Thirty-seven individuals are now on trial in Kazakhstan’s western city of Aktau charged with organizing and participating in violent disturbances that left 14 people dead and scores injured in the oil town of Zhanaozen in December. These tragic events were sparked by a long-standing dispute between oil company Ozenmunaigaz in Zhanaozen and some of its former workers.

Six Kazakh officials from the Interior Ministry are also facing criminal charges for exceeding their authority, and two former mayors of Zhanaozen and a first deputy regional head have been arrested and charged with misappropriating state money intended for the social welfare of the town’s population.

Kazakhstan’s Prosecutor General’s Office has conducted an exhaustive investigation into the Zhanaozen events. We established that the disturbances were caused by a group of former oil workers aided by a number of young people who disrupted the Dec. 16 celebrations of Kazakhstan’s 20 years of independence by attacking police officers and innocent bystanders, as well as vandalizing, looting and setting fire to 125 facilities in the town.

This shocking violence was unprecedented in Kazakhstan and has its roots in social tensions that were inadequately managed at the local level. Regrettably, corruption on the part of some Zhanaozen officials exacerbated the problem. While as a government we have to be open about the causes of these tragic events and take measures to prevent them from happening again, we also have a responsibility to deal swiftly, firmly and fairly with the perpetrators. No civilized country can tolerate behavior of this kind.

This is exactly what we are doing, and we have also taken an extra step by making the trials open. It is important that the citizens of Kazakhstan and our international partners are able to see that justice is being done.

A number of human rights organizations have claimed that some of the 37 charged with instigating the disturbances in Zhanaozen gave evidence under duress and cannot receive a fair trial as a result. These are serious allegations, and we will investigate them if they can be substantiated.

Our investigation also identified important failures in some of the police responses to the disturbances. While police actions were for the most part appropriate and in line with operating procedures, there were instances when the use of weapons and other special equipment was disproportionate and inappropriate to the level of threat they faced. This is why a number of law enforcement officials will stand trial for their actions. Our message is clear: No one stands above the law.

Kazakhstan has much to learn from these events and our handling of them. We are studying the experience of the United States, France and Britain to see how they dealt with similar outbreaks of violence. The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, applied important lessons from the civil unrest of 1992, including new forms of community policing and partnerships with civic organizations.

After last summer’s riots in several British cities, courts in Britain worked overtime to hear the cases against rioters and looters and handed down tough sentences to convicted offenders, in some cases going well beyond the usual sentencing guidelines.

In these situations, firm action is needed to protect society and to keep society’s confidence in the state’s commitment to uphold public order. Individuals convicted of offenses related to the Zhanaozen disturbances can also expect the full force of the law to be applied against them.

In today’s world, news travels faster than ever before but often not accurately. Some early media reports from Zhanaozen put the death toll much higher than it was, and one Russian newspaper falsely reported the testimony of a surgeon at Zhanaozen’s central hospital, who claimed to have seen the bodies of 23 victims of the violence. Investigations revealed that this person did not exist.

However difficult as it may be in these crisis situations, journalists have the same responsibility to check their sources and report the facts. At the same time, governments in democratic countries have to maintain a difficult balance between protecting society and ensuring the rights of the media to report these events.

Kazakhstan is learning the painful lessons of Zhanaozen to avoid situations of this kind in future. Bringing the people responsible for the violence to justice and ensuring they receive a fair trial is a vital step in this process.

• Dialogue with the West a Must – Yerzhan Kazykhanov
  The following, penned in Arab News by Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov, is an intriguing recommendation that Muslims should address misp...
• Kazakhstan Paves the Way in Nuclear Responsibility
  20 years ago, reeling from decades of Soviet nuclear testing, the nation of Kazakhstan took a monumental stand. As its first order of business, Kaz...
• Foreign Policy Magazine Interviews Yermukhamet Yertysbayev
  On April 3, Kazakhs will head to the polls to vote in a presidential election. With major opposition parties boycotting the vote, President Nursultan ...

As its first order of business, Kazakhstan made nuclear responsibility a national mandate, renouncing all nuclear weapons and shutting down the test site in Semipalatinsk, where over 400 detonations once took place.

To mark the closure of the test site and the ongoing efforts to raise awareness to the devastating impact nuclear radiation can have on innocent lives, Kazakhstan will be holding an International Forum for a Nuclear Weapon Free World in Astana, October 12-13.

