The preliminary results on Sunday saw voters overwhelmingly voting for direct presidential elections, with only 10 percent against. However, the outcome of the referendum turnout should exceed 33.33 percent for the vote to be valid.

The counting also saw suspected hackers allegedly disrupting electronic ballot counting.

Since last year, the ex-Soviet republic has been unsuccessfully trying to elect a president, as no candidate has got the necessary three-fifths majority in parliament. Moldavian parliament has a large Communist minority.

A repeat plebiscite can be now held only after one year.

A Round Table on “Perspectives of Kazakhstan’s Chairmanship in the OIC” was one of the first sessions under the framework of the Eurasian Forum. Representing the OIC Secretary General, Ambassador Abdul Moiz Bokhari, Assistant Secretary General delivered the key note speech in the Round Table, wherein he gave a brief but comprehensive account of the new vision and mission of the OIC in facing the challenges of the 21st century.

The Round Table was moderated by Mr. Bektas Mukhamedzhanov, Executive Director of the Foundation. In his speech, Ambassador Bokhari outlined the ways and means for a fruitful Kazakh Chairmanship in 2011. In this connection, he touched on the paradigm shift in the OIC, which was brought to the organization on the basis of two historic documents: OIC Ten Year Program of Action and the new Charter of the Organization. He also highlighted the two core concepts i.e. moderation and modernization that guide the activities of the organization towards achieving the desired level of development in the Muslim World. He elaborated more on the key issues followed by the OIC while responding to the queries of the participants of the Round Table.

An analysis of the issues that keep Iran in the world news headlines will be one of the highlights of this year’s two-day conference, along with other topical themes such as the impact of Kazakhstan’s current chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Also on the agenda are questions of media law and media freedom, the dangers of alarmist reporting of epidemics, the use of online social networks like Facebook and Twitter, ‘citizen journalism’ and celebrity politicians.

The Iranian delegates are Ramin Mehmanparast, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, and Ali Akbar Ashari, Cultural Advisor to the President and Director of the National Library and Archives of Iran. Other speakers include William Courtney, the first US Ambassador to Kazakhstan, Dunja Mijatovi, newly appointed OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, on her first official engagement, and Robert Simmons of NATO, Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia.

“The Forum is a unique opportunity to take the pulse of East-West relations and examine the crucial role played by the mass media,” said Dariga Nazarbayeva, chair of the Eurasian Media Forum Organizing Committee. “And what better place to do this than in the hospitable heart of Central Asia?”

The Forum has been held every year since 2002 in Almaty, the commercial capital of Kazakhstan, which straddles the ancient Silk Road between China and Europe. The event brings together several hundred delegates from all over the world, many from Russia and the CIS countries, including media representatives, political figures and specialists in international relations

The discussions are always topical, with particular emphasis on issues that affect the countries of Central Asia and their biggest neighbours, India, China, Russia and also Pakistan. The Forum also tackles economic, cultural and professional media questions.

Prominent participants at past sessions have included former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, ex-Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, American strategists Richard Holbrooke and Richard Perle, former United States National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Wesley K. Clark.

“In the criminal justice system established in Rome, States have the primary responsibility to investigate and prosecute. As in all the situations, we have offered to support in every possible way efforts by the Russian judiciary to do justice for all victims of these crimes” said Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo. “This is positive complementarity at work”.

The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) visit took place 8 -10 March at the invitation of the Russian Federation. It is the first visit of an OTP delegation to the Russian Federation. It occurred in the context of the preliminary examination into the situation in Georgia, announced by the Prosecutor on 20 August, 2008.

The programme included notably meetings with senior officials of the Office of the Prosecutor General and the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, the Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and other key judicial and government actors.

They briefed the OTP on the nature and progress of Russia’s national judicial proceedings relating to crimes allegedly committed during the violence in South Ossetia.

“We highly appreciate the outcome of the meetings with the delegation from the Office of the Prosecutor” said the Director of the Legal Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

“My Office welcomes the openness of the Russian authorities and we thank them for this dialogue” said the Prosecutor.

