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RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 2, No. 147, 98-08-04Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Newsline Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty <http://www.rferl.org>RFE/RL NEWSLINEVol. 2, No. 147, 4 August 1998CONTENTS[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA
[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
[C] END NOTE
[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA[01] AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENT INVITES ARMENIAN COUNTERPART TO BAKUThe Armenian Foreign Ministry announced on 3 August that President Robert Kocharian has received an invitation from Heidar Aliev to attend an international conference in Baku, RFE/RL's Yerevan bureau reported. The conference, scheduled for 7-8 September, is organized by the EU to discuss implementation of its TRACECA program to create an east-west road, rail, and ferry network linking Central Asia with Europe via the Caucasus. Armenia and Azerbaijan were among the eight states that first launched that program in 1993. A spokeswoman for Kocharian told RFE/RL's Yerevan bureau on 4 August that "Armenia will by all means participate" in the conference and that a decision on the level of that participation will be made soon. Prominent Dashnak party member Vahan Hovannisian, who is one of Kocharian's aides, told journalists the same day that he thinks Kocharian should treat Aliev's invitation with "caution" and send a lower-level representative to the conference. LF[02] LUKIN FAVORS CLOSER BILATERAL TIES WITH AZERBAIJANRussian State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Vladimir Lukin, currently on an unofficial visit to Baku, met with President Aliev and with Azerbaijani parliamentary speaker Murtuz Alesqerov on 3 August, Turan and ITAR-TASS reported. Lukin told Aliev that occasional criticism in Moscow of Azerbaijani policy does not reflect the thinking of the Russian leadership. He added that both the Duma and the Russian government favor the so-called "Lisbon principles" as a basis for resolving the Karabakh conflict. Those principles are preserving Azerbaijan's territorial integrity while bestowing on Karabakh "a broad measure of autonomy" and security guarantees for its population. In this context, Lukin advocated a "carrot-and-stick" policy that would "stimulate Armenia to make concessions." LF[03] AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENT REJECTS OPPOSITION'S ELECTION DEMANDSRepresentatives of Azerbaijani opposition parties and of the Movement for Democratic Elections and Electoral reform met for two hours on 3 August with presidential administration head Ramiz Mehtiev to discuss the conditions for five prominent opposition leaders to abandon their announced boycott of the 11 October presidential elections, Turan reported. Those conditions include the right to nominate half the members of the Central Electoral Commission and the "democratization of the political climate" in Azerbaijan. Mehtiev declined to respond to those demands, but he proposed resuming talks behind closed doors the following day. Following that meeting, opposition leaders told journalists that Mehtiev had informed them that President Aliev has rejected all their demands, RFE/RL's Baku bureau reported on 4 July. LF[04] AZERBAIJANI OPPOSITION LEADER DENIES CONTACTS WITH ARMENIAN DIASPORAExiled former parliamentary speaker Rasul Guliev, one of the five Azerbaijani opposition leaders who intend to boycott the presidential poll, told Turan on 3 August that claims he held talks with U.S. Armenians, including billionnaire Kirk Kirkorian, are false. The independent Azerbaijani television station ANS- TV reported last week that Guliev had discussed with Kirkorian the possible sabotage of the presidential elections by a new Armenian offensive against Azerbaijani forces. LF[05] CIS PEACEKEEPERS TO STAY IN ABKHAZIA FOR NOW...In his Monday radio broadcast, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said on 3 August that the CIS peacekeepers currently deployed along the border between Abkhazia and the rest of Georgia should not be withdrawn until arrangements have been made to replace them with an alternative force, Russian and Georgian agencies reported. The peacekeepers' mandate expired on 31 July. Londer Tsaava, who succeeded Zurab Erkvania as chairman of the Abkhaz government in exile in July, also reasoned that the withdrawal of the CIS peacekeeping force will create "a vacuum" conducive to the resumption of hostilities, Caucasus Press reported on 4 August. But Tsaava, like Shevardnadze, criticized the peacekeepers for failing to protect ethnic Georgians in Abkhazia's Gali Raion. LF[06] ...DESPITE GEORGIAN FUGITIVES' MISGIVINGSSome of the Georgians constrained to flee Abkhazia during the May fighting have formally announced their lack of confidence in the Abkhaz leadership in exile and demanded a meeting with Georgian government representatives, Caucasus