• Learning From Zhanaozen
  The following was originally published in the Moscow Times, penned by prosecutor general of Kazakhstan Askhat Daulbayev. Thirty-seven individuals ...
• Dialogue with the West a Must – Yerzhan Kazykhanov
  The following, penned in Arab News by Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov, is an intriguing recommendation that Muslims should address misp...
• Foreign Policy Magazine Interviews Yermukhamet Yertysbayev
  On April 3, Kazakhs will head to the polls to vote in a presidential election. With major opposition parties boycotting the vote, President Nursultan ...

Aral City’s vice-mayor Kolbai Danabaev can’t wait to have a beer by the sea shore. He is optimistic: he thinks he’ll be able to do so in two years time.

Aral City, in western Kazakhstan, on the northern tip of the Aral Sea, has the trappings of a beach spot: sun, sand, and locally-brewed Aral Beer. But, while Kolbai Danabaev and other city officials are happy to pose for PR photos with the local brew in hand, in the background, something crucial is missing.

There is no sea.

The port today is a fisherman’s paradise lost. The shoreline is nowhere in sight. The dry and dusty sea bed stretches into the horizon, the sea having receded 20 kilometres away.

Some 24 native freshwater species could be caught in the Aral Sea. Fish was such a central part of the cuisine of this town that the pike-perch, with its delicate flavor and small bones, was used instead of boiled meat in the local version of the Kazakh national dish, beshbarmak. This is quite something in a meat obsessed country.

Now, the restaurants here don’t serve fish, as it is too costly for most locals to eat. Indeed, the only fish on view are in the city’s museum, sealed up in display jars.

Aral Sea catastrophe

Aral was once the world’s fourth largest lake, but Soviet-era irrigation projects, beginning in the 1960s began to divert the water from the two rivers that flow into it, the Syr Darya, and the Amu Darya. By 1980, the sea had shrunk to 17 per cent of its original land area, and 9 per cent of its water volume. The images pictured here show the extent to which the sea shrunk between 2000 and 2009.

The water became so salinated that native freshwater fish species were unable to survive, and the communities around the sea had to make do with the flatfish flounder, a saltwater species introduced in the 1970s. Salt and ‘toxic dust’ from pesticide and fertiliser residues left on the bottom of the sea was carried by the wind, causing human health and environmental damage.

And so, with the water and the fish gone went the jobs, and much more. Fish processing and ship building in Aral City, supporting some 6,000 people, ground to a halt. Many families in the surrounding 24 villages in the region, facing unemployment, packed up and left for the city of Kyzylorda, 450 kilometres away.

Local teacher and translator, Akmaral Utemisova, says, ‘During school lessons, we ask the children to imagine what the sea would be like,’ she says. ‘None of the children under 15 have ever seen it.’

Back from the brink?

For years, the Aral Sea catastrophe was not addressed. By 1990, the damage was so severe it had split into two parts – the Northern Sea bordering on Kazakhstan and the larger South Sea in Uzbekistan.

Despite regional efforts to restore sea levels by the five Central Asian countries through the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS) created by Kazakh president Nursultan Nazerbayev in 1993, there were only temporary results.

Then in 2003, the Kazakh government, along with the World Bank, began work on the joint $64 million Northern Aral Sea restoration project, including the eight mile Kok-Aral dam, completed in 2005. The dam will allow water to accumulate in the Northern Sea and help restore delta and riverine wetland ecosystems as well as sustaining and increasing agriculture and fish production in the region.

The second phase of the project begins this year, although, according to Kazakh vice minster for Environmental Protection, Mazhit Turmagambetov, there is an issue with finding funding to match the amount proposed by the World Bank.

Wishfully, Nahmadin Musabasev, Aral City’s mayor, says he believes the second phase of the project will deliver the Aral Sea back up to the city by 2013, although according to IFAS chairman Saghit Ibatullin, it will probably be no earlier than 2018.

Kok-Aral Dam

It is jarring to drive on what was once the Aral Sea. The Ecologist is en route to see the Kok-Aral Dam, some three-hours from Aral City on the border between the North and South Aral Sea and the delta of the Syr Darya River. The desertified sea bed is now home to camels and horses, grazing lazily on bits of grass. A couple of ships lie stranded along the drive, but the fabled ship cemeteries have gone, the victims of looting for scrap metal.

