Asia Times: Opposition groups finally registered in Kazakhstan



	March 05, 1999	atimes.com

Central Asia / Siberia

NEWSLINE: Central Asia, Transcaucasia and Russia

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Opposition groups finally registered in Kazakhstan
Months after submitting their registration applications, the People's Republican Party and the Orleu Movement were registered by the country's Justice Ministry, RFE/RL correspondents in Almaty reported on 3 March. The People's Republican Party is headed by former Prime Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin, who was barred by a court decision from participating in the presidential elections held in January. The Orleu Movement is led by journalist Seydakhmet Kuttykadam. (Bruce Pannier)

More Kyrgyz complaints about Uzbek TV
The day after deputy Dooronbek Sadyrbayev told the Kyrgyz parliament that Uzbek Television is broadcasting anti-Kyrgyz propaganda, his colleague Adakham Madumarov told the parliament he has received complaints from his constituency about the same problem, RFE/RL correspondents in Bishkek reported on 2 March. According to Madumarov, who represents the Uzgen District of southern Kyrgyzstan, Uzbek President Islam Karimov appeared in a television interview saying ''5,000 poor citizens of the country led by the scientist come to Uzbekistan every day to buy 10,000 loaves of bread.'' Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev is a physicist by training. In 1990, the Osh riots, which turned into a violent conflict between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, began in Uzgen. (B.P.)

Uzbekistan tightens residence, visa rules
According to a presidential decree signed on 1 March, foreign citizens, including those of CIS countries, may reside in Uzbekistan only if they have a permit issued by law enforcement authorities, ITAR-TASS reported on 3 March. Citizens of CIS countries visiting Uzbekistan for more than three days must obtain a visa. (B.P.)

New Tajik party holds congress
The National Movement Party held its founding congress in Tajikistan on 27 February, Asia Plus reported three days later. Hokim Muhabbatov, the editor of the newspaper ''Junbish'', was elected chairman of the party. The major goals of the party are reported to be establishing peace and national accord, repairing damage caused by the civil war, achieving political and economic independence, combating factionalism and regionalism, and integration into the CIS as well as the Central Asian and world communities. (B.P.)

Tajik president orders speedy integration
Imomali Rakhmonov issued a decree on 2 March ordering all obstacles to implementing the terms of military protocol removed by 12 March, Interfax and ITAR-TASS reported. The decree calls for complete integration of soldiers from the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) into the regular army. The decree also orders opposition leaders amnestied and reinstated to the post they held before the outbreak of the civil war in 1992. BP

Tajikistan offers Uzbekistan anti-terrorist help
Tajikistan has proposed to Uzbekistan establishing a joint force to inspect remote mountainous areas of Tajikistan and locate suspected terrorist training areas, Interfax and ITAR-TASS reported on 2 March. After the 16 February bomb explosions in the Uzbek capital, President Islam Karimov said some of the terrorists involved had trained in camps in Tajikistan. (B.P.)

Berezovskii visits Tbilisi
CIS Executive Secretary Boris Berezovskii held talks with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze in Tbilisi on 2 March on the first leg of a tour that will take him to the capitals of six CIS member states to discuss CIS reform, Interfax reported. Berezovskii told journalists after his meeting with the Georgian president that Georgia's misgivings about extending its participation in the CIS Security Treaty reflect the pact's inadequacy and thus constitutes a problem for the CIS as a whole. Georgian Foreign Minister Irakli Menagharishvili told Interfax that Georgia is ready to work on revising the treaty and may extend its membership if those revisions meet its needs. Menagharishvili implicitly endorsed Berezovskii's performance as CIS executive secretary. Berezovskii also discussed with Shevardnadze the repatriation to Abkhazia of Georgian displaced persons, echoing Shevardnadze's objections that the security guarantees offered by Abkhazia are inadequate. (Liz Fuller)

Opposition continues to criticize election law
The majority Yerkrapah group within the Armenian parliament convened an emergency debate on 2 March to propose 31 minor amendments in the controversial election law passed in the final reading last month, RFE/RL's Yerevan bureau reported (see ''RFE/RL Newsline,'' 8 February 1999). Those amendments do not address the opposition's main objection to the bill, which allocates 75 of a total of 131 seats in single-mandate constituencies. During the debate, Mkrtich Gimshian of the Hayrenik faction claimed to possess proof that changes in the text of the law after its passage were made not by the bill's author, as previously believed, but by the staff of President Kocharian, Noyan Tapan reported. Aram Manoukian of the former majority Hanrapetutiun faction claimed that the bill was adopted with numerous violations of both the parliament's regulations and the country's constitution. (L.F.)

Armenian Kurds end hunger strike
Some 30 ethnic Kurds announced on 2 March that they are abandoning the hunger strike they began two weeks previously outside the UN building in Yerevan to protest the arrest of Kurdistan Workers' Party leader Abdullah Ocalan, ITAR-TASS reported (see ''RFE/RL Newsline,'' 24 February 1999). In Tbilisi, some 80 members of Georgia's estimated 25,000 Kurdish minority staged a demonstration on 2 March to demand that Ocalan be tried not in Turkey but by the International Court in The Hague, Caucasus Press reported. (L.F.)

