International News

Argentina probes Ford's military ties

The Argentine authorities launched an investigation into allegations that a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company was involved in the illegal detention and disappearance of workers during the military regime.

Prosecutor Felix Crous filed the claim after a former Ford Argentine employee, Pedro Norberto Troiani, told a court that a secret military detention center was set up inside one of the company factories outside Buenos Aires.

Troiani told the La Plata court that he was one of 25 workers detained in the center in the 1970s.

In 1998 Ford Argentina was accused of collaborating with the military juntas which ran the country from 1976 to 1983.

Crous speculated that if Troiani's claims were true then the decision to collaborate with the military must have been made by executives of Ford Argentina.

Troiani, a former union representative, was summoned to the La Plata court about the disappearance of 14 Mercedes-Benz workers in the 1970's.

It was during this testimony that Troiani detailed the detention center established at the plant during the Dirty War.

Troiani said he was held in the center for 50 days before being sent to prison.

According to papers filed by Crous, army personnel arrived at the plant on the day of the military coup in 1976. The same day workers began to disappear.

Ford Argentine is not the first car-maker to be accused of ties with the military regime.

Last month, DaimlerChrysler— Mercedes-Benz's parent company— announced an external investigation into claims that 14 union activists were handed over to the military in the 1970's.

DaimlerChrysler says the investigation is designed to dispel the allegations made by Amnesty International about the disappearance of Mercedes-Benz workers.

An official investigation concluded that 9000 people were killed or went missing during the period of military rule in Argentina. Human rights organizations claim that number is as high as 30,000.

Russia pursues new assault on Chechnya

Sunday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced a new offensive on Chechnya, as nine Russian servicemen died on board a military helicopter that crashed in the republic.

The helicopter was the second lost to Russia in less than a week.

Ivanov said that plans to de-escalate the Russian military presence in Chechnya have been suspended following the Moscow theater hostage crisis last month. During the crisis, about 800-theatre-goers were taken hostage by about 50 Chechen rebels. Most of the rebels and 120 hostages were killed when Russian forces stormed the building—almost all deaths were a result of the opiate the Russians' threw in the building prior to entry.

Russian authorities imposed strict restrictions on the media and as a result, very little is known about the new offensive.

Last weekend, Russian troops began encircling refugee camps. Russian troops are also building a new base at the gates of the Sleptsovsk refugee camp.

Inside the camp, the thousands of refugees whose homes were destroyed in the conflict are apprehensive and expect the Russians to start carrying out mass arrests soon.

Suleiman Azanaurov, who has lived in the camp with his wife and six children for three years, dismissed accusations that the Chechens who went to Moscow were terrorists. He believes they were independence fighters who acted to draw attention to a cause the world ignores.

These people had no other option. They carried out this extreme act because we can't stand this war anymore, he said. Today, in Chechnya, the whole nation is being exterminated … we have nothing to lose.

The Russians outside the camp see the situation quite differently and believe the camps are a hotbed of dissent. Alexander Machevsky, an advisor to Vladimir Putin, says Chechnya is full of terrorist training bases.

Suleiman says there will be more violent acts against the Russians unless they agree to peace talks.

Aslan Maskhadov, the President of the Republic of Chechnya-Ichkeria, offered to start unconditional peace talks with the Russian Government. We declare our readiness to talk peace without any preliminary terms, said an envoy for Maskhadov. There is no military solution. There is one reasonable, correct step—to sit down at the negotiating table.

But Russia has insisted on a military solution to the Chechnya problem and has refused to negotiate with Maskhadov's government, claiming the government has links to international terrorism.

In fact, Russia is seeking to extradite Akhmed Zakayev, the Prime Minister the Republic of Chechnya-Ichkeria, from Denmark where he was attending a conference on Chechnya. Russia originally called for his arrest for involvement in the Moscow theater siege, but the specific details of its allegations fail to link him with the situation.

Zakayev strongly denies the claim.

Similarly, Novaya Gazeta observer Anna Politkovskaya, and author of A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya, says the arrest of Zakayev on October 30 was a major tragedy. She also said that there were only two people in Chechnya with whom it was possible to conduct negotiations and they are Zakayev and Ilias Akhmadov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Republic of Chechnya-Ichkeria.

The arrest of Zakayev means, according to Politkovskaya, that the Kremlin has chosen the route of supporting the radicalization of the Chechen top leadership. This is the most murderous route. If we react in this way to people such as Zakayev and Akhmadov, we will have nobody with whom we can talk and we will be left to await the next act of terrorism, she said.

Akhmadov is currently an applicant for political asylum in the U.S. He will be speaking at Macalester on December 5.