Charles Taylor has left Liberia with a society shattered, the population fragmented and the economy ruined. However, he is unlikely to be tried for his actions in coming to power through civil war nor for his use of violence to stay in power once president.
Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, has been forced from his comfortable exile in Nigeria by growing international pressures and cooperation between Liberia's new president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo. Taylor has now been arrested for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including sexual slavery, mutilation and sending children into combat. Taylor
The president of Azerbaijan, Ilhan Aliyev, son of the long-time president Heydar Aliyev and Robert Kocharian, president of Armenia, met outside Paris, in Rambouillet February 10-11, 2006 to discuss the stalemated conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Rambouillet had also been the scene for the last-chance negotiations on Kosovo just before the NATO bombing of Serbia began in 1999.
Just as negotiations on the "final status" of Kosovo were to start on January 25 under the chairmanship of Martii Ahtisaari, former President of Finland and a seasoned negotiator, Ibrahim Rugova, President of Kosovo, died of lung cancer in the Kosovo capital Pristina. The start of the final status talks have been postponed but should start relatively soon as the negotiating team that Rugova had put together should be able to continue, but without the long-range vision and spirit of reconciliation that Rugova represented.
While the United Nations human rights structures are under critical examination and Burma is being discussed in the UN Security Council, it is useful to review the UN's efforts to help a transition occur in the country. The military's responses have always been temporary with minor modifications of its heavy-handed rule. In December, at the Security Council, the Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, warned "In the longer term, deep-rooted chronic and accelerating poverty, growing insecurity and increasing political tension appear to be moving Myanmar toward a humanitarian crisis."
"We are faced with a country which is at war with its own people" - Justice Rajsoomer Lallah,
former UN Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur on Myanmar
The recent plea for UN Security Council Action on Burma from former Czech President Vaclav Havel and the retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has led to strong reactions from the Myanmar (Burma) military-led government. The Burmese government has wildly lashed out at everyone it considers to be a part of the opposition both in the country and in foreign governments and NGOs. The plea for action was accompanied by massive reports of slave labor, systematic rape, the conscription of child soldiers and the massive, deliberate destruction of villages, food sources and medical services, especially against ethnic minorities. Recent interviews have been carried out among the thousands of refugees who have fled to Thailand and a smaller number to Bangladesh.
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