Russia, a State not Party to the Rome Statute, has to date sent 3, 817 communications to the OTP. Georgia has been a State Party to the Rome Statute since 5 September, 2003. As such the ICC has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide possibly committed in the territory of Georgia or by nationals of Georgia. The Prosecutor requested information from the Governments of Russia and Georgia on 27 August, 2008. Both the Russian and the Georgian authorities responded. The Office conducted a visit to Georgia in November, 2008. A further visit to Georgia is planned in 2010.

The second point the Chinese envoy said the ‘outside influence’ was growing in the region. ‘These are issues of serious concern for China,’ he said. He said that US strategies needed some ‘corrective measures’ to contain terrorism. He did not spell out the Chinese measure to help Pakistan against the Taliban.

‘We are cooperating with the US and Pakistan in the fight against terror,’ Mr Lou Zhaohui said, adding that separatists belonging to Muslim majority areas of western China had got training in Fata and Afghanistan during the 1980s. Yes Mr. Chinese ambassador, you kill even peaceful Buddhists in Tibet and sign an agreement with Pakistan’s main Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami.

The Chinese ambassador then said ‘Counter-terrorism is needed with Pakistan and we are in close liaison with the interior ministry for the security of over 10,000 Chinese engineers and technical experts in Pakistan.’ Chinese ambassador is very focused on Chinese version of how Pakistan should employ its security forces.

China is very wise to achieve its goals, objectives and leverages. It’s time Pakistanis take off their blinkers and see through Chinese.

US says that this action contravenes Russia’s commitments under the August 12 ceasefire agreement brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy between Russia and Georgia, and violates Georgia’s territorial integrity.

Robert Wood, Acting Department Spokesman, Office of the Spokesman called upon Russia to honor its commitments under the August 12 and September 8 ceasefire agreements. This includes removing its troops to positions held prior to the start of the conflict, allowing unfettered humanitarian access, and allowing human rights organizations to investigate allegations of ethnic cleansing in the two regions. Establishing a “border” under the control of Russian soldiers marks another step in the opposite direction.

Turkey and Armenia: Opening Minds, Opening Borders,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines how a decade of academic and civil society outreach laid the foundations for what is now intense official engagement between the governments. The two sides are now close to agreement on a package deal that will establish diplomatic relations, open the border and set up bilateral commissions to address a range of issues.

These commissions will include one on joint historical dimensions of the Armenian-Turkish relationship, which will work to broaden understanding of the Ottoman-era forced relocations and massacres of Armenians, widely recognised as the Armenian genocide. Turkey contests the term genocide, disputing its legal applicability and pointing to mitigating circumstances as the Ottoman Empire fought on three fronts in the First World War. But many Turks, including officials, now publicly express regret over the tragic and high loss of Armenian life.

“Turks’ and Armenians’ once uncompromising views of history are significantly converging, showing that the deep traumas can be healed”, says Hugh Pope, Director of Crisis Group’s Turkey/Cyprus Project. “At this sensitive time, third parties should avoid statements or resolutions in the politicised debate over genocide recognition or denial that could inflame opinion on either side”.

A separate but related issue, the stalemated Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, still risks undermining final agreement on the Turkey and Armenia normalisation package. Azerbaijan opposes any border opening until Armenia withdraws from its occupied territory. But Turkey should not sacrifice this chance to move forward, and should persuade its ally that détente which makes Armenia feel secure will do more for a settlement than continuing a fifteen-year impasse.

For long-term normalisation with Turkey to be sustainable, Armenia, together with Azerbaijan, should ultimately adopt the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group basic principles for settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of the OSCE, and Armenia should withdraw from Azerbaijani territories that it occupies.

“Turkey and Armenia should finalise their agreement and thus create new momentum for peace and cooperation in the South Caucasus”, says Sabine Freizer, Crisis Group’s Europe Program Director. “They should not wait until the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is settled. But outside powers such as the U.S., EU, Russia and others should build on their rare common interest to move both Turkish-Armenian normalisation and the Nagorno-Karabakh process forward”.

