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RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 2, No. 76, 98-04-21Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Newsline Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty <http://www.rferl.org>RFE/RL NEWSLINEVol. 2, No. 76, 21 April 1998CONTENTS[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA
[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
[C] END NOTE
[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA[01] NIYAZOV IN NEW YORKTurkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov, currently in the U.S. on his first official visit to that country, gave a speech at an event sponsored by the Eurasia Group and the Council on Foreign Relations on 20 April, RFE/RL correspondents reported. Niyazov criticized the U.S. for attempting to pressure Turkmenistan into premature democratic reforms, saying his country has "its own way of political, social, and economic development." He added that "democratic and market reforms are a tremendous endeavor often accompanied by bloodshed." Responding to charges of human rights violations, Niyazov said there are no political prisoners in Turkmenistan. Asked about former Foreign Minister Avdy Kuliev who was released from detention by Turkmen authorities on the evening of 20 April, Niyazov said no one has done anything to him. He added that Americans have "poor information" about "so-called prisoners of conscience" in Turkmenistan. BP[02] KAZAKH ECONOMY HAS MIXED PROSPECTSAccording to an article in the 17 April "Russkii Telegraf" Kazakhstan's oil and gas industry is off to a good start this year but forecasts are poor for year's end. In the first quarter of 1998, oil output was 6.67 million tons, up 10 percent on the same period in 1997, and gas condensate production was 1.86 billion cubic meters, a 62.9 percent increase. The newspaper says that the decision to halt privatization, first announced by President Nursultan Nazarbayev earlier this year and again by Prime Minister Nurlan Balgimbayev last week, is partly due to falling world prices for both fuels. "Russkii Telegraf" estimates that as a result, Kazakhstan will lose a total of $10-12 billion by year's end. BP[03] UZBEK PRESIDENT AGAIN VOICES CONCERN OVER ISLAMIslam Karimov has again warned against the spread of "political Islam" in his country and Central Asia, Interfax reported on 18 April. Commenting on the Islamic Renaissance Party at a press conference, Karimov said such a development could put Uzbekistan back "dozens of years." He added that the training of religious radicals to destabilize the governments of the CIS Central Asian states is taking place in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. On two previous occasions this year, Karimov has said such training is under way in Pakistan. BP[04] UZBEKISTAN TO RECEIVE CREDITS FOR AGRICULTUREUzbekistan will soon receive more than $60 million in credits from the International Finance Corporation, ITAR- TASS reported on 21 April. The organization, which has close ties with the World Bank, will make the credit available for purchasing cotton and grain harvesters from the U.S.'s Case Corp. According to the Russian news agency, agricultural production accounts for 30 percent of Uzbekistan's GDP and 60 percent of the country's export profits. The sector also provides work for some 40 percent of the force. BP[05] CHANGES LIKELY IN ARMENIAN FOREIGN POLICYIntroducing newly appointed Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian to his staff on 20 April, Armenian President Robert Kocharian said "a powerful department" for relations with the Armenian Diaspora will be created within the ministry, Noyan Tapan reported. Its head will have the status of deputy minister. Oskanian also met on 20 April with visiting Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Morteza Sarmadi, saying the expansion of bilateral relations is an Armenian foreign policy priority, according to IRAN. Oskanian also called for a further exchange of views on a just and peaceful solution to the Karabakh conflict. Oskanian told RFE/RL's Yerevan bureau that policy on Karabakh will undergo "definite changes" and that "the principles we will maintain are that the settlement be comprehensive and without preconditions." LF[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE[06] KOSOVAR PARTY SAYS SITUATION IS SERIOUS IN DECANIThe Kosova Democratic League, the leading ethnic Albanian party in the province, said on 20 April that an apparent build-up of forces in the western Decani region has made the situation there "dramatic," AFP reported. The party said in a statement that there are "indications" that Serbian forces in Decani are preparing for a "massive-scale attack." It said local residents have been "organizing themselves" because of the "absence of concrete measures to prevent a new massacre." There is no independent confirmation of those reports. Kosova Serb sources said the same day that gunmen shot and threw grenades at a Serbian refugee camp in Babaloc. The Serbian Information Center in Prishtina said armed ethnic Albanians are grouping in the region, particularly in the town of Glodjane, near the Albanian border. PB[07] COUNCIL OF EUROPE REJECTS YUGOSLAV APPLICATION TO JOINLeni Fischer, the president of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, said on 20 April that Yugoslavia does not meet the standards needed for membership, an RFE/RL correspondent in Strasbourg reported. Fischer said the Yugoslav government must first seek a peaceful solution to the crisis in Kosova and