Press reported on 31 July. The fugitives announced that if the Russian peacekeeping force is not withdrawn immediately they will appeal to Abkhaz President Vladislav Ardzinba to take measures to protect them from Abkhaz militants. One Abkhaz police officer was killed and two injured in Gali on 2 August when grenades were fired at their patrol car, Interfax reported. LF[07] EMBATTLED GEORGIAN MINISTER REJECTS CORRUPTION CHARGESCommunications Minister Pridon Indjia, speaking to journalists in Tbilisi on 3 August, denied charges by the parliamentary anti-corruption committee that he misappropriated millions of dollars during the illegal privatization of the country's telecommunications system, Caucasus Press reported. He said he will take parliamentary State and Legal Affairs Committee chairman Mikhail Saakashvili to court for spreading false information about him. Indjia is the only government minister who has not complied with former Minister of State Niko Lekishvili's call to resign. He argues that to do so would be a tacit admission of guilt. Shevardnadze on 3 August declined to comment on Indjia's case, saying law enforcement bodies should "thoroughly investigate" the charges against him, Interfax reported. LF[08] ABASHIDZE CLAIMS HE WAS OFFERED PREMIERSHIPAdjar Supreme Soviet chairman Aslan Abashidze told journalists at his weekly press conference in Batumi on 3 August that Eduard Shevardnadze offered him the post of minister of state, Caucasus Press reported. The agency, however, did not clarify whether that offer was made following the 26 July resignation of Niko Lekishvili or when the position was first created, in late 1995. Abashidze said he rejected the offer as it was intended solely to weaken the position of Adjaria vis-a-vis the central Georgian government. LF[09] MORE UTO MEMBERS CONFIRMED FOR GOVERNMENT POSTSTajik President Imomali Rakhmonov signed a decree on 3 August confirming another four members of the United Tajik Opposition for government posts, ITAR- TASS and Reuters reported. Shodi Kabirov is minister of agriculture, Salamshah Muhabbatov chairman of the State Committee for Oil and Gas, Muhammadjon Davlatov is chairman of the State Committee for Precious Stones and Metals and Muhammadruzi Iskandarov chairman of the State Committee for Emergency Situations and Civil Defense. UTO member Dovudkhoja Islomov, who was expected to receive the chairmanship of the State Committee for Milk and Meat, failed to show up for talks with Rakhmonov. The UTO now has 10 positions in the government. Under the terms of the 1997 Tajik peace accord, they are to receive 14. BP[10] UN ENVOY TO TAJIKISTAN GROWING IMPATIENTUN special envoy to Tajikistan Jan Kubis told RFE/RL's Tajik service on 3 August that he wants to know the results of the investigation into the killing of UN personnel as soon as possible. A special commission was formed by the Tajik government to investigate the 20 July murders of three UN observers and their driver-translator in central Tajikistan. Although the commission was supposed to make available its findings to Kubis by 1 August, the UN envoy has still received no information. Meanwhile, all UN observers have been recalled to Dushanbe, and Kubis said some or all may be pulled out of the country if the murders are not solved soon. Kubis added that the observers cannot fulfill their mandate by staying in the capital, nor can they return to areas throughout the country while the killers are still at large. BP[11] COURT UPHOLDS DECISION AGAINST UZBEK JOURNALISTAn Uzbek appeals court on 3 August upheld a ruling against journalist Shodi Mardiev sentencing him to 11 years in jail, RFE/RL correspondents reported. Mardiev was found guilty of defamation for his satirical radio broadcast about the Samarkand deputy prosecutor-general in June 1997. He was arrested in November of that year and found guilty by a Syr-Darya regional court on 11 June. The Committee to Protect Journalists sent an appeal to Uzbek President Islam Karimov on 16 July asking for clemency for the 62-year-old Mardiev, who is said to be in poor health. BP[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE[12] 'ETHNIC CLEANSING' CONTINUES IN KOSOVASerbian paramilitary police and Yugoslav army forces continued their assault on regions inhabited by ethnic Albanians in central and western Kosova on 3 August. The "New York Times" the following day quoted an unidentified foreign monitor as saying: "It is a vicious tactic. First [Serbian forces] are shelling civilian villages and towns to make the people run, then they seem to be going in to blow up or burn the buildings to ensure civilians cannot return." A foreign diplomat added that "at best, we have to assume this is a case of widespread 'ethnic cleansing.' But the fact that we are not allowed in to see for ourselves makes me wonder seriously about what kind of atrocities are being committed." The Prishtina daily "Bujku" wrote that the Serbian forces are conducting a "scorched- earth" policy. The official Serbian news agency Tanjug reported that police "neutralized" a group of "terrorists" west of Prishtina during the morning of 4 August. PM[13] 'HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE' LOOMING IN KOSOVAU.