Before Elections, Kazakhstan Does a Little Campaigning

By Al Kamen
Friday, July 20, 2007

If you're an ex-commie dictator looking to burnish your image, it's probably a good thing to make extra sure that the international community thinks your country's parliamentary elections next month are fairly run.

It surely makes sense that Nursultan Nazarbayev, ruler of oil- and gas-rich Kazakhstan since just before it broke from the Soviet Union in 1991, would want to get the "right" people on the monitoring group, which is being run by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

So the country's newly arrived envoy here, Erlan Idrissov, sent out a letter about a week ago to several hundred of "our friends" in Washington asking them to sign up to be on the monitoring team. (The United States gets to appoint 20 percent of the OSCE observers.) Kazakhstan, which is hoping to chair the OSCE in 2009, "believes it would be ideal" if the monitoring team "consists of experienced and knowledgeable representatives capable of making broad-based, well-balanced and forward-looking observations," Idrissov wrote. No hard-line human rights folks?

"Needless to say that a personal knowledge of Kazakhstan and understanding of the challenges of building new institutions and political culture in a young society are important to be an objective observer," he said. "Having been told that you are such a person who does care about the sustained economic and political growth of Kazakhstan, I decided to write to you to ask" you to sign up.

But hurry, the deadline's today.

We think this is a neat move, but there are those who, predictably, think otherwise. "I've never heard of a country trying to stack an OSCE mission with 'friendly' election observers," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "Kazakhstan is obviously more interested in manipulating the image of its elections than it is in actually improving them."

Not so, an embassy spokesman said -- there is no effort to stack the deck with pro-regime business or lobbyist types. In fact, the spokesman said, "we're avoiding them."

Did we mention the oil? The gas?

New Look for the NSC

James Jeffrey, former Army Ranger and Vietnam vet and former No. 2 in the embassy in Baghdad and now principal deputy assistant secretary of state (notably handling the Iran portfolio), is moving over to the White House National Security Council to be chief deputy, replacing J.D. Crouch.

Meanwhile, Judith A. Ansley, senior director for European matters, is going to be deputy national security adviser for regional affairs. This completes NSC chief Stephen Hadley's reshuffling of recent months, which has included bringing on Iraq czar Gen. William Lute.

The Iran portfolio probably will be picked up at State by Iraq coordinator David Satterfield and Jeffrey's deputies.

Contest Winners, Part I

And now, the winners of the In the Loop Pardon Scooter Contest Part I, The Commutation. President Bush, rushing to ensure that former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby didn't do any time, was forced to make this a two-step process: first commuting the sentence and then later on issuing a full pardon.

So, the contest will have 20 winners -- 10 for those whose guesses were closest to July 2, the date of the commutation, and then 10 more when the pardon is issued.

Now the winners:

Bill Campbell, campaign manager for the United Way for the Greater New Orleans Area, was the only person who guessed July 2, saying the White House would act "hoping no one will notice in the hustle and bustle of the July 4th holiday."

Wendel Schneider of Bethesda, a managing editor at a consulting company, who guessed July 1, thought Bush would "do it sooner rather than later so as not to make Libby too nervous."

The other eight winners generally reasoned along of those lines.

Those who guessed July 3 were Robbie Callaway of Damascus, a board member for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children; Allen Ahearn, owner of Quill & Brush Booksellers in Dickerson, Md.; Matthew Levine of Suffern, N.Y.; Douglas Murphy, an economic researcher from Addison, Tex.; Ken Kero, a career diplomat working at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin; and retired intelligence analyst Jerry Olek of Greenbelt.

Richard F. Czubaj, a lawyer from Rochester Hills, Mich., and Murray B. Itkin, a computer systems engineer in Upper Marlboro, picked July 4, saying Bush would act then as a symbolic gesture.

Congratulations to the winners, thanks to all for playing, and remember, we're saving the remaining entries for Part II, The Pardon.

Spelling Correction

Tony Fratto calls to assure us that a cheap shot in Wednesday's column about the White House spelling King Abdullah's name as "Abdallah" was misdirected. He'd checked with people at the White House and "the government has always spelled his name with an 'a,' " he said.

Well, actually, the State Department seems to spell it both ways. And the Saudi embassy's Web site spells it with a "u." And the people there oughta know.

Swell Time for a Safari

And a hearty Loop welcome home to Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), just back from a two-week hunting trip to Zambia. Some Alaska media have popped him for being gone while the House voted on Iraq troop withdrawals last week.

But a Young spokeswoman said the Africa trip -- he was accompanied by former aide, now lobbyist Mike Henry -- had been planned for nearly a year, so Young didn't know he would miss the vote, the Alaska Daily News reported. He went on his own tab, we're told.

In any event, he shot a cape buffalo, a puku and a bushbuck. The meat was given to people in Zambia, the spokeswoman said.

Meanwhile, speaking of Congress and animals, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the Senate's preeminent dog lover, took to the floor yesterday for a lengthy attack on football star Michael Vick and Vick's indictment for running a dog-fighting ring.

Byrd, who's spoken often of his own dog, a Shih Tzu named Baby, condemned Vick's alleged actions as "barbaric."

Each Wore a Tiny Trench Coat

Also in the animal world . . . From the BBC translators, an editorial by Saleh Eskandari headlined "spying squirrels," published July 10 by the Iranian newspaper Resalat.

"A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country's borders. These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes. According to the announcement made by Iranian intelligence officials, alert police officials caught these squirrels before they could carry out any task.

"Fixing GPS devices, bugging instruments and advanced cameras in the bodies of trained animals like squirrels, mice, hamsters, etc, are among modern methods of collecting intelligence. Given the fast speed and the special physical features of these animals, they provide special capabilities for spying operations. Once the animals return to their place of origin, the intelligence gathered by them is then offloaded. . . ."

Always thought there was something squirrelly about those folks.