From: Guven.Guzeldere%STANFORD.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU (hq.ggg)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: TRH NEWS--PART 3
Date: 19 Dec 1992 01:12:07 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

12/18 U.N. PREPARES MOVES TO HELP MOSLEMS IN BOSNIA

    By Evelyn Leopold
    UNITED NATIONS, Dec 18, Reuter - The United States made
it clear it was ready to support a General Assembly
resolution on Friday calling for the use of force to help
Moslems in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
    The draft also recommends the lifting of a U.N. arms
embargo, allowing Moslems to buy weapons to defend
themsleves against the well-equipped Serbs.
    At the same time, the 15-member Security Council was
considering resolutions authorising force against Serb
military aircraft flying over Bosnia and requesting escorts
for human rights monitors investigating rape of Moslem
women.
    Next week the council may discuss proposals to station
U.N. monitors in the tense Serb province of Kosovo.
    The General Assembly resolution, initiated by Islamic
states, is non-binding but the United States usually does
not pay lip-service to documents it dismisses afterwards.
European countries are considering abstaining.
    The document asks the Security Council to "use all
necessary means" to restore the territorial integrity of
Bosnia and to lift the arms embargo.
    The phrase "all necessary means" was invented by the
United States before the 1991 Gulf War as diplomatic
language calling for the use of force.
    One U.S. official said that voting for the document did
not mean "we are voting for action" but "expressing our view
that something more assertive must be done."
    A European envoy expressed puzzlement at the U.S.
position, saying "if it means they are going to send a
massive military force into Yugoslavia, that's fine. But
that isn't what they are going to do."
    Bosnia's ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey was delighted with
the expected U.S. vote, saying the entire document was an
"important conscious-raising" exercise.
    The Security Council intended to adopt a resolution on
Friday providing escorts for European human rights
investigators seeking detention camps in Bosnia where Serbs
are reported to have conducted mass rapes, torture and
killings of Moslem women and girls.
    The resolution, initiated by France, asks the secretary-
general only to report back to the council in 15 days on how
to provide security for the human rights monitors.
    It does not advocate any action by U.N. peace-keepers
against the alleged camps.
    At the same time, the United States, Russia, France,
Britain and Belgium are working on a resolution enforcing a
no-fly zone for military aircraft over Bosnia and awaiting
instructions from their governments.
    More than 300 violations have been recorded since early
October when the council imposed the no-fly zone, most --
but not all -- by Serbian aircraft.
    France has drafted a resolution authorising force
against violators. The United States is advocating wider
action which would allow the bombing of Serb airfields and
Britain still has reservations about the entire operation.
    Diplomats said a final draft was expected next week and
would prescribe a 15-day grace period before enforcement.
    At the same time, some council members are considering a
resolution, not yet drafted, that would permit U.N. monitors
or peace-keepers in the tense Serb province of Kosovo,
dominated by ethnic Albanians, to avoid the Balkan war from
spreading.
    No peace-keepers could be sent without Belgrade's
permission but a resolution might ask Secretary-General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali to conduct a study and begin
negotiations with Belgrade.

 12/17 U.N. CONSIDERS RESOLUTION ON ``RAPE CAMPS'' IN BOSNIA

    UNITED NATIONS, Dec 17, Reuter - The Security Council on
Thursday is considering a resolution to provide U.N.
protection for European human rights monitors visiting
Bosnian detention centres where Serbs are accused of
systematically raping Moslem women.
    Initiated by France, the draft resolution asks
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to provide escorts
for the European delegation, without suggesting any
specifics.
    The 15-member council is expected to adopt the
resolution on Friday.
    The document requests Boutros-Ghali "take the necessary
means available to him in the area to ensure the European
delegation be allowed free and secure access to the places
of detention" and report back to the council within 15 days.
    The European Community at its summit in Edinburgh over
the weekend decided to send a delegation headed by Dame Anne
Warburton of Britain to investigate the camps following
reports of the rapes of Moslem women and girls.
    French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas on Tuesday called
for U.N. military escorts to accompany the monitors, saying
the object of the mission should be to "empty these camps
and free the people in them."
    Slavenka Drakulic, a Croatian journalist and novelist,
wrote in Sunday's New York Times that women were being raped
by Serbian soldiers "in an organised and systematic way as a
planned crime to destroy a whole Moslem population."
    She said Bosnia's Interior Ministry estimates that
50,000 women and girls had been raped and many impregnated
on purpose.
    She published testimony from witnesses who alleged they
watched Serbs mutilate women with knives before raping them,
kill those who screamed on the spot and murder their
children.

      12/18  ANKARA SIGNS $880 MILLION METRO DEALS

    ANKARA, Dec 18, Reuter - The city of Ankara signed two
deals totalling $880 million on Friday to build an
underground railway.
    One deal for the $660-million metro project was with a
consortium including Canadian UTDC-Bombardier. The other was
a $220-million loan agreement with a 16-bank group to
finance construction of the 14.6-km (nine-mile) line.
    Mayor Murat Karayalcin told reporters the railway would
be built in 48 months.
    Turkish deputy Prime Minister Erdal Inonu and Canadian
Transport Minister Jean Corbell attended the signing
ceremony of the two deals in Ankara.
    The city is expected to sign another agreement next week
for a $260 million export credit, guaranteed by the Canadian
and British governments, to contribute to financing the
metro project, officials said.

