A leading independent refugee advocacy organization has called on Washington to cooperate better with the international effort to help those displaced by ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan.
In July 2002, the works of Georgian director and writer Rezo Gabriadze made their New York debut at the Lincoln Center Festival, with rotating performances of The Battle of Stalingrad and Autumn of My Springtime, marionette works that sold out and earned rave reviews, becoming a kind of stealth sensation.
Kyrgyzstan's government has failed to win the confidence of its Uzbek minority after ethnic violence in the southern part of the country forced hundreds of thousands of Uzbeks to flee earlier this summer, a top US State Department official has said.
Matthew Bryza, President Obama's controversial nominee to be the next American ambassador to Azerbaijan, had his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on July 22. He defended himself against allegations of bias in favor of Baku and asserted he would be an even-handed advocate of US policy in the Caucasus. His critics did not appear reassured, however.
Red Star Enterprises Ltd. and Mina Corp, two companies at the center of a US congressional investigation into fuel contracting practices in Kyrgyzstan, have pledged to cooperate with investigators and have negotiated a document submission extension, according to a reliable source familiar with the investigation.
For more than six years, the Pentagon paid fees to the Turkmen government for the use of the Central Asian nation’s airports. However, officials in Washington either won’t or can’t say just how much was paid to Ashgabat from 2002-2008. All that they will say is that such payments made to Turkmenistan were inadvertent.
Whether by words or by her mere appearance, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s July 5 visit to Tbilisi will serve to reassure Georgian officials that Washington still values its strategic partnership with Georgia, analysts say.
A heated political debate in Armenia over a joint statement by US President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicholas Sarkozy about the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process has overshadowed preparations for US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s July 4-5 visit to Yerevan.
US support for Azerbaijan in its Nagorno-Karabakh negotiations with Armenia will most likely prove the price for any agreements on other issues made during US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s July 4 visit to Baku, local analysts say.
