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RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 4, No. 214, 00-11-03Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Newsline Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty <http://www.rferl.org>RFE/RL NEWSLINEVol. 4, No. 214, 3 November 2000CONTENTS[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA
[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
[C] END NOTE
[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA[01] ARMENIAN AUTHORITIES MULL FURTHER CHARGES AGAINST VARTANIANDetained businessman and 21st Century foundation leader Arkadii Vartanian may be charged with calling for the overthrow of the country's leadership, Armenian Interior Minister Hayk Harutiunian told journalists in Yerevan on 2 November. Vartanian has organized a series of demonstrations across the country over the past month, culminating in an unsanctioned rally in Yerevan on 30 October in which some 10,000 people who marched to the presidential palace to demand the resignation of President Robert Kocharian (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 31 October 2000). Vartanian, who is a Russian citizen, was subsequently detained by police for 10 days. Harutiunian argued that Vartanian's arrest was justified as he had been warned not to convene an unsanctioned protest and had agreed not to do so. AP quoted Harutiunian as saying 17 of Vartanian's supporters have also been sentenced to prison terms of between seven and 15 days. But the left-wing Union of Socialist Forces that backs Vartanian estimated the number of people arrested at 33. LF[02] ARMENIAN JOURNALISTS PROTEST POWER CUTS TO INDEPENDENT TV TRANSMITTERThe National Press Club on 1 November issued a statement deploring all restrictions on journalists and actions to disable television transmitters, Noyan Tapan reported. The statement was presumably prompted by the 30 October cutoff to the transmitter that airs Noyan Tapan's television news, shortly before exclusive footage showing Vartanian's arrest was to be broadcast. Power supplies to the transmitter were resumed only after 24 hours. LF[03] U.S. FUND INAUGURATES 'ALTERNATIVE' PRINTING PRESS IN ARMENIAThe Eurasia Foundation inaugurated a printing press in Yerevan on 1 November that is intended to provide independent publications with an alternative to state-controlled publishing facilities, RFE/RL's bureau in the Armenian capital reported. The printing press is located at the Gind publishing company and will give it the technical capacity to print all Armenia's newspapers. LF[04] TWO AZERBAIJANI OPPOSITION PARTIES DENIED PERMISSION TO HOLD PRE- ELECTION MEETINGSTwo Azerbaijani opposition parties, the Azerbaijan National Independence Party and Musavat, have been refused permission to stage meetings in Baku on 3 November, the last day of campaigning before the 5 November parliamentary poll, but the reformist wing of the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party has been granted permission to do so, Turan reported. The ruling Yeni Azerbaycan Party will stage a pop concert in the capital. In an internet discussion sponsored by the independent daily "Ayna/Zerkalo" on 2 November, Gudrat Hasankuliev, who is the opposition secretary on the Azerbaijan Central Electoral Commission, said the election campaign "falls short of European standards" (see also "End Note" below). LF[05] U.S. DEPLORES CENTRAL ASIAN STATES' LACK OF COMMITMENT TO DEMOCRACYA resolution passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on 1 November notes the tendency of Central Asian leaders to manipulate elections to remain in power indefinitely and urges them to comply with their OSCE commitments to protect human rights and freedoms, including media freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. It encourages the U.S. administration to raise with the OSCE the possibility of excluding from that organization any state that "engages in clear, gross and uncorrected violations of its OSCE commitments." It also advocates an increase in VOA and RFE/RL broadcasting to the countries of the region to provide the population with "unbiased news." LF[06] KAZAKHSTAN'S PRESIDENT OFFERS TO HOST TALKS ON AFGHAN SETTLEMENTMeeting in Astana on 2 November with visiting Saudi Deputy Prime Minister Prince Sultan ibn Abdul Aziz al-Saud, Nursultan Nazarbaev said he is ready to host peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reported. LF[07] KAZAKHSTAN'S NATIONAL BANK RULES OUT MONETARY EMISSIONNational Bank Chairman Georgii Marchenko told journalists in Astana on 2 November that the bank will not need to print money to cover the 30 percent increase in government sector salaries that is to take effect on 1 January, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reported. LF[08] U.S. EXPRESSES DISAPPOINTMENT OVER KYRGYZ PRESIDENTIAL POLL...In a written statement released on 2 November, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the U.S. is "disappointed that the conduct of the...election in Kyrgyzstan did not meet international standards," Reuters reported. He said the overall conduct of the poll "denied the people of Kyrgyzstan the right to exercise their vote in a free and fair political contest." The Kyrgyz government newspaper "Slovo Kyrgyzstana" printed an interview on 2 November with presidential adviser Askar Aitmatov, who conceded that isolated procedural violations and interference by local officials had taken place during the 29 October