nyberg says, "a humanitarian catastrophe in the making." Mick Lorentzen, emergency coordinator for the UN's World Food Program in Prishtina, says that the main problem is that whole villages are on the move: "Within the mountain range itself, there's an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 people and this is not the only area that's being affected. People are moving every day. It's a changing situation. The forests are very, very dense, so it's sometimes hard to find them. How much longer are they going to stay out, nobody knows." Both Nyberg and Lorentzen agree that the fugitives are far too terrified and distrustful of Serbian authorities to return to their villages right now. Lorentzen says that while he was in the mountains delivering food to refugees on 2 August, the Yugoslav government air-dropped leaflets telling the refugees it was safe for them to return to their villages, and that if they did, they would be protected. As the refugees were reading the flyers, Lorentzen said, they could hear Serbian shelling just a kilometer away. Lorentzen concludes : "The people are just not going to return while this is going on." He also questions what they have to go home to after so much destruction by Yugoslav and Serb forces. Another major problem is that Serbian forces are routinely blocking attempts by aid agencies to reach people in distress. "This is very serious obstruction," says Nyberg. "President Milosevic has repeatedly assured the humanitarian organizations that they have free access, they can go anywhere they want. The same has been assured to us by the police commander in Prishtina. In spite of all this, it happens almost on a daily basis that our field teams are being stopped by police at checkpoints and being refused access." The UNHCR has added its voice to that of many countries around the world in appealing to Milosevic to halt the Serbian offensive and allow his ethnic Albanian citizens to live a normal life again. The author is an RFE/RL senior correspondent. 05-08-98 Reprinted with permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
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