The U.S. State Department's former top human rights official, Lorne Craner, spent much of the past three years grappling with the challenge of pressing reforms with new U.S. allies in the war on terror. During his final few months in office this year, the State Department de-certified Uzbekistan for economic aid and helped censure Turkmenistan in the UN Human Rights Commission. Craner says such actions demonstrate that, despite accusations to the contrary, the Bush administration has maintained human rights as a foreign policy priority. Craner talked with RFE/RL on the sidelines of the Republican Party convention in New York.
Thirteen years ago today, Kyrgyzstan became the first Soviet Central Asian republic to declare its independence from the Soviet Union. Uzbekistan followed the next day, and Tajikistan about a week later on 9 September. By the end of that year, all five Soviet Central Asian republics were free nations. After years of Soviet domination, independence was hoped to usher in a period of rapid political and economic development. But RFE/RL spoke with two analysts who say the reality hasn't yet lived up to the expectations.
31 August 2004 -- Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah arrived in the Uzbek capital on 29 August for an official visit aimed at improving regional relations with his country's Central Asian neighbors.
Turkmenistan is planning to build a lake and river in an effort to create a reliable storage area for water, expand farmland, and make the capital, Ashgabat, more attractive. Neighboring states are watching these projects with alarm, however. Previous water-diversion projects in Central Asia have left a devastating environmental legacy, the most visible being the dying Aral Sea. Rational use of water is a priority in the region, and many analysts cite disputes over water as being among the more likely causes of friction between the Central Asian states. In the second of two parts, RFE/RL looks at how the Turkmen water projects are being viewed outside Turkmenistan, particularly by its neighbors.
Japan's Foreign Minister Yokiro Kawaguchi arrived in Uzbekistan today, starting a tour that will take her to four Central Asian states and Mongolia. Kawaguchi is due to give a speech in Tashkent that will articulate Tokyo's new policy toward the Silk Route countries. Kawaguchi's trip was already something of a success even before she left Japan, considering the Japanese Foreign Ministry has arranged a rare event in Central Asia -- a meeting in Astana that will include the foreign ministers of all five Central Asian states. RFE/RL correspondent Bruce Pannier looks at Kawaguchi's tour and Japan's new strategy in the region.
Washington, 25 August 2004 (RFE/RL) -- The United States says it will look into allegations that a court in Uzbekistan unfairly convicted defendants on charges stemming from a recent wave of violence.
25 August 2004 -- An Uzbek court yesterday sentenced 15 people to jail in connection with a wave of violence that killed almost 50 people in Uzbekistan earlier this year.
The aftermath of a bombing in Tashkent this spring. Perpetual Polemic Terrorism, and particularly terrorism with a perceived or avowed Islamist agenda, has sparked an increasingly acrimonious debate. Broadly speaking, two positions, both of which condemn terrorism -- without exclusively defining it -- as an unacceptable form of political violence, delimit the debate: 1) that terrorism emerges from the confluence of legitimate grievances and unresponsive government, and that the best way to fight terrorism is by creating viable mechanisms for effecting political change and addressing festering concerns; 2) that terrorism represents an ideological commitment to violence so willfully and profoundly at variance with acceptable standards of civilized behavior that it must be stamped out with the harshest measures the law allows, or else it will metastasize like a cancer.
20 August 2004 -- Uzbek prosecutors today said they would not seek the death penalty in the trial of 15 people charged in connection with suicide bombings and shoot-outs that claimed 47 lives earlier this year.
For landlocked Central Asia, transport infrastructures and regional cooperation are key conditions to emerging from trade isolation. By opening transport links with neighboring China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have in recent years established themselves as important conduits for Chinese goods sold in Central Asia, where they are in great demand. Tajikistan followed almost three months ago with the opening of a border crossing that had been sealed since Soviet times.
After five years, the Uzbek government has finally agreed to help in demining its borders with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The land mines were planted to prevent militants from entering Uzbekistan from the east, but so far appear only to have killed scores of civilians. Though reports this week claim that the process of removing the mines has already begun, residents in some of the affected areas say otherwise.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) should consider paying extra attention to Central Asia and the Caucasus. That's the view of the OSCE's current chairman, Solomon Pasi. Pasi, who is also Bulgaria's foreign minister, says it makes sense now to concentrate on those parts of the world, in view of new international realities. He also said it would be "far more useful" to hold the OSCE's major annual economic forum in Central Asia rather than in Central Europe. RFE/RL reports on what looks like a shift in emphasis for the 55-member OSCE, which is Europe's largest security and rights body.
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