UNITED NATIONS, September 22 -- Three months after the pogroms in southern Kyrgyzstan, US President Barack Obama is set to meet with Kyrgyz interim leader Rosa Otunbayeva on Friday in New York.
It is one of President Obama's few bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the UN General Debate, but when Inner City Press on Tuesday asked State Department spokesman PJ Crowley whether the President will raise issues of human rights and the protection of civilians, Crowley responded only in terms of regional stability, which most took to mean the maintenance of the US base in the country.
Meanwhile, Otunbayeva's government has refused to follow through the sign the memorandum of understanding allowing the deployment of the international Police Assistance Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in advance of the October 10 parliamentary election.
Inner City Press asked Crowley if Obama would be raising this. Crowley said that he wouldn't speak for the President in advance of the meeting.
Ethnic Uzbek human rights defender Azimjon Askarov only a week ago was sentenced to life imprisonment for alleged involvement in the death of a police officer in Bazar-Kurgan after a trial dominated by a second round of mob violence. Inner City Press asked Crowley if the President would be raising this case in the meeting. Again, there was no answer.
There has still been no outside investigation of the causes of the pogroms against ethnic Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan. Rather, as of August the Kyrgyz prosecutor's office said that of 243 people in detention, fully 214 were Uzbek. The UN, after mentioning the word accountability, has done little to follow through. Will the US?
In the run up to Obama's visit to the UN General Assembly, his advisor Samantha Power and spokesman Ben Rhodes told the Press of his administration's and Ambassador Susan Rice's many achievements on human rights at the UN. In the case of Kyrgyzstan, the US had yet to do much. Will Obama's bilateral meeting with Kyrgyz interim leader -- and former UN staff member -- Rosa Otunbayeva change that? Watch this site.
Footnote: Kyrgyz leader Otunbayeva abruptly canceled her press conference set for the UN on Tuesday at 2:30. An hour and a half later, Secretary of State Clinton, after her meeting with the Middle East Quartet, was scheduled to appear at a 4 pm press conference at the UN on the topic. The presser was canceled, Inner City Press was told by the UN, due to a power outage. But Clinton's name plate wasn't on the rostrum, even before the lights went dim.
Crowley said that Clinton had planned to meet with Tony Blair. But as one reporter pointed out, Blair's name plate WAS on the rostrum. More than a little strange.
