Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Putin Assails Non-Russia Gov't Groups

In some of the more recent and ongoing attempts by Bush to install puppet governments such as in Kyrygyzstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, the Philippines and obviously Russia there is an awareness of the clandestine agendas of the NGOs and steps are being taken by leaders to protect their sovereignty. Democracy would have had a better chance had Bush not made a mockery of democracy through vast NGO productions culminating in ‘velvet revolutions’.

-Am


Wednesday July 20, 2005 4:01 PM

By MARIA DANILOVA

Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia won't allow foreign organizations to finance political activities in the country, President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday in the latest in a series of Kremlin statements assailing Western-funded non-governmental groups.

Meeting with human rights experts to discuss how to strengthen civil society in Russia, Putin said authorities needed to ``de-bureaucratize'' how nonprofit groups get grants and financing.

But he also said he had information that certain foreign groups were paying for specific political activities in Russia.

``Not a single, self-respecting country will allow that, and neither will we,'' Putin said. ``Let us solve our internal problems ourselves.''

The Kremlin has shown increasing discomfort with Western-funded NGOs as mass protests have swept through parts of the former Soviet Union in the past two years. Many Russian politicians contend that Western funding was behind the protests that drove out the longtime presidents of Georgia and Kyrgyzstan and that forced a rerun of Ukraine's presidential elections, in which the Kremlin-favored candidate lost.

Putin lamented that Russia's nonprofit organizations were getting little assistance from domestic and foreign donors, and called for developing ways for the state to help them. He noted, though, that this aid should not be considered ``some kind of bribery on the part of the state, that this is some form of dependency.''

Critics have accused Putin's government of favoring compliant public groups and trying to rein in nonprofit organizations critical of the government. He did not specify Wednesday what he meant by political activity, leaving open the possibility of a broad interpretation that could be used to stifle some activities by NGOs.

Putin urged environmental protection organizations to boost cooperation with the government but warned them against promoting interests of foreign businesses that might be financing them.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5154207,00.html



Reference:

#msg-5871042

The extent of Washington’s meddling in Kyrgyz affairs was documented in a February 25 article in the Wall Street Journal. According to the report, Washington’s support for the Kyrgyz opposition is largely funneled through pro-Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

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.

The same press put out several publications critical of Akayev, including the primary organ of the opposition, the newspaper “MSN.” When government authorities cut off the electricity at the publishing house just prior to the first round of parliamentary voting on February 27, the US Embassy in Bishkek had two generators delivered to the facility.

Directed by an American, Mike Stone, the printing operations recently received an infusion of funds from George Soros’s Open Society Institute (OSI). The OSI played a major role in financing opposition activities during Georgia’s US-backed “Rose Revolution.”

The connections between the Kyrgyz opposition and the US extend beyond American funding of pro-opposition NGOs and printing presses. Roza Otunbaeva, who is the head of Ata Dzhurt and one of the leading spokespeople of the anti-Akayev coalition, has extensive personal and political ties with the US, and the West in general.

From 1991 to 1994, she served as Kyrgyz ambassador to the US and Canada, and in 1997 she served as Kyrgyz ambassador to the United Kingdom. As deputy special representative of the UN secretary general on the Georgian-Abkhazian border conflict, she lived in Georgia from 2002 until September 2004. Otunbaeva was working for the UN in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, at the height of the “Rose Revolution.” She routinely describes events in that country as a model for change in Kyrgyzstan.

Initially elected to office by the Supreme Soviet of the Kyrgyz Republic in 1990, Akayev, a physicist and the former president of the Academy of Sciences in Kyrgyzstan, was touted as a liberal leader with few political connections to the country’s communist past. This was despite the fact that he owed his political ascendancy to support from within the old Soviet elite. Confirmed by popular vote in 1991, Akayev’s backing from the West had much more to do with his support for the breakup of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism than it did with any genuine allegiance to democratic principles on his part.

Similarly, his recent transformation into a pariah had little to do with the increasingly autocratic character of his rule over the last several years, which pales in comparison to the brutal methods used by such key US allies as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Rather, US disfavor stemmed largely from his government’s efforts to cultivate and deepen its political and economic ties with Russia, as well as China.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/tulp-m28.shtml