ballot. But echoing other senior Kyrgyz officials, he added that the OSCE's criticism of those shortcomings was overly severe. LF[09] ...AS PRESIDENT THANKS ELECTORATE FOR RE-ELECTING HIM...Speaking on national television on 1 November, Askar Akaev thanked the Kyrgyz people for re-electing him, adding that he is glad the ballot was not marred by serious irregularities or quarrels, RFE/RL's Bishkek bureau reported. He said his top priority now is to expedite and expand the lagging reform process, according to Interfax. On 1 November, Akaev travelled to Osh Oblast to meet with residents and thank them personally for voting for him. But he did not visit the neighboring Djalalabad Oblast, where protests took place from 30 October to 1 November against the poll outcome. The last protests in Djalalabad ended on 1 November after defeated candidate Omurbek Tekebaev appealed to the participants and police released several detained participants. LF[10] ...AND OPPOSITION WARNS OF SERIOUS UNRESTMembers of the press service of former Vice President Feliks Kulov's opposition Ar-Namys Party told Interfax on 2 November that the party is receiving numerous complaints from voters dissatisfied with the official results of the presidential poll. They said that in some regions of the country voters "are ready to take to the streets" in protest, as they have done in Djalalabad. Ar-Namys appealed to the population not to take any actions that are illegal or could destabilize the political situation. LF[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE[11] MONTENEGRO TO HOLD REFERENDUM ON INDEPENDENCE NEXT YEARThe Montenegrin government said on 2 November that it will hold a referendum on the Yugoslav republic's status by June 2001, dpa reported, citing Montenegrin state television (RTCG). Officials from the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), the Social Democratic Party, and the People's Party told RTCG that they will complete preparations for the poll by the end of this year. People's Party President Dragan Soc, who has publicly opposed calls by Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic's government for independence, confirmed that the three parties will begin preparing for a referendum. Miodrag Vukovic, the DPS chairman, said that Montenegrins will decide the future course of the republic only after an association agreement with Serbia is reached. PB[12] NEW SERBIAN GOVERNMENT STILL DEADLOCKED...Reform members continued their boycott of Serbia's transitional government on 2 November after members loyal to former President Slobodan Milosevic refused to dismiss Rade Markovic, the head of the secret service, AP reported. Zoran Djindjic, a leader of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) bloc, said the DOS will not participate in the government until Markovic is removed. Djindjic said Markovic is a "main symbol of the old regime." He added that there still exists a "Department for Internal Enemies" within the state security office. "Markovic wants to stay to cover his tracks. We have information that for three days people from state security were destroying evidence," Djindjic said. "But there are eyewitnesses. You can't burn or shred them." Elections to a new Serbian parliament are to be held on 23 December. PB[13] ...AS YUGOSLAV PREMIER-DESIGNATE FINALIZES FEDERAL CABINETZoran Zizic has reportedly completed the lineup for his proposed federal government, Reuters reported on 2 November. Zizic read out his proposed cabinet at a meeting of the executive board of his Socialist People's Party in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica. That government would be made up of 16 ministers, most of them allies of President Vojislav Kostunica. The Yugoslav parliament is expected to meet in Belgrade to vote on the government on 4 November. Among the proposed members are Goran Svilanovic as foreign minister, Miroljub Labus as deputy premier for foreign economic affairs, Mayor of Nis Zoran Zivkovic as interior minister; and Montenegrins Dragisa Pesic and Slobodan Krapovic as finance and defense ministers, respectively. PB[14] YUGOSLAV ARMY CHARGES PRISON GUARDS WITH EXTORTING MONEY FROM KOSOVAR ALBANIANSA Yugoslav army prosecutor charged eight military police and a former army officer on 2 November with extorting money from Kosovar Albanian prisoners, AP reported. The nine are accused of breach of duty as prison guards and extortion while working at the army jail in Nis. They were arrested in September. An indictment claims that Miodrag Trajkovic led the extortion activities, providing prisoners with mobile phones so that they could call their families to ask them to send money so that the prisoners' terms would not be extended. Trajkovic allegedly extorted some $7,000 from the prisoners, as did his main accomplice, Nikola Sekulovic. The trial is to start within one month. PB[15] MILOSEVIC ALLY QUITS SOCIALIST PARTYDusan Matkovic, a close ally of former President Milosevic, said on 2 November that he has quit the Socialist Party and all posts he held within it, AP reported. Matkovic was a member of the Socialist Party's executive committee. A Socialist Party congress is to be held on 25 November. PB[16] SERBIAN ELECTIONS TO BE HELD IN KOSOVA?A NATO official said on 2 November that the UN administrator for Kosova, Bernard Kouchner, must decide soon if Serbian parliamentary elections will be held in the Serbian province as well, Reuters reported. Observers say the decision will go far in determining Kosova's future status: an independent state, a Yugoslav federal republic with autonomy, or a province of Serbia (which is its current status). A decision to hold the elections in Kosova will anger ethnic Albanians, while not allowing the ballot to be held there will make Serbs in Kosova and the rest of Serbia unhappy. The Serbian elections are to be held on 23 December. The NATO official said Kouchner will make the decision after consulting with Yugoslav President Kostunica. PB[17] TUDJMAN'S DAUGHTER CHARGED WITH CORRUPTIONCroatian police have raised corruption charges against Nevenka Tudjman, the daughter of former President Franjo Tudjman, dpa reported on 2 November. A police spokesman said Tudjman is charged with using her "position in society" to ensure that her friend, Igor Knezevic, was the chief supplier of Alcatel telephone switchboards to the Ministry of Science and some other companies and institutions. Knezevic is alleged to have received large bribes from those companies, which he shared with Nevenka Tudjman. He is also alleged to have given her some $300,000. Nevenka Tudjman, 48, denies the charges. An investigating judge will now examine the charges before deciding whether to prosecute. PB[18] SWITZERLAND TO HELP CROATIA REGAIN STOLEN FUNDSSwiss Foreign Minister Joseph Deiss told visiting Croatian President Stipe Mesic on 2 November in Zurich that Swiss officials will help Croats track down government funds that were embezzled from the country over the last decade, dpa reported. Deiss also said Switzerland is willing to freeze the Swiss accounts of Croatian citizens suspected of economic crimes. Many believe that former President Tudjman and his associates stashed millions of dollars of state funds in bank accounts around the world. Former Tourism Minister Ivan Herak went on trial in Croatia last month on charges of embezzling some $200,000 in funds marked for the reconstruction of a hotel. PB[19] REPORT: DOZENS OF PEOPLE LINKED TO WAR CRIMES HOLD PUBLIC OFFICE IN BOSNIAA report by the International Crisis Committee (ICC) says that five years after the end of the Bosnian war, some 75 people linked to war crimes are in elected office or positions of authority in the Republika Srpska, AP reported on 3 November. The list includes mayors, police officers, and members of the Bosnian Serb parliament. The ICC says UN documents and witness testimony implicate many of those officials in "war crimes, like mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and mass rape" or in the running of prison camps. The report says none of the 75 has been publicly indicted by the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, probably because the court currently lacks the resources to draw up cases against them. It adds that some could be on the list of secret indictees. PB[20] CDR 2000 LEADER CALLS FORMER MEMBERS 'DESERTERS' AND 'TRAITORS'At the campaign rally for the Romanian Democratic Convention 2000 (CDR 2000) in Bucharest, chairman Ion Diaconescu called former CDR members "deserters," "traitors," and "swindlers," Mediafax reported. Prime Minister Mugur Isarescu, an independent candidate for Romania's presidency who is supported by the CDR 2000, thanked the alliance for "not deserting in difficult times." President Emil Constantinescu also made an appearance, expressing his full support for Isarescu and calling him the "president of development." Constantinescu accused the current coalition partners of criticizing "their own government and the premier" during the electoral campaignZsM[21] WAS ROMANIAN ARMY CHIEF'S DISMISSAL A GESTURE TOWARD NATO?A 1 November report by the U.S. Stratfor intelligence consulting firm states that Romanian Army Chief of Staff General Mircea Chelar's resignation the previous day shows the degree to which the country wants to join NATO (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 1 November 2000). Stratfor sees Chelaru's dismissal as an indication of the "desperation and fragility of Romania's efforts to gain NATO entry." Although President Constantinescu argued that Chelaru's resignation was accepted "to avoid any misinterpretation [on]...the exercise of democratic control over the armed forces," Constantinescu's real reason was to avert a misinterpretation of the situation by NATO, the Stratfor report said. ZsM[22] MOLDOVAN BORDER POLICE WITHDRAWN FROM ROMANIAN FRONTIERThe Moldovan government on 2 November suspended the activities of frontier police at all border crossings between Moldova and Romania, AP Flux reported. Police officials complained that the government's action violated the law that requires that the Interior Ministry police be involved on the border. PG[23] MOLDOVAN PARLIAMENT TO VOTE FOR PRESIDENT ON 1 DECEMBERLawmakers have voted to elect the country's president on 1 December, Infotag reported on 2 November. Candidates must secure the support of at least 15 parliamentary deputies to be nominated; to be elected, the next president must receive three-fifths of the votes in the 101-strong parliament. Moldovan Communist Party leader Vladimir Voronin announced on 1 November that he will not run for that office, BASA-Press reported. PG[24] MEMORIAL CROSS, STATUE VANDALIZED IN BULGARIA"Magyar Hirlip" reported on 2 November that five high school students have vandalized a wooden cross memorial in Budapest. In an unrelated development, unknown persons poured red paint on the statue of Mihaly Karolyi, prime minister and president of Hungary before the 