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin on 3 August said that Kosova faces "a humanitarian catastrophe" in a matter of weeks if aid does not reach the tens of thousands of displaced persons in the province. In Prishtina, the main organization of Kosovar students called for the establishment of humanitarian relief corridors to enable aid "convoys to break through and enter the surrounded regions in order to rescue thousands of lives." Austrian Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schuessel, whose country holds the EU chair, told Austrian Radio that "there are 150,000 refugees in the region and above all I fear a humanitarian catastrophe this winter because the Serbian army is burning fields...and killing cattle. Soon there won't be anything for these people to eat." A specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture told the "International Herald Tribune" that "there will be no food reserves" when winter comes. PM[14] MILOSEVIC BLAMED FOR CRISISNATO Secretary- General Javier Solana told the German daily "Die Welt" on 3 August that the Kosova problem "has only one name: [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic." Schuessel said to the BBC the next day: "You cannot trust [Milosevic]. He is a sort of reverse King Midas--all that he touches falls apart." In Vienna, representatives of the EU called on the Yugoslav president to stop the violence by his armed forces. For his part, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said that "both sides are not showing necessary readiness to discuss broad autonomy for the province." He added that "pressure must be kept up on both sides," dpa reported from Bonn. PM[15] NO INTERVENTION LIKELY IN KOSOVAU.S. Ambassador to Macedonia Christopher Hill said in Prishtina on 3 August that "more and more the situation is calling for an international presence on the ground," AFP reported. He nonetheless added that there is no military solution to the problem. Schuessel said in his BBC interview the next day that there is no majority in the UN Security Council to endorse any NATO military intervention in the province. In Washington, Rubin said on 3 August that the Atlantic alliance has approved plans to use air power against Serbian forces, but he did not indicate what action on the Serbs' part would trigger a NATO response. NATO spokesmen in Brussels told AP that the alliance is fine- tuning its contingency plans but that it is unlikely there will be intervention at any time soon. PM[16] VOJVODINA HUNGARIANS CALL FOR 'CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE'Laszlo Jozsa, who is deputy chairman of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, said in Backa Topola on 3 August that young ethnic Hungarian males should not answer their draft notices from the Yugoslav authorities, "Nasa Borba" wrote. Jozsa added that "several hundred" young men in the Subotica area received call up notices for the army reserves on 2 August. He said that 60 members of the police reserves--about half of whom are ethnic Hungarians--in Backa Topola received notices at the same time and were sent immediately to Kosova. PM[17] MACEDONIA TO SEEK 'HELP'?Defense Minister Lazar Kitanovski said in Ohrid on 3 August that Macedonia may seek "outside assistance" to help patrol its border with Albania if illegal crossings of that frontier by smugglers and gun-runners increase. He did not elaborate, Tanjug reported. PM[18] KOSOVARS, ALBANIANS TURNED BACK BY ITALYA spokesman for the Interior Ministry said in Tirana on 3 August that Albanian and Italian Coast Guard patrol boats operating under a bilateral agreement off the Albanian coast turned back a group of 17 dinghies carrying some 600 Kosovar refugees and Albanian citizens attempting to cross the Adriatic. The illegal migrants paid up to $450 for the passage from Vlora to Italy, where thousands of Albanians live and work as legal or illegal immigrants. Police spokesmen said that the joint Coast Guard patrols have intercepted and turned back some 52 dinghies carrying 1,500 people in the past three weeks. PM[19] CROATIAN FARMERS PROTESTFarmers blocked a road in Slavonia's wheat-growing region on 4 August to protest a ruling by government officials that producers must pay the 22 percent value-added tax on wheat they sell to the state at guaranteed prices. The previous day, "Jutarnji list" wrote that Croatia had a trade deficit in the first six months of 1998 with virtually the entire world, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Slovenia, and federal Yugoslavia, as well as with most of the developed countries. Imports from France and Ireland rose significantly. Croatia's trade balance with the OPEC countries was $40 million in the red, and its trade deficit with developing