Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Here is another fabrication from the U.S. They spew this stuff and people are not doing their homework.

The United States Friday rejected as completely false a charge by Russia's security chief that U.S. and other non-governmental groups (NGOs) are plotting revolution in Belarus. The State Department said work of the NGOs is transparent and peaceful.

Ukraine, Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, to name a few countries, all have been victimized by NGOs with an American agenda of insurrection.

-Am

US Rejects Russian Charge of Subversion in Belarus
By David Gollust
State Departmnet
13 May 2005



The United States Friday rejected as completely false a charge by Russia's security chief that U.S. and other non-governmental groups (NGOs) are plotting revolution in Belarus. The State Department said work of the NGOs is transparent and peaceful.

The State Department has rejected in unusually forceful terms a charge by the head of Russia's FSB security service that U.S. non-governmental groups are part of a covert plot to unseat the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

In remarks Thursday in the Russian Parliament, FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev accused the Peace Corps, along with U.S. British and other NGOs of spy activity, and he said millions of dollars were being funneled into Belarus to try to replicate in that country the so-called Orange Revolution last year in Ukraine.

At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said the allegations of the Russian security chief are completely false, and many of them ridiculous, and at odds with the tone of the summit meeting of Presidents Bush and Putin only days before.

Mr. Boucher said the Peace Corps has had very high standards of conduct since its founding in 1961 and that when its decade-long program in Russia ended in 2003, the Russian government expressed gratitude and said its work had been positive and useful.

As to the operations of U.S.-based NGOs, Mr. Boucher said their work in promoting democracy and the growth of civil society in European countries including Belarus is open and transparent.

“Our election aid in Belarus and elsewhere is for civic participation in the election process, balanced media coverage, non-partisan political party training, election monitoring and election administration. These programs are non-partisan, they're transparent, they're peaceful in nature and we'll conduct them in Belarus in order to support efforts to build civil society and democracy,” said Mr. Boucher.

Mr. Boucher said the United States provided $6.5 million in democracy aid to Belarus this year, and that details of the spending are available on the State Department's website.

He said another $5 million in Belarus funding was included in the supplemental spending bill for the Iraq war and various foreign aid programs that was approved by Congress this week.

The United States has long been critical of the authoritarian government of Mr. Lukashenko in Minsk, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has described as the last dictatorship in Europe.

Ms. Rice met leaders of Belarusian opposition groups last month in Lithuania, who are trying to unite around a candidate to challenge Mr. Lukashenko in elections next year.


http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-05-13-voa59.cfm


Reference:
One of the major NGOs working with the opposition, the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society (CDCS), receives the bulk of its funding from the National Democratic Institute in Washington, which is financed by the US government.

The head of CDCS, Edil Baisalov, recently returned from Ukraine where he served as an election observer in the disputed presidential contest. Yushchenko was able to secure a victory over his rival, Viktor Yanukovich, an ally of Kuchma, with the aid of mass protests staged by organizations financed by Washington. Describing his time in Ukraine as “a very formative experience,” Baisalov told the Journal, “I saw what the results of our work could be.”

Until recently, another Kyrgyz NGO, Civil Society Against Corruption (CSAC), received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US-government organization with extensive ties to the AFL-CIO trade union bureaucracy that is well known for its efforts to topple governments deemed unfriendly to Washington. The head of CSAC, Tolekan Ismailova, recently translated a pamphlet on the “revolutionary” methods used to bring down governments in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. This pamphlet was printed on a press in Kyrgyzstan owned by the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.
#msg-5871042

The Azerbaijani authorities’ criticism of U.S. Ambassador Harnish, the unification of opposition groups and the involvement of NGOs and their use of the media as a means of propaganda are unmistakable characteristics of U.S. takeovers under the guise of democracy although bogus democracies at best.
#msg-6118375

A lot of planning, work and money has gone into efforts to design a US model for promoting democracy around the world. The model's first success was notched in Serbia. Funded and organized by the US government, which deployed US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organizations (NGOs), the campaign defeated Slobodan Milosevich at the ballot box in Belgrade in 2000.
#msg-4696890