US continues Uzbek aid despite human rights record

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N12238980.htm

WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush has decided to give Uzbekistan $1.2 million, largely to dispose of Soviet-era weapons of mass destruction programs, despite the Central Asian ally's failure to meet U.S. conditions on human rights, U.S. officials said on Monday.

The White House on Dec. 30 announced Bush's decision to grant Uzbekistan a "waiver" under a U.S. law that otherwise would have required an end to U.S. money for Cooperative Threat Reduction programs set up after the demise of the Soviet Union to prevent the proliferation of Soviet weapons and technology.

A U.S. official said the money that would go to Uzbekistan under the program included $1 million to prevent the spread of materials that could be used for biological or chemical weapons and $200,000 for military-to-military exchanges.

U.S. officials who asked not to be named said the so-called Nunn-Lugar programs, named for Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and former Sen. Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat, depended on annual human rights certification of Uzbekistan, a supporter of the U.S. "war on terrorism".

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1072313,00.html

Britain and the US claim a moral mandate - and back a dictator who boils victims to death

The British and US governments gave three reasons for going to war with Iraq. The first was to extend the war on terrorism. The second was to destroy its weapons of mass destruction before they could be deployed. The third was to remove a brutal regime, which had tortured and murdered its people.

If the purpose of the war was to defeat terrorism, it has failed. Before the invasion, there was no demonstrable link between al-Qaida and Iraq. Today, al-Qaida appears to have moved into that country, to exploit a new range of accessible western targets. If the purpose of the war was to destroy Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction before he deployed them, then, as no such weapons appear to have existed, it was a war without moral or strategic justification. snip

There is just one test of this sincerity, and that is the consistency with which his concern for human rights guides his foreign policy. If he cares so much about the welfare of foreigners that he is prepared to go to war on their behalf, we should expect to see this concern reflected in all his relations with the governments of other countries. We should expect him, for example, to do all he can to help the people of Uzbekistan.

There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.

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[salin]

1. so we give $$$$ to this thug

but trump up charges on others... but shrub is ALL about human rights... so says he (he claimed recently that HE has done more about human rights than any other US President.)

[NNN0LHI]

2. Jeb will be invading Uzbekistan in a few years to liberate them n/t

[Whoa_Nelly]

3. Someone please explain to me...

how Chimpy can unilaterally decide who gets our money? Doesn't this have to go through a process on yea/nay?

From the article:
"The secretary examined the human rights record of the Uzbekistan government and determined that there had not been enough progress on human rights to meet the criteria this year (in 2003)," said a U.S. official who was reading from State Department comments prepared for release in late December.

"However, the president determined that Cooperative Threat Reduction programs in Uzbekistan are sufficiently critical that he decided to exercise his waiver authority," the U.S. official added.

"This waiver means that we can continue to fund Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programs in Uzbekistan. We plan to continue to provide nonproliferation aid to secure left over Soviet-era WMD sites and to engage the Uzbeks in defense and military contacts," the official said.

How is it that a country with such a horrendous human rights record be GIVEN our money without our representation on the hill?
Is it any wonder that our national coffers are so empty... :mad:

[LeftistGorilla]

4. Deals with the devil....

allies in the war on terror...


:crazy: