Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

EU accused of ignoring human rights abuses in rush for gas
deal

"Apparently the EU is still willing to compromise human rights for economic interests. When energy resources are at stake, the EU is clear as to what comes first."

Same thing with the United States.

By inviting Mr. Aliyev to the White House, they say, Mr. Bush has made a choice: oil and location now trump other concerns.

Ali Kerimli, leader of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, noted that when Mr. Aliyev was elected in 2003 in a vote deemed neither free nor fair, the White House withheld an invitation, awaiting improvement by Azerbaijan in promoting civil society and recognizing human rights.

Note: Bush needs Azerbaijan to invade Iran.
#msg-10662681

These hypocrites should lighten up on Belarus.

Memo to Hamas: make a large oil or gas discovery.

-Am

EU accused of ignoring human rights abuses in rush for gas
deal

uploaded 22 Apr 2006


· Trade agreement with Turkmenistan revived
· Fate of gas-poor Belarus 'provides telling contrast'

Nicholas Watt, Brussels
Friday April 21, 2006

Human rights groups have attacked the EU for negotiating a trade deal with Turkmenistan, one of the harshest regimes in the former Soviet Union. Campaigners have accused the EU of turning a blind eye to the abuses of President Saparmurat Niyazov as it eyes up his country's huge gas reserves.

"It comes as a huge shock that the EU is moving to break ranks and cosy up to this pariah government," Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group said in a joint statement. Their intervention came after the European parliament brought back to life a trade agreement with Turkmenistan, which had been on hold since 1999 amid concerns over human rights.

Last month the influential foreign and trade committees of the parliament voted in favour of the agreement, which will now go to the full parliament. Once passed, it will move on to the council of ministers for approval. Critics say the EU is ignoring blatant human rights abuses because it wants European companies to be allowed to grab a share of Turkmenistan's huge gas reserves. Turkmenistan is keen to bypass Russia and Ukraine, which are its main customers.

Cem Ozdemir, a German Green MEP, tried unsuccessfully to block the agreement with Turkmenistan in the parliament's foreign affairs committee. He compared the treatment of Turkmenistan with that of Belarus, which does not export gas, and whose leaders were recently subject to EU travel bans because of vote-rigging. "Large gas reserves lie behind the EU's policy difference towards Turkmenistan and Belarus," Mr Ozdemir said. "Apparently the EU is still willing to compromise human rights for economic interests. When energy resources are at stake, the EU is clear as to what comes first."

Farid Tukhbatullin, an exiled Turkmen human rights activist, recently wrote in the International Herald Tribune: "Belarus is a dictatorship, but the democratic opposition had the opportunity, however limited, to express its views, form political movements, and participate in the election. In Belarus the government is throwing people in jail for 12 to 15 days; in Turkmenistan, it's 12 to 15 years."

The European commission, which first proposed establishing an "interim agreement on trade and trade-related matters" with Turkmenistan in 1998, said it was simply recognising the country as a sovereign state - the old accord was with the Soviet Union. The new accord, it added, included a human rights clause to allow the EU to pursue human rights concerns with the country, and it did not offer any new trade advantages.

Richard Howitt, a Labour member of the foreign affairs committee, who abstained in the vote, said: "I am disgusted and appalled by the regime in Turkmenistan. But isolation of the regime has failed. The idea is to use trade as a leverage on the regime to improve human rights. If they do not do that, Europe should walk away."

Backstory

Saparmurat Niyazov, known as Turkmenbashi (or Father of all Turkmen) is one of the former Soviet Union's most repressive leaders. As president for life, he enjoys supreme powers in Turkmenistan where people are jailed for questioning "the one and eternal" leader.

An old joke says there are three types of people: former prisoners, prisoners and people about to be thrown into prison. The Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, is dominated by a large golden effigy of the 66-year-old, who renamed January in honour of himself.

Opera and ballet have been banned and he has named the month of September after his great tome, the Rukhnama. Reading it aloud three times increases intelligence and sets people on an automatic path to heaven, Turkmenbashi says.

Source: Guardian

http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?DocumentID=13214&TagID=2


Azerbaijan Leader, Under Fire, Hopes U.S. Visit Improves Image

April 23, 2006

By C. J. CHIVERS
MOSCOW, April 19 — Next week, after years of waiting for an unequivocal nod of Western approval, President Ilham H. Aliyev of Azerbaijan will fly to Washington to be received at the White House, a visit his administration hopes will lift his stature.

Being a guest of President Bush has been billed in Mr. Aliyev's circle as a chance for the 44-year-old president — dogged by allegations of corruption, election rigging and repression of opposition figures — to gain more international legitimacy.

"We have long waited for this visit," said Ali Gasanov, a senior presidential adviser. "Now it has been scheduled, and we hope that we will be able to discuss global issues."

For President Bush, who has made democracy promotion a prominent theme of his foreign policy, Mr. Aliyev's visit could prove tricky.