Once the water comes into to view, it isn’t the rich wetland ecosystem it once was, but there are now signs of life returning. A few herons, ducks, storks and seagulls can be seen along the shoreline.

Already the Kok-Aral dam has provided a lease on life for the nearby villages. Water levels, which originally were 53 metres above Baltic Sea level, and at the lowest, 38 metres, have now increased to 42 metres above Baltic Sea level. Salinity has decreased 5 times, which has enabled 7 fish species to return, and fish catch has increased 10-12 times.

The Ecologist visits a small fish processing centre near Karaterren village. Along with flounder, there is carp, pike perch, and catfish all caught on the day using small motor boats. Batyrkhan Brekeev, a fisherman and the son and the father of fishermen, recently returned to fishing after years as a ‘businessman’.

Fish catch is now heavily regulated and enforced, the fishermen say, through quotas and inspections. In the last year a total of 2,500 tonnes of fish were processed in the 3 processing plants in Aral City. Mayor Nahmadin Musabasev says the catch should rise to 12,000 tonnes by the end of the second phase of the World Bank project. Increased efficiency of irrigation will provide more River water flowing into the sea.

Fish stocks are bolstered by a hatchery in nearby Kozhar village, which releases millions of eggs of various species every year.

Future threats

The success of the restoration project can only be seen in light of the reality that the project ensures the existence of only the North Aral Sea. There is much concern over the future of the South Aral Sea, bordering on Uzbekistan.

It was an extreme decision to save the Kazakh part of the sea, essentially preventing water from the Syr Darya River to flow down into the Uzbek area.

The Syr Darya River is the main source of inflow to the northern, or Small Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, while the Amu Darya, enters the lake from Uzbekistan.

Kazakh vice minister Mazhit Turmagambetov says ‘What we can do is regulate the water from the Syr Darya River going into the smaller sea, but the total Aral Sea depends on Uzbekistan.’

According to Vadim Ni, Director of the Law & Environment Eurasia partnership, which supports legal expertise to environmental campaigns, the Aral Sea Restoration Project is a success but, ‘There are conflicting interests. Uzbekistan has no interest in restoring the Aral Sea. They want to use the water for cotton irrigation. They are not trying to conserve’.

How did the Uzbek government respond to the Kok-Aral Dam limiting water into their part of the Aral Sea? According to Saghit Ibatullin, the chairman of IFAS, whose executive committee includes the Uzbek government, there was ‘no problem’. Instead, Uzbekistan continues to prospect for for oil and gas deposits in the Aral Sea.

In Karaterren village, near the Kok-Aral dam, the community is beginning to rebuild. We are treated as honourable guests and given a traditional meal of pike-perch, meat and bolsak, or fried bread at the mayor’s house. His wife is expecting their sixth child, with 5 daughters already.

By 1997, half of the 500 families of this village had moved away. Now they are gradually coming back, 14 families returning in the last 3 years. Raising a vodka glass in toast, he adds, ‘so have the fish’.

• No Related Post

“I don’t know the reason of their detention. I only know that Irakli and Natia are detained”, Marina Andghuladze said.

Photo reporter of Georgian MFA Giorgi Abdaladze is also detained.

InterPressNews has been informed a while ago about the detention of the photo reporter Zurab Kurtsikidze, who is in the so-called “Moduli” building. Details and reasons behind the detention are not known yet but the Arcadia Foundation will keep our readers up to speed on any new information that is divulged.

• Success of Georgia Police Reform Is a Function of Sovereignty
  Jamestown Foundation correspondent Giorgi Kvelashvili below discusses the de-Sovietization of Georgia, its progress based on the work and recent writi...
• Steps in the Right Direction: Zambian President Bows Out After Losing At Polls
  CNN reports that Zambia's incumbent president has bowed out with "grace and honor" today after election results showed his main challenger had won, hi...
• Shale Gas and the Putin Puzzle
  The following comes to us by By Holman W. Jenkins jr., courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. Stalin died in bed at age 73 of a stroke, virtually unt...

Stalin died in bed at age 73 of a stroke, virtually untreated, as his aides stood around and debated the propriety of calling in a doctor without an instruction from their master. Given Vladimir Putin’s age (58) and modern life expectancies, it could be decades before his henchmen might have a similar opportunity for inaction.