stop rejecting demands calling for the protection of human rights of Kosovars as outside interference in its internal affairs. The assembly is meeting this week with a four- member delegation from Belgrade to discuss the Kosova conflict. Yugoslavia applied last month to join the Council of Europe. PB[08] EXHUMATIONS BEGIN AT MASS GRAVE SITES NEAR SREBRENICASome 50 international forensic experts working for the UN found bones, clothing, and bullet casings after beginning exhumations at a mass grave in Bosnia- Herzegovina on 20 April, Reuters reported. A UN statement said the forensic experts, working near a dam at Brnice in eastern Bosnia, expected to find "significant evidence" to support current or potential indictments by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The former Muslim enclave of Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in summer 1995. Some 7,000 people from the area are still missing and are thought to have been executed. PB[09] BOSNIAN SERB PLEADS NOT GUILTY 69 TIMESZoran Zigic told a court at the war crimes tribunal on 20 April that he is innocent of 69 charges of crimes against humanity, an RFE/RL correspondent at The Hague reported. He is accused of beating, torturing, and murdering civilians at a Bosnian Serb camp near Prijedor in summer 1992. The prosecution claims that Zigic was not a commander or guard at the camp but that he volunteered to "beat, murder, and abuse" people. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary- General Javier Solana said in Sarajevo the same day that NATO forces will remain in Bosnia until all indicted war crimes suspects go on trial at The Hague. Twenty-six are in custody there. Solana met with Alija Izetbegovic and Kresimir Zubak, the Muslim and Croatian members of the joint Bosnian presidency, but Serbian member Momcilo Krajisnik sent a substitute. PB[10] CROATIAN JOURNALIST FOUND NOT GUILTY OF LIBELDavor Butkovic, the former editor in chief of the independent weekly "Globus," was acquitted of libel charges by a Zagreb court on 20 April, RFE/RL's South Slavic Service reported. Butkovic said he is happy with the verdict but said that the dire situation of independent media in Croatia is basically unchanged. All 23 members of the Croatian cabinet filed libel charges against Butkovic for a "Globus" article on government corruption. They were seeking 4.6 million kuna (about $733,000) in damages. Meanwhile, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman announced that Justice Minister Miroslav Separovic will be the new head of the country's intelligence service, replacing the president's son, Miroslav Tudjman, who had tendered his resignation. PB[11] CROATIA INDICTS CAMP COMMANDERThe Croatian state attorney's office indicted former Jasenovac camp commander Dinko Sakic for war crimes and repeated a call for his extradition from Argentina, AFP reported. Sakic is wanted for his part in the deaths of many tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Muslims, and Roma at Jasenovac during World War II. On 19 April, some 2,000 people attended a ceremony at the concentration camp to mourn those who were killed there. Jewish, Romani, Serbian, Muslim, and Croatian representatives took part in the ceremony. PB[12] ALBANIAN PRESIDENT APPROVES TWO MORE MINISTERSRexhep Meidani has approved two more ministers in Prime Minister Fatos Nano's coalition government, Reuters reported on 20 April. A government statement said Meidani appointed Bashkim Fino as deputy prime minister and local government minister and Ermelinda Meksi as economic cooperation and trade minister. The same day, Nano withdrew a statement he made on 18 April accusing Meidani of causing a political crisis in Albania. Meidani has now approved five of Nano's nine new cabinet members, who were announced in a government reshuffle made last week. Meanwhile, a NATO delegation arrived in Tirana on 20 April to instruct officials on how to manage internal and external crises, Albanian Television reported. NATO and Albanian officials said they are worried about Albania's ability to control its border with Yugoslavia's restive Kosova province. PB[13] ROMANIAN PREMIER ADDRESSES COUNCIL OF EUROPE...In a speech to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 20 April, Radu Vasile said his new government's program offers a "one-way road to democracy and a market economy." He said his cabinet intends to pursue two main objectives: Romania's integration into Euro-Atlantic structures and a "profound reform of society" leading to the "full assimilation of moral, democratic, and human values." Until his appointment as premier earlier this month, Vasile was the chief of Romania's parliamentary delegation to the assembly; his speech marked his departure from that position. MS[14] ...REJECTS AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL ACCUSATIONSAt a press conference in Strasbourg on 20 April, Vasile rejected accusations in an Amnesty International report published the same day saying that homosexuals continue to be imprisoned in Romania and the country's Roma are still subject to discrimination. The report also claimed that detainees are ill-treated and even tortured and that there of prisoners of conscience in Romania. In response, Vasile said that the penal code has been liberalized on homosexual offenses but Romanian society is "not yet ready for the change." The Parliamentary Assembly is to discuss at its present session whether Romania is meeting the obligations it undertook when it was taken off the assembly's special monitoring list last year. MS[C] END