The State Department's top human rights official was in Tashkent last week, and at a press conference he was asked about the possibility of Uzbek companies to ties with the government's most notorious human rights abusers getting contracts with the Pentagon for the Northern Distribution Network. (Harper's, for example, found that one company connected with the notorious Zeromax had gotten an NDN contract.) The State Department official, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Michael Posner, said he hadn't heard of any such issues, but was interested in finding out:
Question: My question is on the human rights situation and Northern Distribution Network to Afghanistan. We know that a lot of Uzbek companies signed contracts to deliver goods to Afghanistan and some of them have contacts with agencies that break human rights. Will there be any guarantee or control in delivering goods that they will be used properly?
A/S Posner: I’ve not focused on that situation. In fact if you have more information I would be interested in seeing it, but what I will say is we continue to have, as I said before, a frank, direct and open conversation with the Government of Uzbekistan about a range of human rights issues. We are going to continue to do that and we are going to press cases and we are going to continue in this period of mutual respect but also believe that these are critical issues in the United States and critical issues to the world. So the human rights issues are very much on the agenda here.
It's somewhat surprising to find out that that wasn't even on the radar of the U.S. human rights dialogue with Uzbekistan. But Posner seemed interested -- could more transparency on the NDN be in the works?
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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