A moment of suspense came in 2008 when then-President Putin faced a constitutional prohibition on a third consecutive term. He solved his dilemma by turning himself into prime minister, arranging for one of his factotums to be elected as president, and carrying on as before. Now he can stay prime minister indefinitely, or can run in next year’s presidential race.

Bottom line: The world, and Russia, may be living with Mr. Putin for a long time.

He rose by pushing an older mentor into invisible retirement; so did Saddam Hussein. Mr. Putin started a war in Chechnya. Saddam started a war with Iran. Each regime became known for the violence that befell critics and other inconvenient persons. Saddam had his way for so long, and was so surrounded by yes men, that his final miscalculation was almost inevitable. The precedent is not an entirely happy one. Saddam’s downfall came at considerable cost.

Mr. Putin would have every excuse for one day committing a similar miscalculation. His seizure of Yukos and imprisonment of its boss, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which incidentally wiped out Yukos’s Western minority shareholders, went mostly unrebuked. His country’s nearly unbroken record of double-crossing Western oil companies has gone pretty much unrebuked. The death of investigative journalists, the killings of nosy legislators, the polonium murder, on British soil, of critic Alexander Litvinenko, in an act of nuclear terrorism, have all gone pretty much unrebuked.

Western governments have not cut profiles of exceptional courage in dealing with Putin’s Russia. Yet, beyond our merits, the Lord has recently smiled on us in the form of shale gas.

First, thanks to the unexpected shale gas boom in the U.S., liquefied natural gas cargoes once planned for the U.S. have gone looking for new buyers. Result: European customers have been able to shake off Russian long-term contracts linked to the price of oil.

Russia insists the gas glut is temporary. It has tried to fight back by pushing gas sales to China. But now those talks are stalled over price thanks to Beijing’s discovery that—guess what?—China back home may have the biggest shale potential of all.

And the hits will keep on coming, upending a high-price dynamic and European dependency that have suited Russia very well (and, admittedly, also suited some of its customers, especially German utilities).

A “land grab” is under way in Europe, says a new study by the European Center for Energy and Resource Security. Having missed the shale boom in the U.S., ExxonMobil has been drilling in Germany since 2008. In France, Toreador Resources and its partner Hess Corp. are prepared to seek oil and gas under the Eiffel Tower. Poland—a country whose energy captivity to Russia is especially irksome—may be sitting on 300 years worth of shale energy. Chevron and ConocoPhillips are among the companies already drilling there.

Though none of this gas, produced by a method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, will likely find its way to market before 2025, shale is already reshaping global energy politics.

But what the Lord giveth, European politics may fritter away. French campaigner Jose Bove, having failed to kick McDonald’s out of Paris, is now jawboning Poland against developing its reserves, handing a Polish-subtitled copy of “Gasland,” the U.S.-made antifracking documentary, recently to Poland’s president.

France in May passed a ban on fracking. Poland is the anti-France, set to take the European Union’s rotating presidency next month and determined to move ahead on fracking. A mystery wrapped in an enigma is Germany, with its precipitous decision to retire its nuclear plants, and its big, Russia-friendly investment in Nord Stream, a gas pipeline whose board is headed by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

The obstacles, environmental and political, are perhaps overplayed, given the eye-popping wealth on offer. Polls show a solid majority of French voters in favor of development that will lower energy prices. In a Bloomberg interview, French legislator Isabelle Vasseur, who ardently backed the moratorium, was quick to add: “France could have phenomenal energy reserves so we must not close the door forever.”

Back in Russia, meanwhile, a presidential race is supposedly shaping up between Mr. Putin and his iPad-toting protégé, President Dmitry Medvedev. Whereas Mr. Putin last week pooh-poohed what he called liberal experiments, Mr. Medvedev says Russia must not be so dependent on oil and gas exports. He says the country should modernize, liberalize—it should become more welcoming to foreign investment, establishing a rule of law, ending cronyism.

Don’t bet on Mr. Medvedev. Bet on the crude logic of Russia’s declining energy power, which Western policy should do everything possible to exploit, to deliver better behavior in Moscow.