Mr. Aliyev's invitation arrived during a period of increasing diplomatic difficulties between the United States and both Russia and Iran, countries that border Azerbaijan.

But while Azerbaijan's strategic location could hardly be better and its relations with the United States have mostly been warm, no leader in the region more fully embodies the conflicting American objectives in the former Soviet Union than its president.

Mr. Aliyev is a secular Muslim politician who is steering oil and gas to Western markets and who has given political and military support to the Iraq war. But his administration has never held a clean election and has used riot police to crush antigovernment demonstrations.

The invitation, made last week, has raised eyebrows in the former Soviet world, where Mr. Bush's calls for democratization have increased tensions between opposition movements and the entrenched autocrats.

Opposition leaders have long said the United States' desires to diversify Western energy sources and to encourage democratic growth have collided in Azerbaijan. By inviting Mr. Aliyev to the White House, they say, Mr. Bush has made a choice: oil and location now trump other concerns.

Ali Kerimli, leader of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, noted that when Mr. Aliyev was elected in 2003 in a vote deemed neither free nor fair, the White House withheld an invitation, awaiting improvement by Azerbaijan in promoting civil society and recognizing human rights.

"It is difficult for Azerbaijan's democratic forces to understand what changed," said Mr. Kerimli, who was beaten by the police as were several thousand demonstrators during a crackdown on a protest over fraudulent parliamentary elections last fall. The demonstration had been peaceful until the police rushed in with clubs.

"I think the White House must explain what has happened when three years ago Aliyev was not wanted for a reception in the White House, and now he falsifies another election and is received," Mr. Kerimli said.

American officials insist nothing has changed, and say Mr. Aliyev has been invited for what they call a "working visit," during which he will be urged to liberalize his government and its economy, which is tightly controlled by state officials and clans.

"If we are going to elevate our relationship with Azerbaijan to something that is qualitatively different, then there has to be progress on democratic and market reforms," a senior State Department official said. "I am sure we will talk in these clear and blunt terms."

The United States' relationship with Azerbaijan rests on three principal issues: access to energy resources, international security cooperation, and democratic and economic change.

On the first two issues, the United States has made clear it is satisfied. Mr. Aliyev has supported new pipelines to pump Caspian hydrocarbons away from Russia and Iran to Western customers, and provided troops to United States-led military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Azerbaijan also grants overflight rights to the American military and is cooperating with a Pentagon-sponsored modernization of a former Soviet airfield that could be used by American military planes.

Mr. Aliyev often welcomes foreign delegations to Baku, the capital, describing in smooth English his efforts to push his nation toward Western models of democracy and free markets.

But Azerbaijan has remained undemocratic. No election under Mr. Aliyev or his late father, Heydar Aliyev, has been judged free or fair by the main international observers. Instead, fraud and abuse of state resources for chosen candidates have been widespread.

Ilham Aliyev's government maintains a distinctly Soviet-era state television network and has elevated Heydar Aliyev to the status of a minor personality cult figure.

Moreover, Azerbaijan's government is often described as one of the world's most corrupt. A criminal case now in federal court in New York against three international speculators describes enormous shakedowns and bribes in the late 1990's at Socar, Azerbaijan's state oil company. Mr. Aliyev was a Socar vice president at the time.

Last year the Azerbaijani government showed signs of paranoia, arresting several people shortly before the parliamentary election and accusing them of plotting an armed coup.

Public evidence for the charges has been scarce, and a lawyer for two of the men held in solitary confinement for months since — Farhad Aliyev, the former minister of economics, and his brother Rafiq — has urged Congress to raise issues of their treatment when Mr. Aliyev comes to Washington. (The president is not related to the accused men.)

American officials say that Azerbaijan has been liberalizing slowly, and evolving into a more responsible state. But given Mr. Aliyev's uneven record and the allegations against him, his visit has raised fresh questions about the degree to which American standards are malleable.

"Russian public opinion, when it looks at the United States policy in Azerbaijan, cannot ignore the fact that the United States has a desire not in favor of democracy but in favor of profits and geopolitical domination," said Sergei Markov, director of the Institute for Political Studies here and a Kremlin adviser.

Mr. Markov and others have noted that the West has penalized Belarus for police crackdowns after tainted elections last month.

"This is one of the reasons that Russian public opinion is very suspicious of United States policies in the former Soviet political sphere, and its propaganda about democracy," Mr. Markov said.

"Ilham Aliyev will be in the White House not because he promotes democracy," Mr. Markov said. "He will be in the White House because he controls oil."

In Armenia, Mr. Aliyev's invitation has also generated interest.

Armenia fought Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a wedge of territory within Azerbaijan's boundaries that each country claims. The conflict has been frozen for several years, but Mr. Aliyev's recent statements have often been bellicose.

"The visit at this time should not be viewed as appreciation of their democratic or other policies," Vartan Oskanian, Armenia's foreign minister, said via e-mail.

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/nyt182.html