Azerbaijan murder claim received skeptically
Azerbaijan's National Security Ministry issued a statement on 1 March saying that former parliamentary speaker Rasul Guliev hired a contract killer in Russia to murder former President Abulfaz Elchibey early last month, ITAR-TASS and Turan reported on 2 March. The statement added that the ministry had warned Elchibey about the threat to his life. Guliev, who left Azerbaijan for the U.S. after being dismissed from his post in September 1996 dismissed the claim as ''stupid,'' according to Turan. Almost all other leading Azerbaijani opposition politicians expressed either total disbelief or strong skepticism over the allegations. Elchibey has declined to comment, but Azerbaijan Popular Front Party deputy chairman Assim Mollazade said he considers the allegations ''unlikely.'' Guliev and Elchibey were among a group of five prominent opposition leaders who jointly boycotted last year's presidential elections. (L.F.)

Russia denies violating Azerbaijani airspace
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told Interfax on 2 March that there is no truth to Azerbaijan's 27 February claim that a Russian fighter aircraft stationed in Armenia entered Azerbaijan's airspace two days earlier. Rakhmanin said that the plane had turned back 15-20 kilometers before the frontier. In Yerevan, Colonel Anatolii Balaev, military attache at the Russian embassy, said the incident is still being investigated, according to Noyan Tapan on 2 March. He conceded that the aircraft in question might inadvertently have entered Azerbaijani airspace, noting that Russian pilots have been stationed in Armenia only for a short time and are not yet familiar with the terrain. (L.F.)

Maslyukov orders counter-probe into newspaper
First Deputy Prime Minister Yurii Maslyukov announced on 2 March that he will ask the prosecutor-general to investigate ''Nezavisimaya gazeta'' over the second in a series of articles implicating him in criminal wrongdoing, ITAR-TASS reported. Maslyukov's spokesman clarified the next day that Maslyukov is not seeking curbs on press freedom but merely wants an investigation into slanderous media reports about the government. On 2 March, the newspaper did a follow-up to an earlier piece, suggesting that Maslyukov and his aides somehow embezzled $130 million of budget funds. ''Nezavisimaya gazeta'' receives financial support from Boris Berezovskii's LogoVAZ group. (Julie A. Corwin)

Russia losing more oil than Qatar produces
Russia lost almost 20 million tons of oil - more than is annually produced by Qatar, an OPEC member - during drilling and transport, the state pipeline company Transneft reported on 2 March. According to ITAR-TASS, losses amounted to some 6.5 percent of last year's annual production. (J.A.C.)

International accounting firm to audit FIMACO
Three days after Duma Deputy and Budget Committee member Nikolai Gonchar made new accusations against the Central Bank for its involvement with the Channel Islands-based FIMACO investment firm, the head of the Duma's Audit Chamber, Khachim Karmokov, told reporters on 2 March that his organization has ''not uncovered any serious, large-scale violations'' of Central Bank procedures. However, he also noted that his chamber has not tracked the flow of capital outside Russia. Karmokov disclosed that his agency has filed a report on the Central Bank but added that the document is not available to either the public or the press. Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko plans to ask the international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct an audit of FIMACO, Interfax reported. Central Bank Deputy Chairman Oleg Mozhaiskii said, ''Our professional and business reputation is more important than the money that will have to be spent on an audit. '' (J.A.C.)

New twist in stand-off between evangelicals and police
Members of the evangelical Christian group that seized a public building in Aldan Raion in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) on 28 February have asked police to shoot them, Ekho Moskvy reported on 3 March. They promised they would forgive the police and others for any ''injustices'' perpetrated against them. According to Reuters, the group has rejected offers of money and broken off negotiations with the police. In a statement released to the press, the group added that in addition to wanting the police to shoot them, they also would like the Sakha government to recognize financial debts owed the group, according to ITAR-TASS. The agency also reported that the leader of the group, Pastor Yevgenii, has served a 13-year prison sentence for killing his wife. JAC

Coal miners call for more protest
Leaders of coal miner unions in the Donetsk basin called on 1 March for large-scale protests nine days later, ITAR-TASS reported. At a plenum of Rostov Oblast unions representing 120,000 miners in the region, leaders drafted a message to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Yevgenii Primakov noting that the government still owes miners unpaid wages as well as disability and other benefits amounting to 1.3 billion rubles ($56 million). Meanwhile, dozens of miners in Komi Republic declared their willingness on 2 March to join 10 of their colleagues who launched a hunger strike last month over unpaid wages. The miners work for the Severuglestroi coal company, in the city of Vorkuta. According to ITAR-TASS, company officials say that they cannot pay workers wages because the mine where they work is to be liquidated. (J.A.C.)

Four years later, no break in Listiev case
March 1 marked the fourth anniversary of the contract slaying of Vladislav Listiev, famous television journalist and first director-general of Russian Public Television (ORT). An anonymous senior law-enforcement official told ITAR-TASS that investigators still involved in the case are now working on a theory that Listiev's murder was connected with the re-division of ORT's advertising market. Financial magnate Boris Berezovskii told reporters the same day that he does not doubt that President Yeltsin's former security head Aleksandr Korzhakov was invovled in the killing. The next day, two unidentified men tried to kill a local military journalist in Rostov na Donu, Aleksandr Tolmachov. (J.A.C.)

Doughnuts fall into economic hole
The Dunkin' Donuts chain, specializing in doughnuts and coffee, has closed its two shops in Moscow because Russia's economic crisis negatively impacted sales, AP reported. In October, another U.S. fast food chain, Pizza Hut, announced plans to shut its two Moscow locations. (J.A.C.)

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