• U.S.-Russia Ties Prove Difficult to Rebuild
  As the United States and Russia look to improve their equivocal relationship, there is still great hesitation as to what the future may hold for the t...
• Success of Georgia Police Reform Is a Function of Sovereignty
  Jamestown Foundation correspondent Giorgi Kvelashvili below discusses the de-Sovietization of Georgia, its progress based on the work and recent writi...
• Georgia: President’s Personal Photo Correspondent and Wife Detained
  Georgian President’s personal photographer Irakli Gedenidze and his wife Natia Gedenidze have been detained, apparently accused of participating in a ...

According to the official position of Interpol, such notices “are not international arrest warrants” but are automatically circulated at the request of the requesting state “to assist the national police in identifying or locating those persons with a view to their arrest”.  Arrest warrants are issued exclusively by national authorities, which in Mr. Egiazaryan’s case took place nearly four months ago.

The Investigative Committee’s arrest warrant is also fraudulent.  Under Russian law, an arrest warrant may only be issued in the absence of the accused if that individual has been placed on an international wanted list, whereas a mandatory condition for placement on the international wanted list is placement on the national wanted list.  Mr. Egiazaryan was placed on the Russian national wanted list on the false pretence that his whereabouts are unknown.

Mr. Egiazaryan and his legal representatives have on numerous occasions informed the Russian Investigative Committee of Mr. Egiazaryan’s current address, where he has been residing since September 2010 (i.e. before any criminal inquiry was instituted against him), as well as the address and telephone numbers of his counsel in the United States.

Further, the Russian Investigative Committee has been advised of the fact that it should, and is required to seek appropriate investigative demands pursuant to the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), which governs the acquisition of information in government investigations conducted by the Russian Federation of persons residing in the United States.  The Investigative Committee has in fact written several letters to Mr. Egiazaryan’s home address and legal representatives and received prompt and comprehensive responses.  Consequently, as Mr. Egiazaryan’s whereabouts, including his specific home address, are well known to the Russian Investigative Committee, he was placed on the Russian wanted list without any legal basis.

This is yet another example of politically motivated action by the Russian legal system that does not stand up to scrutiny.

• U.S.-Russia Ties Prove Difficult to Rebuild
  As the United States and Russia look to improve their equivocal relationship, there is still great hesitation as to what the future may hold for the t...
• Georgia: President’s Personal Photo Correspondent and Wife Detained
  Georgian President’s personal photographer Irakli Gedenidze and his wife Natia Gedenidze have been detained, apparently accused of participating in a ...
• Shale Gas and the Putin Puzzle
  The following comes to us by By Holman W. Jenkins jr., courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. Stalin died in bed at age 73 of a stroke, virtually unt...

At a State Department briefing earlier this week, the spokesman stated that U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea Ambassador Robert King may be tasked to lead a food assessment mission to North Korea. This announcement comes following a round of consultations led by Ambassador Stephen Bosworth last week in South Korea to manage differences on the issue, since United States sees food assistance as an issue separate from politics while the South Korean government sees food assistance as a form of leverage by which to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table. The consultations resulted in begrudging South Korean government support (or at least the absence of objections to) the U.S. decision to send an assessment team to North Korea.

The decision to send a U.S. food assessment mission itself does not mean that the United States will actually decide to give food aid to North Korea, but it does open the door to that possibility. A major obstacle remains the outstanding issues between the United States and North Korea that must be addressed if food assistance is to be approved, including the unmonitored disposition of food aid that was disbursed in North Korea after the departure of monitors at the time of North Korea’s decision to prematurely end provision of food assistance in March of 2009.

The most interesting aspect of the announcement is the possibility that U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, Ambassador Robert King, will lead the mission. This new wrinkle is intriguing for a variety of reasons:

