CHAOS IN CAUCASUS
Congressional human rights leaders fear Russia is losing control over the lawless North Caucasus region, where blood feuds, gangsters and militant Muslims are pushing up the death toll daily.
After the latest killing of two aid workers in Chechnya, a journalist in Dagestan and a government official in Ingushetia, the chairmen of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe called on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to open a “thorough prosecution of these heinous murders.”
“These murders suggest that no one is safe in the North Caucasus, and this volatile region is drifting toward chaos,” said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, Maryland Democrat and the commission’s chairman.
Mr. Cardin and his co-chairman, Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, Florida Democrat, agreed that the assassinations undermine efforts to investigate corruption and human rights abuses in the region.
“The execution of independent journalists and human rights activists is creating a black hole of information and violence in the region,” Mr. Cardin said.
“We are literally losing our ability to understand wider problems in the North Caucasus because, on a daily basis, independent voices are being eliminated for speaking truth to the region,” Mr. Hastings added.
Aid workers Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband, Alik Djabrailov, were killed in Chechnya on Monday. On Wednesday, Abdulmalik Akhmedilov, a reporter, was killed in Dagestan, and Ruslan Amerkhanov, the regional minister for construction, was killed in Ingushetia.
On a visit to the region in June, Mr. Medvedev noted that 235 people had been killed since January.
OUTSPOKEN ENVOY
Patricia Butenis has a reputation for speaking her mind - an unusual trait for an ambassador - and signaled this week that she will continue her straight-talking diplomacy in her next assignment as U.S. envoy to Sri Lanka, which is struggling to repair a country ravaged by 26 years of war.
“I go to Colombo as a friend and as someone who has a reputation for speaking candidly - though I hope, diplomatically,” she said, referring to the Sri Lankan capital, after meeting Wednesday with Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United States.
Ambassador Jaliya Wickramasuriya, the first Sri Lankan official she has met since her Senate confirmation, reported that they discussed his government’s responsibility to resettle about 280,000 refugees displaced by the war, which ended in May with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
He also thanked Ms. Butenis for the assistance his government has received from the United States during the war. The Clinton administration designated the rebels a terrorist group in 1997.
“U.S. help has been extremely helpful,” Mr. Wickramasuriya said.
He also explained his efforts to reach out to the Tamil community in the United States, explaining that Tamils used to meet with him privately during the war out of fear of retribution from Tiger supporters. Now, he said, they meet publicly.
Ms. Butenis called those meetings “encouraging.”
The ambassador is a career Foreign Service envoy, who served as ambassador to Bangladesh from 2006 to 2007.
DIPLOMATIC DEFINITION
“The only real diplomacy ever performed by a diplomat is in deceiving their own people after their dumbness has got them into a war.” - Will Rogers, American humorist (1879-1935)
Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@washingtontimes.com.
• James Morrison can be reached at jmorrison@washingtontimes.com.
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