countries as a group totaled $200 million. PM[20] MIXED REACTIONS TO CROATIAN ANNIVERSARYThe state-run Zagreb daily "Vjesnik" on 4 August hailed the third anniversary of Operation Storm, which was the Croatian military's lightning campaign that defeated the Krajina Serb armies and sent tens of thousands of refugees fleeing. The newspaper said that the offensive ended Serbian dreams of a Greater Serbia to be built on the ruins of the former Yugoslavia and put a stop to plans by the international community to set up a de facto Serbian state within Croatia's borders. Amnesty International, however, said in a statement issued in London that many "extrajudicial executions" of Serbs by Croatian forces and other "human rights violations" continue to go unpunished. The text added that in many cases "relatives of the victims are still being denied the dignity of a proper burial for their loved ones, and hundreds of crimes remain unacknowledged, uninvestigated, and the perpetrators unpunished." PM[21] ROMANIAN PREMIER IN ISRAELRadu Vasile and his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, on 3 August signed accords on agricultural cooperation and the mutual protection of investments, saying they will step up efforts to conclude a free trade agreement, an RFE/RL correspondent in Tel Aviv reported. Vasile said the problem of the restitution of Jewish properties confiscated by the fascist and communist regimes will be resolved next month, when a bill providing for the restitution of all confiscated properties will be submitted to the parliament. Responding to protests that the bill will apply only to Romanian citizens, Vasile said a "just solution" will be sought. Naftali Lavi, deputy chairman of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, said that Jews were "singled out for the confiscation" of their properties and must therefore be "singled out for restitution as well." MS[22] ROMANIAN EDUCATION MINISTER TO REMAIN IN OFFICE?Ion Diaconescu, chairman of the ruling National Peasant Party Christian Democratic, has ruled out the dismissal of Education Minister Andrei Marga in connection with Marga's opposition to establishing a Hungarian- language state university. He said on 2 August that views within the governing coalition over the university are "different" and a solution is still being sought. Last week, Bela Marko, chairman of the Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania, said Marga's continued presence in the government is an infringement of the protocol signed by the coalition partners (see also "End Note" below). MS[23] MOLDOVANS PROTEST NUCLEAR WASTE TRANSITParliament deputy chairman Iurie Rosca, who is also co- chairman of the Democratic Convention of Moldova (CDM), said in an interview with Radio Chisinau on 3 August that the CDM will appeal to the Constitutional Court over the decision of the parliament to allow the transit of nuclear waste from Bulgaria to Russia, RFE/RL's Chisinau bureau reported. Rosca also said that "such deals always involve huge sums of dirty money." The same accusation was leveled by spokesmen of Moldovan ecological organizations, who said Moldova has the highest rate of cancer in all former Soviet bloc countries. The ecological organizations called on their counterparts in Bulgaria, Russia, and Romania to protest the decision, saying they will also appeal to international ecological organizations for help. MS[24] BULGARIA DENIES SELLING ARMS TO TERRORISTSResponding to an article published in "The New York Times" on 3 August, Bulgaria denied it is selling weapons to terrorist organizations. A spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Tourism said on 3 August that "Bulgaria strictly observes all restrictions imposed by the UN Security Council, including the embargo on arms sales to Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Liberia, Angola, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Yugoslavia, and Kosova." The spokesman said Bulgaria "cannot be held responsible" for instances where "arms legally sold to other countries are then re-sold to terrorist groups," BTA reported. MS[C] END NOTE[25] IRRATIONAL RATIONALITY IN THE CARPATHIANSby Michael ShafirThe dispute over establishing a Hungarian-language state university in Romania is laden with "irrational rationality." An outsider will have difficulty in comprehending what drives the two opposing sides to take positions that apparently defy the rationality of their own interests. By insisting on the setting up of the university, the Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania (UDMR) is--in the eyes of most members of the ethnic Romanian majority--betraying first and foremost the interests of the electorate it represents. Why, ask Romanians, should an ethnic Hungarian complete his or her education without being capable of integrating himself or herself into the Romanian labor market and into Romanian society as a whole owing to language comprehension difficulties? And why, they add, does the