• North Korea has traditionally not recognized human rights issues as a legitimate issue for discussion between the United States and North Korea, but despite this circumstance appears to have accepted Ambassador King as the leader of the delegation. One factor that may have made this decision easier in Pyongyang is that Ambassador King is already a known quantity to the North Koreans, having visited the country with his former boss, Congressman Tom Lantos, as chief of staff to Lantos in 2005. The existence of a prior relationship between King and the North Koreans and the framing of the mission as primarily focused on humanitarian aid probably facilitated North Korean acceptance.
• Ambassador King’s leadership of the delegation provides a political inoculation to criticism of the Obama administration for moving forward in its assessment of conditions in North Korea, regardless of the outcome of the mission, and for any potential provision of food assistance to North Korea, given his prior relationships and good standing with Capitol Hill. Ambassador King should serve as an effective interlocutor and advocate on this issue precisely because he enjoys relationships on the Hill that will make him an effective advocate of the administration’s decision, especially given that the position of Ambassador for North Korean Human Rights was a creation of Congress through the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, so in this sense, Ambassador King owes his role and position to the decision of the U.S. Congress. However, some might argue that by appointing a political appointee to lead the assessment, the Obama administration has unnecessarily given a political tinge to what might otherwise have been seen as a purely technical delegation.
• Ambassador King’s leadership of the mission sends the signal that the United States frames the food issue in a humanitarian and human rights context, presumably strengthening the demarcation between the humanitarian mission and any potential political developments in the U.S.-DPRK relationship. However, since North Korea sees U.S. decisions on humanitarian aid through a political lens, the food aid assessment might be treated in Pyongyang as a political signal that the Obama administration might finally be open to a broader political dialogue with North Korea. Ambassador King will want to take care to limit the scope of his dialogue to humanitarian issues if the United States truly wants to separate humanitarian from political issues. South Korea will want to see the purpose of the humanitarian mission separated clearly from spillover into politics, while North Korea may see humanitarian assistance dialogue as an early indicator that the U.S. government may be willing to broaden the scope of high-level bilateral interaction to include political dialogue.
• Ambassador King’s role and title as Special Envoy on Human Rights Issues suggests that he will be expected to raise a myriad of non-humanitarian human rights concerns with North Korea on topics that North Korea has historically denied as having either a factual basis or having legitimacy as part of the U.S.-DPRK diplomatic relationship. Among the issues that have recently gained traction among human rights NGOs, the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea has just released a report on North Korea’s involvement in international abductions and the Korean War Abduction Research Institute has stepped up lobbying in Seoul and Washington to have the unresolved armistice issue of North Korea’s abductions of South Korean citizens from the Korean War reintroduced as a current issue that must be resolved.

A substantive issue that has emerged on the basis of previous assessments by U.S. NGOs and the UN World Food Programme is the role of the markets versus North Korea’s public distribution system, through which North Korean government authorizes preferred institutions eligible to receive international aid. To address this issue, the WFP and others have discussed the possibility of “monitoring the markets” as part of the regime that North Korea would have to accept as part of a new round of food assistance.

However, North Korean agreements to monitor the markets will not go far enough as elements of any new program for distributing food aid to North Korea. In the absence of inability to independently determine greatest need, the best option for saving lives in North Korea is to stabilize grain prices through the market mechanism through subsidies that lower market prices. The introduction of external assistance through the market mechanism would influence existing suppliers of grain, who currently have a monopoly on supply and the capacity to influence market availability and perceptions of supply and demand to maximize their own profits. The problem is that such a program would require a greater level of intrusiveness into North Korean markets than North Korea is likely to be willing to accept at this time. Monitoring the markets will provide more detailed information regarding domestic prices inside North Korea, but will not fundamentally decrease the dependence of the entire aid monitoring project on the North Korean government’s listing of priorities.

• U.S.-Russia Ties Prove Difficult to Rebuild
  As the United States and Russia look to improve their equivocal relationship, there is still great hesitation as to what the future may hold for the t...
• U.S. Revokes Venezuelan Ambassador’s Visa Amid Escalating Feud With Chavez
  BusinessWeek has reported that the U.S. today revoked the visa of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s ambassador to Washington as part of a five-month ...
• Obama Presents Plan to Help Disarm LRA in Uganda
  U.S. President Barack Obama has presented to Congress his administration's plan for supporting the disarmament of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda...

What’s next for the U.S.-Russian reset? Having already succeeded in ramming the ambitious New START arms control treaty through a reluctant Senate late last year, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is now eyeing the next step in its reboot of relations with Moscow: integrating Russia into the world economy.

“Our trade and investment relationship is nowhere near where it could or should be,” U.S. Vice President Joe Biden wrote recently in the International Herald Tribune. “Russia was America’s 37th largest export market in 2010, and the value of goods that cross our borders with Canada and Mexico every few days exceeds the annual value of our trade with Russia.”

Further improvements to U.S.-Russian ties, Biden believes, require the United States to support Russia’s ongoing efforts to join the World Trade Organization.

As even Biden recognizes, however, doing so faces a formidable hurdle. More than a decade after then-President Boris Yeltsin termed Russia a “criminal state,” the country still suffers from pervasive corruption. Changing that culture and restoring investor confidence are prerequisites for Russia to be seriously considered for membership in the world’s largest trading bloc. All of which, in turn, requires serious, systemic alterations to how the country and its government operates.

But that’s easier said than done. Just ask President Dmitry Medvedev, who has repeatedly attempted to impose greater official accountability since inheriting the post from Vladimir Putin back in 2008. His administration has produced a national plan to combat corruption, fired numerous regional and local officials for abuse of office and imposed tighter regulations on the country’s notoriously unruly police.

Yet these efforts have had no discernible effect on Russia’s accelerating drop to the worst spots on the global corruption lists. For example, between 2000 and 2009, Russia plunged 64 notches on Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index. Last year, Russia slid still further, ranking 154th out of a possible 178 countries — putting it on a par with Kenya and the Congo in terms of graft.

Medvedev’s lack of success in his battle against corruption is because he has little political muscle to fight the entrenched Kremlin machine. After all, by some estimates, as many of 73 of the 75 most influential government posts in Russia are held by members of the amalgam of intelligence, economic and political interests that cumulatively make up the country’s ruling elite.

International financial institutions understand this very well, which is why they are making a beeline for the exits. In recent weeks, at least six European and U.S. banks have announced plans to scale back their operations in Russia — or shutter them outright — as a result of unfair competition, corrupt business practices and an uncertain investment climate. The casualties include Morgan Stanley, Banco Santander and Barclay’s.

It would be foolish for Washington to expect the Kremlin to voluntarily enact measures that would alter the prevailing status quo. It’s a safe bet that Russia’s entrenched interests will have to be dragged kicking and screaming toward transparency and good governance.

Maybe they will be. Recent moves by Medvedev hold out at least some promise of beginning to address the country’s entrenched culture of corruption, provided they are allowed to see the light of day and then, even more crucially, enforced. Chief among them is a proposed bill to fine corrupt officials up to 100 times the sum of a bribe.

Still, given the nature of the country’s government, such change won’t come easy. And if in its pursuit of better ties with Moscow, Washington succumbs to the temptation to paper over the Kremlin’s internal deformities, it’s a safe bet that such change won’t come at all.

• U.S. Plans to Assess Food Situation in North Korea
  The Council on Foreign Relations reports that the United States could quite possibly be making headway into possible talks between North and South Kor...
• Shale Gas and the Putin Puzzle
  The following comes to us by By Holman W. Jenkins jr., courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. Stalin died in bed at age 73 of a stroke, virtually unt...
• Russian Authorities Submit Fraudulent Arrest Warrant to Interpol
  In a systemic pattern of Interpol abuse, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that former Duma member Ashot Egiazaryan was placed on the ‘Interp...

The LA times reports that  human rights group urged Bangladesh on Tuesday to end torture, extrajudicial killings and related abuses by an elite anticrime force that the organization said had killed nearly 200 people since January 2009, including many allegedly executed while in the unit’s custody.

Human Rights Watch further called on the Asian nation to disband the Rapid Action Battalion if its record doesn’t improve.

Brad Adams, the group’s Asia director, said he doesn’t have an exact figure for the number of the reported deaths involved extrajudicial killings since the government of Prime Minister Sheik Hasina Wajed came to power 28 months ago, in part because Human Rights Watch didn’t investigate every case.

But the number of “crossfire” deaths, a blanket term the unit uses to justify many of its killings, was significant, Adams said in a telephone interview from Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital.

Bangladeshi Home Minister Shahara Khatun, who oversees the battalion, also known as RAB, criticized the rights group’s conclusions.

“RAB personnel only retaliate in self-defense,” Khatun said, according to the Bangladeshi online newspaper BDNews24.com. “RAB do not kill anyone, but shoot only when criminals do.”

Human Rights Watch says in its 53-page report released Tuesday that the ruling Awami League strongly criticized the rapid-action force when it was in opposition, only to defend its deadly record once the party came to power.

No member of the force or other official has ever been prosecuted for a crossfire killing or other human rights abuse, the report says.

The ruling party’s unwillingness to act reflects in part a fear of the army, which has staged coups against civilian leaders and jailed Wajed during a caretaker government, Adams said. It also doesn’t want to appear soft on crime, he said.