1919 communist takeover. PG[C] END NOTE[25] WILL AZERBAIJANI ELECTIONS CONFIRM WORST-CASE SCENARIO?By Liz FullerOn 5 November, the Azerbaijani electorate will go to the polls to elect a new parliament. But few people believe the ballot will be free, fair, and democratic. Opposition Musavat Party chairman Isa Gambar, for example, told RFE/RL on 31 October that "the Azerbaijani people and international community know that Heidar Aliev's government is trying to falsify the elections." Observers do not doubt that the official election returns will give the ruling Yeni Azerbaycan Party (YAP) an overall majority of the 125 mandates. That party is headed by President Heidar Aliev, and its election campaign is being spearheaded by his son Ilham, who is being groomed to succeed to the presidency. Ilham Aliev heads YAP's list of candidates to contest the party list seats and will almost certainly be elected speaker of the new legislature. In the hope of preventing a repeat of the massive falsification that marred both the 1995 parliamentary elections and the 1998 presidential poll. the Azerbaijani opposition suggested early this year that the UN should oversee the November parliamentary ballot. When the UN said it could not do so without an invitation from the Azerbaijani leadership, the opposition drafted its own election legislation, which the parliament refused to consider. In the early summer, the OSCE's Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights consulted with both the Azerbaijani authorities and the opposition and succeeded in persuading the former to accept some of its proposed amendments to the legislation aimed at minimizing the potential for fraud. But in a report released earlier this week, Human Rights Watch described the new election legislation as less democratic in many respects than the laws it superseded. The beginning of the election campaign was overshadowed by the arrest in late August of Rauf Arifoglu, editor of the newspaper published by the opposition Musavat party, on charges of involvement in a plane hijack, planning a coup, and illegal weapons possession. (He was released on bail in late September after countless protests from the international community.) In late August, the Supreme Court ruled that the article of the election law excluding parties that registered with Justice Ministry less than six months before the announcement of the elections was unconstitutional. That decision paved the way for the participation in the ballot of former parliamentary speaker Rasul Guliev's the opposition Democratic Party of Azerbaijan. But the Central Electoral Commission (the majority of whose 18 members are loyal to the authorities) initially registered only five parties wishing to contest the 25 seats to be allocated under the proportional system: Yeni Azerbaycan, the opposition Azerbaijan National Independence Party, the Civic Solidarity Party, the Communist Party, and the "reformist" wing of the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party. (The last-named party split into two wings, reformers and conservatives, in August, shortly before its chairman, former President Abulfaz Elchibey, died of cancer.) In early October, in response to calls by the OSCE and the U.S. State Department to register the Democratic and Musavat Parties, President Aliev instructed the Central Election Commission to register those two parties as well as six others that had initially been barred from contesting the party list seats. Aliev also said he would instruct the commission to register all candidates who wished to contest the 99 single mandate constituencies (no voting is taking place in the 100th constituency, Nagorno-Karabakh). But local election commissions, whose members are appointed by the Central Election Commission, registered only 409 of more than 1,000 would-be candidates. And of those 409, only 25 percent or so represent opposition parties, while 140 are members of Yeni Azerbaycan and 149 are nominally independent but approved by the Azerbaijani leadership. Human Rights Watch has listed numerous examples of refusals by local election commissions to register opposition candidates. Unlike in 1995, however, many voters have held rallies in recent weeks to protest such decisions by local election officials. And opinion polls suggest that such measures may have undermined support for Yeni Azerbaycan. The findings, released earlier of this week, of two such polls suggested that Musavat is the most popular political party with some 28 percent support, while Yeni Azerbaycan is in second place with 20 percent. Assuming those findings are accurate, they are nonetheless unlikely to be reflected in the poll outcome. Official returns are likely to give Musavat less than the minimum 8 percent of the party list vote needed to qualify for representation under the proportional system and thus leave Gambar, who heads Musavat's party list, outside the new legislature. Opposition politician Matlab Mutallimli, the head of a committee to defend the rights of would-be candidates who were refused registration, has even claimed that the results of the poll have been determined in advance, and he published a list of names of those deputies to be "elected" in the 99 single-mandate constituencies. A similar list made public on the eve of the 1995 poll proved almost 100 percent accurate. 03-11-00 Reprinted with permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
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