12/18 Troops Urged To Leave Abkhazia

   TBILISI, Georgia (AP) -- Parliament demanded that Russian
troops leave the breakaway Abkhazian region of western
Georgia immediately, according to a statement released
Friday.
   Lawmakers adopted a statement late Thursday that also
accuses Russia of interfering in Georgia's internal affairs
and threatening stability throughout the volatile Caucasus
Mountains.
   Relations between Georgia and Russia have been worsening
since a surface-to-air missile downed a Russian helicopter
earlier this week. At least 39 people, half of them
children, were killed.
   Georgia blames Abkhazian militants for the crash.
   Georgia sent troops to Abkhazia in August to pursue
supporters of ousted President Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Abkhazia
says it was a pretext for stopping its independence drive.
   Russian troops also have been deployed in the region to
form a buffer between Georgian troops and Abkhazian
separatists. The Georgian parliament statement accuses the
Russians of arming the Abkhazians.

12/18 ABC: Iraq Has Targeted Kurds

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- Saddam Hussein has amassed enough
forces in northern Iraq to attack and swiftly sweep through
Kurdish areas that have been under U.S. military protection
since the Gulf War, ABC News reported Thursday night.
   Quoting unidentified senior Pentagon officials, the
network said it was unclear whether Saddam really intended
to launch an attack or may simply be preparing for large-
scale training exercises in the northern mountains of Iraq.
   "We have no insight on Saddam's intentions," one official
was quoted as saying. "We're watching matters closely. It's
50-50 either way."
   The Pentagon had no comment on the report.
   At the United Nations, Iraqi Ambassador Nizar Hamdoun
said there were maneuvers in the north but no activities
against the Kurds.
   According to the report, during the past six weeks Saddam
has shifted "substantial numbers" of tanks and other heavy
weapons to frontline positions opposite the Kurdish
sanctuary and brought understrength divisions up to nearly
full readiness.
   That, analysts told ABC, mean that Iraq is in a position
to attack the Kurds, overrunning them in a matter of hours.
A Pentagon assessment said that 'Iraq has sharply raised the
stakes" in its threat to the Kurds and now could "present
the U.S. and the U.N. coalition with an embarrassing and
difficult situation ... a fait accompli."

CIS DEFENSE CHIEF YEVGENY SHAPOSHNIKOV RAISES DOUBTS ABOUT
ALLIANCE

MOSCOW (DEC. 11) - C.I.S. Defense Minister Yevgeny
Shaposhnikov Friday warned the Russian Congress that the
future of the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States
appears in doubt.
    But the congress, embroiled in its own political
conflicts, took no immediate action in response to his dark
words about the alliance.
    ''The present situation in the C.I.S. does not augur
well for the future,'' he said. ''The present is amorphous
and uncertain. If this situation is allowed to remain for
some time more, the C.I.S. will be doomed.''
    Shaposhnikov urged the Congress to ''launch political
initiatives and make practical steps'' to strengthen the
weak young economic, military and political alliance.
    The conservative Soviet-era 1,041-member Congress of
People's Deputies heard the C.I.S. defense chief out, but
did nothing to take his advice to bolster the alliance. The
congress is caught up in a bitter conflict with Russian
Presidfent Boris Yeltsin over the course of economic reforms
and the balance of powers in Russia.
    ''The main danger,'' Shaposhnikov said, ''is not only
further disintegration of the economy, culture and politics,
including the military, but ... the virus of nationalism.''
    Although the C.I.S. remains nominally an alliance of 11
former Soviet republics, ''there are destabilizing factors
at work in the Commonwealth,'' he said, and some members
peel away.
    ''Those states which are not ready for integration may
leave the Commonwealth, '' he said. ''But then we will deal
with them on the basis of world prices and standards. Others
may prepare for the status of associate members, still
others, the status of observers.''
    Shaposhnikov named five republics, in addition to
Russia, that ''are ready to cooperate'' - Armenia and four
Central Asian republics, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan
and Tadzhikistan. But Tadzhikistan is wracked by civil war
and the C.I.S. has tried without much success to muster a
peacekeeping force for deployment there and in other hot
spots.
    Two other republics, Belarus and Turkmenistan, will
cooperate ''under certain conditions,'' he said.
    Omitted from the group of cooperating nations were
Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. Four other former Soviet
republics, Georgia and the three Baltic states, never
expressed any intertest in becoming C.I. S. members.
    The three Slavic states, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus,
formed the C.I. S. one year ago as the Soviet Union was
disintegrating and eight other republics joined two weeks
later.
    But the initial need to hold onto some coherent
economic, military and political ties and stability have
failed to hold the republics in a solid group.
    A collective security treaty remains a paper agreement
only, not even ratified by Russia.
    Republics are forming separate armies, and there is
tension in the military and competing oaths of allegiance.
The formerly integrated military-industrial complex has been
broken up and economies are in shambles. Ethnic strife has
created legions of refugees and threatened to embroil ex-
Soviet forces.
    Shaposhnikov, who also was Soviet defense minister and
serves as joint C.I.S. commander of strategic forces, has
played a role in safeguarding the former Soviet nuclear
arsenal left in four republics.
    But he told the Russian Congress that the status of
strategic nuclear forces based outside of Russia was
''unclear'' and that ''causes great anxiety among the
peoples of the C.I.S. and among the world community.''
    For many in Congress and the Kremlin, the current
troubles in the country pose serious questions about the
fate of Russia. But Shaposhnikov sought to direct concern to
the fate of this alliance, too.
    He said, ''The time has come for Russia to make its
choice and a lot, if not everything, depends on the position
it takes.''