The rapid-action force, formed in March 2004 amid a crime wave, draws on members of the army, air force, navy, police and other law enforcement groups who serve for a limited time before returning to their units. The battalion, which supporters credit with stemming militant Islamic groups, has killed 732 suspects since its inception.

Human Rights Watch urged foreign governments, including the United States and Britain, to stop working with the battalion until it ended the alleged extrajudicial executions and torture.

Both countries have provided human rights training, and Britain also schooled battalion members in interrogation techniques, according to May 2009 diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks group.

• Sahrawi Refugees Imprisoned, Unnoticed
  The stomach growl heard round the world: Aminatou Haidar, referred to as the “Sahrawi Gandhi” commenced a hunger strike in the middle of November of 2...

Dozens of human rights and watchdog groups are calling on the United Nations to expel from its ranks a Swiss official who allegedly had a hand in creating the al-Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights more than two decades ago.

The prize, as its title suggests, is named after Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi, whose efforts to mow down rebels and protesters triggered an internationally backed no-fly zone and military intervention last month. Over the years, the award bearing his name has gone to such controversial and dubious figures as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Louis Farrakhan and French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.

The story behind the prize is a matter of dispute, but UN Watch and others claim Jean Ziegler — a former member of the Swiss Parliament who for the last several years has served as an adviser to the U.N. Human Rights Council — played a leading role.

UN Watch, a United Nations watchdog group, was among 45 organizations that sent an appeal to U.N. leaders this week urging them to oust Ziegler, along with a Libyan official, from the Human Rights Council. Further, they urged the Human Rights Council to apologize to victims of Qaddafi’s regime for electing Ziegler in the first place, and the Swiss government to do the same for nominating him.

The appeal referred to Ziegler as “a long-time apologist and propagandist for Col. Qaddafi and his regime.”

As recently as last month, Ziegler, who serves on the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, has denied supporting Qaddafi and denied being behind the Qaddafi prize. He told a Swiss television station last month that he’s never supported Libya’s policies and never played a role in the human rights prize, according to a transcript of the broadcast.

The Austrian Times also reported last week that he called Qaddafi a “psychopath” — however, the same report said the government of Salzburg had just rescinded an invitation for him to speak at an upcoming festival because of his potential ties to Qaddafi.

“If a leading music festival is ashamed and now distances itself from Qaddafi apologists, why is the United Nations not doing the same?” UN Watch Director Hillel Neuer said in a statement.

A UN Watch report in 2006 alleged that Ziegler played a “leading role” in founding the prize bearing Qaddafi’s name, and went on to become vice chairman of a group that helped administer the prize.

Several news reports from 1989 — when the first-ever Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights was awarded to South African leader Nelson Mandela — cite Ziegler in connection with the award.

United Press International quoted Ziegler, as a committee member, describing the prize as “an anti-Nobel Peace Prize award for the Third World.”

Time magazine reported that Qaddafi put $10 million in trust to finance the prize. The Time article described Ziegler as a “member of the jury that selected Mandela” as its first recipient.

The award, said to be worth $250,000, has since gone to more controversial figures.

The website for the prize says it was established in 1988 — the same year as the Libya-orchestrated Lockerbie bombing — to recognize individuals who “have distinctively contributed to rendering an outstanding human service and has achieved great actions in defending human rights, protecting the causes of freedom and supporting peace everywhere in the world.”

Ziegler, as well as a representative at the Swiss Embassy in Washington, did not return requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described Ziegler as an “independent” expert, and said the issue would have to be resolved by the “member states” that selected him.

UN Watch has also called for the U.N. to remove from its working group on mercenaries Libya’s Najat Al-Hajjaji, whom the organization accused of shielding the Qaddafi regime “from any accountability whatsoever.”

• UN Evaluates Tunisia’s Human Rights and Anti-Terrorism Efforts
  UN officials made a special visit to Tunisia to determine the progress of it's recommendations involving human rights and counter-terrorism in the cou...
• Investigation Launched into Human Rights Violation in Ivory Coast
  In conjunction with former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo's arrest on Monday, the United Nations has launched an investigation into hundreds of ...
• Canada to Pass New Act to Reverse Human Rights Error
  As the Canadian Newswire reports, Canada will finally pass the Canadian Human Rights Act, restoring rights of the Aboriginal people long since lost. T...