The planned protests in Georgia have been scheduled to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Soviet crackdown on independence demonstrators in Tbilisi. The opposition movement claims that more than 100,000 people will take to the streets — an ambitious number, as the protests of the past six years have not drawn more than 15,000 people. But this time around, the Georgian people’s discontent is greatly intensified because of the blame placed on Saakashvili after the Russo-Georgian war in August 2008. Most Georgians believe Saakashvili pushed the country into a war, knowing the repercussions, and into a serious financial crisis in which unemployment has reached nearly 9 percent.

source STRATFOR

Georgia’s opposition has always been fractured and so has only managed to pull together sporadic rallies rather than a real movement. But the growing discontent in Georgia is allowing the opposition groups to finally overcome their differences and agree that Saakashvili should be removed. Even Saakashvili loyalists like former Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze and former Georgian Ambassador to the United Nations Irakli Alasania have joined the opposition’s cause, targeting Saakashvili personally. The problem now is that opposition members still do not agree on how to remove the president; some are calling for referendums on new elections, and some want to install a replacement government to make sure Saakashvili does not have a chance to return to power. But all 17 parties agreed to start with large-scale demonstrations in the streets and go from there.

If the movement does inspire such a large turnout, it would be equivalent to the number of protesters that hit the streets at the height of the Rose Revolution, which toppled the previous government and brought Saakashvili into power in the first place. Saakashvili and the remainder of his supporters are prepared, however, with the military on standby outside of Tbilisi in order to counter a large movement. During a demonstration in 2007, Saakashvili deployed the military and successfully — though violently — crushed the protests. But that demonstration consisted of 15,000 protesters; it is unclear if Saakashvili and the military could withstand numbers seven times that. There is also concern that protests are planned in the Georgian secessionist region of Adjara, which rose up against and rejected Saakashvili’s government in 2004 after the Rose Revolution.

This region was suppressed by Saakashvili once and has held a grudge ever since, looking for the perfect time to rise up again. Tbilisi especially wants to keep Adjara under its control because it is home to the large port of Batumi, and many of Georgia’s transport routes to Turkey run through it. If Adjara rises up, there are rumors in the region that its neighboring secessionist region, Samtskhe-Javakheti, will join in to help destabilize Saakashvili and the government. Georgia already officially lost its two northern secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Russian occupation during the August 2008 war and is highly concerned with its southern regions trying to break away. These southern regions, like the northern ones, have strong support from Russia; thus, Moscow is square in the middle of tomorrow’s activities. Russia has long backed all of Georgia’s secessionist regions, but has had difficulty penetrating the Georgian opposition groups in order to organize them against Saakashvili. Though none of the 17 opposition groups are pro-Russian, STRATFOR sources in Georgia say Russian money has been flowing into the groups in order to nudge them along in organizing the impending protests. Russia has a vested interest in breaking the Georgian government.

Russia and the West have been locked in a struggle over the small Caucasus state. That struggle led to the August 2008 Russo-Georgian war, after which Moscow felt secure in its control over Georgia. Since Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama met April 1 and disagreed over a slew of issues, including U.S. ballistic missile defense installations in Poland and NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia, Russia is not as secure and is seeking to consolidate its power in Georgia. This means first breaking the still vehemently pro-Western Saakashvili. This does not mean Russia thinks it can get a pro-Russian leader in power in Georgia; it just wants one who is not so outspoken against Moscow and so determined to invite Western influence.

The April 9 protests are the point at which all sides will try to gain — and maintain — momentum. The 2003 Rose Revolution took months to build up to, but the upcoming protests are the starting point for both the opposition and Russia — and opposition movements in Georgia have not seen this much support and organization since the 2003 revolution. April 9 will reveal whether or not things are about to get shaken up, if not completely transformed, in Georgia.