country's large ethnic Hungarian minority (1.6 million) not accept the solution advocated by Education Minister Andrei Marga? That solution is namely one of "multi-culturalism," such as has been pursued over the past years at the Babes-Bolyai Cluj University. In this context, "multi-culturalism" refers to teaching in several languages, with Romanian, Hungarian, and German being the main ones on offer. At first glance, the argument is a sound one, the more so as all parties involved are well aware of the high costs of setting up a separate institution of higher education. Such costs involve not only buildings but also the training of qualified faculty. "Rationality," however, is in the eyes of the beholder. What may look "irrational" to one group is perfectly "rational" to the other. The bulk of the ethnic Romanian majority, including many of the UDMR's coalition partners, view the ethnic Hungarians' demand with suspicion, regarding it as proof of Hungarian "segregationism" and, moreover, "separatism." Marga said that in so many words when responding to the recent announcement by Zsolt Nemeth, state secretary at the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, that Budapest is willing to finance the establishment of the Hungarian university in Transylvania. At this point, one is forced to ask: "Who is actually more "irrational?" Nemeth's statement had at least invalidated some of the "rational" Romanian arguments against Hungarian "irrationality." Some, but not all, one should hasten to add. In his announcement (released to the press as a "personal declaration" rather than an official government statement), Marga himself said that the establishment of a Hungarian- language university was an issue that is "mainly symbolic" in essence. Symbols, however, cannot carry the same meaning for all people. They are "irrational" to those for whom the symbols are meaningless and highly important to those for whom the symbols have significance. For Romania's ethnic Hungarians, a separate university symbolizes the restitution of their cultural rights, which they considered to have been abolished in the late 1950s, when the communist regime merged the two universities in Cluj into one. It is precisely for this reason that many in the UDMR believe the university must be set up in Cluj and only in Cluj. In addition, a separate university is considered by some members of the Hungarian elites as a symbol of ensured "cultural reproduction." Cultural reproduction is at the core of ethnicity, for it goes beyond individual rights (indeed, it may even contradict them) to convey a collective sense of ensured trans-generational communion of values as well as inter- generational communication. And the latter is also trans-border communication. However, such a separate university may question (openly or otherwise) the concept of the "nation-state". It is no accident that in only one European country, namely Finland, do minorities (in this case the Swedish minority) benefit from such extended cultural rights. Owing to the suspicion that the Hungarian-language university is laying the groundwork for demands that would go well beyond those of cultural or even territorial autonomy, most ethnic Romanians (consciously or otherwise) tend to reject the university. Viewed from this perspective, statements made by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during his private visit to Romania last week have probably exacerbated, rather than alleviated, such suspicions. His comment that "if the [separate] university is not set up, there is nothing to talk about" was obviously taken out of context by his Romanian critics. He made that comment in connection with rejecting "multi-culturalism" as an alternative to the proposed university. But Orban is certainly not unaware of the mutual historical suspicion and of the fact that the nationalist- inclined press in Bucharest would read it as "blackmail" and as a threat to relations between the two countries precisely at a time when Hungary is about to join NATO and Romania is being left out. The same applies to Nemeth's earlier statement while attending the traditional "summer university" at Balvanyos, in Transylvania. According to Nemeth, the "nation-state" is a thing of the past and the "Hungarian nation's borders do not coincide with Hungary's borders." Orban and Nemeth, of course, are remaining faithful to their election promise to promote more forcefully the interests of Hungarians abroad than did Gyula Horn's cabinet. The question is whether this "rationality" is "rational" in the post-electoral context. In turn, the UDMR's partners in Romania's ruling coalition may wonder now whether they were not the unwitting midwives of "irrational rationality" when they procrastinated over satisfying the "rational" and less radical demands of the UDMR in education and local administration. 04-08-98 Reprinted with permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
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