NOTE[15] BALCEROWICZ REMAINS ENTHUSIASTIC FOR FREE MARKETSby Robert LyleThe man who was the architect and driving force of Poland's radical shift to a market economy--Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz-- says his biggest surprise during that process has been the pace of growth and the dynamism of the private sector. Balcerowicz, a former university professor, came to prominence in 1989 to push Poland into what was the fastest shift from central planning to a market-based economy among all countries in East-Central Europe and Central Asia. The road has not been easy, and Balcerowicz was out of government for a period when the pain of the radical reform process made him a less than popular figure in Poland. Now back in public life as both finance and deputy prime minister, Balcerowicz has lost none of his zeal for free markets, admitting that even he was not prepared for how dynamic the private sector proved in Poland and how well it has grown. "That was the most positive surprise of the whole thing," he recently told a few international financial journalists over breakfast at the Polish Embassy in Washington. Balcerowicz was in Washington for the regular spring leadership meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as well as to participate in a conference on redesigning and strengthening the architecture of the international financial system. Finance ministers and central bank governors from the 22 countries--including Poland and Russia-- took part in that conference, which tackled, among other things, improving the transparency and accountability of national financial systems and strengthening the ability of global institutions like the IMF to deal with crises such as the most recent one in Asia. Balcerowicz has clear ideas about what is wrong and how the global system can reduce the risk of future crises. First, there must be full information about what is actually going on in national economies and people must be willing to look at that information, he said. One question arising from the Asian crisis, he says, is whether bankers, lenders, and investors ignored much of the information they did have, preferring to look the other way while grabbing bigger profits. Second, once assuring that as much information is available as possible, there must be incentives to act on what is known--and that, said Balcerowicz, means "punishment for bad decisions." If major international banks keep pouring short-term loans into potentially dangerous situations as they did in Asia, he says, they ought to suffer the subsequent losses. All parties--borrowers and lenders alike--must "share in the consequences, both good and bad," he commented. Balcerowicz says that while he strongly supports liberal and open global trade in goods-- that is "beneficial to all sides"--he is willing to consider measures to have some controls available on the flow of short-term capital. Short-term capital refers to loans or investments for less than one year, often for as little as three months. Balcerowicz says the "size and speed" of the movement of this kind of money has become unbelievable in the growing global market place, a new problem for which he said he is open to "new ideas." Reforms for the global system will find Poland in the midst of its own continuing reform, Balcerowicz commented. Warsaw is preparing to speed up large-scale privatization, especially focusing on transportation, railroads, coal mining, and insurance as well as wrapping up the privatization of banks. The release last week of $415 million from the multi-national Polish Bank Privatization fund will spur that effort. But Poland needs to continue to expand all its reforms as it moves toward EU membership. "We must bring inflation down much further--it's currently around 11 percent annually--and we must reduce the budget and push ahead on privatization," he said. Experience has shown everywhere--but especially in Poland--that "private owners are stronger" than public owners and work harder to produce economic growth. Poland's border with Belarus, which Balcerowicz noted will eventually become the eastern frontier of the EU, is of some concern to Warsaw. Balcerowicz said that Poland is considering ways to further open the border. New Polish consular offices are to be opened in Belarus to make visas far more readily available and Warsaw wants to work with Minsk on easing current restrictions. "We don't want to turn our backs on anyone," he noted. Balcerowicz sees an independent, market-oriented Ukraine as "absolutely strategic" to the success of the new relationship among East European countries. But at the same time, he is "concerned" about Kyiv's extremely slow pace of reforms and faltering economy. As for Poland's membership in NATO, Balcerowicz says everyone in the region knows it is not an "aggressive" alliance and that once Poland joins, the issue will be forgotten. "Russian officials tell me privately they don't really care about Poland joining NATO but can't say that publicly for fear of being attacked" by the nationalists. And polls of average Russian citizens show it is not of any concern to most people, he added. The cost of joining NATO is not prohibitive for Poland, Balcerowicz said. "We needed to modernize and revamp our military anyway," he commented. In the beginning, NATO is demanding only compatibility of systems, not massive upgrades. The author is RFE/RL's Washington-based economics correspondent. 21-04-98 Reprinted with permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
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