MONITOR - A DAILY BRIEFING ON THE POST-SOVIET STATES
OSCE DISMISSES CHECHNYA ELECTION. In an official statement yesterday the OSCE' s Permanent Council described the legislative elections just held in Chechnya as "unfree and unfair" and "incompatible with OSCE principles." The statement further said that the decision to hold those elections contravenes the armistice agreements signed June 10 in Nazran. That agreement had provided for holding Chechen elections only after the withdrawal of Russian troops and the demilitarization of the republic, the OSCE statement recalled. The OSCE thus vindicates the remonstrations of its mission in Chechnya and of the Chechen resistance against Moscow' s violation of the armistice.
The Russian government's commission on the Chechnya settlement, chaired by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, accepted yesterday the report of Chechnya's authorities on the elections held there. The report claimed a turnout of 74 percent and credited Boris Yeltsin with 64 percent of the votes cast in the presidential election. It said turnout was 58 percent in the Chechen legislative election and claimed that most of the "people' s assembly's" seats have been filled. Participants of the Moscow commission's session noted "the opinion of certain observers that the figure was exaggerated, but left the moral responsibility for such judgments to their authors."
The Chechen resistance leadership for its part noted in a statement that "the population fully ignored the June 16 electoral farce." Most correspondents' reports from the scene corroborate this assessment. The resistance did not undertake operations to disrupt the elections. Sporadic shooting was reported from Grozny and a few other locations in Chechnya yesterday and this morning. (Itar-Tass, Interfax, Western agencies, June 18 & 19)
GEORGIA JITTERY AFTER LEBED STATEMENTS. In televised statements yesterday, Russia's newly appointed Security Council secretary and presidential security adviser, Aleksandr Lebed, accused Georgian defense minister Vardiko Nadibaidze of having joined an alleged attempt by deposed Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev and other Russian generals to resist changes atop the Defense Ministry.
Within hours, Georgian ambassador Vazha Lordkipanidze appeared on Russian television to declare that "Aleksandr Ivanovich Lebed's impressive success in the election and his appointment were greeted with nothing but positive feelings in Georgia." President Eduard Shevardnadze "confirmed this official position" by cabling his personal congratulations to Lebed on his appointment. Nadibaidze had in fact been in Moscow for several days for official talks on bilateral military cooperation. Known to have been close to Grachev, Nadibaidze's days as minister may now be numbered. (Itar-Tass, NTV, June 18)
GEORGIA'S JUDICIARY ACTS AGAINST ABKHAZ ETHNIC CLEANSERS...Georgia's State Prosecutor's Office announced yesterday the completion of a preliminary investigation into "acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing" perpetrated against the Georgian population of Abkhazia during the 1992-93 conflict. The investigation identified approximately 70 organizers, "including leaders of the Abkhaz separatist regime," and approximately 300 executants of the ethnic cleansing. The Georgian Prosecutor's Office is preparing to indict the organizers and the executants in Georgian courts.
Almost the entire ethnic Georgian population of Abkhazia, which numbered nearly 300,000 or some 45 percent of Abkhazia's total prior to 1992, was evicted by the Abkhaz with Russian military support--a factor unlikely to be mentioned by the indictment. Tbilisi's action stems from a parliamentary decision earlier this year to investigate and indict the Abkhaz leaders for ethnic cleansing. The parliament had acted out of extreme frustration over Abkhazia's rejection of any political compromise with Tbilisi, but a Georgian indictment would probably harden Abkhaz intransigence.
Also yesterday, Georgia's Supreme Court announced the sentencing of two captured Chechen "mercenaries" to terms of imprisonment for having fought on the Abkhaz side against Georgia. Today, a court in Zugdidi begins the trial of two captured Abkhaz fighters, the Pachulia brothers, accused of crimes of terrorism against Georgians in Abkhazia in 1993. Last week, Abkhaz forces captured a group of approximately a dozen Georgian civilians in the zone of responsibility of Russian "peacekeepers" and are reportedly offering to exchange them for the Pachulia brothers. (Interfax, June 15 and 18).
...AND VIOLENT DOMESTIC OPPONENTS. Georgia's Supreme Court on June 17 sentenced Badri Zarandia to death for seizing the west Georgian city of Zugdidi in 1993 on behalf of deposed president Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Zarandia was found guilty of high treason, premeditated murders, and banditry committed in his capacity as commandant of Gamsakhurdia's forces in Zugdidi. Five codefendants were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from 13 to 15 years. The death sentence against Zarandia is unappealable, but a pardon commission and ultimately President Eduard Shevardnadze may review petitions for a pardon. (Interfax, June 18).
West Georgia and Zugdidi were Gamsakhurdia's political stronghold and the site of his armed effort in 1993 to recapture power from Shevardnadze, after Gamsakhurdia had been violently ousted from the presidency by Shevardnadze's temporary allies Tengiz Kitovani and Jaba Ioseliani. Gamsakhurdia died shortly afterward, and Shevardnadze broke with Kitovani and Ioseliani, who are now in jail awaiting their own trials.
The Supreme Court is now trying the former parliamentary deputy and Monarchist Party leader, Timur Zhorzholiani, accused of having deliberately injured a policeman and of possession of arms and narcotics.