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Tuesday, January 7, 1997

* Tabriz-Born Gregorian heads Carnegie Corporation
* CIA to unveil 1953 coup secrets
* Amnesty International: Executions doubled
* AI man moves to U.S. State Department
* Another Russian sub delivered
* Border mine killes three

Carnegie Corp. Picks a Chief in Gregorian

By JUDITH MILLER
The New York Times
Jan. 7, 1997

The Carnegie Corporation has chosen Vartan Gregorian, the exuberant scholar who revitalized the New York Public Library and led Brown University for the last eight years, as its new president.

Mr. Gregorian will replace David A. Hamburg, a 71-year-old educator and scientist, as head of the foundation, based in midtown Manhattan. Last year, it gave away $59 million to more than 335 organizations in the United States and abroad for projects aimed at promoting education and peace.

Spokesmen for the 86-year-old Carnegie Corporation, the nation's 16th largest foundation, said the board was expected to approve the choice of Mr. Gregorian at its annual meeting on Thursday.

During the 14-year-tenure of Dr. Hamburg, Carnegie's assets quadrupled, thanks largely to the soaring value of its investments, and now total $1.4 billion...

Mr. Gregorian is also known for his commitment to human rights and interest in foreign affairs, especially conflict resolution and intellectual freedom. An Armenian born in Tabriz, Iran, Mr. Gregorian speaks seven languages and is the author of "The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan," and two other books and many articles on Middle Eastern and Armenian history...

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From: Masoud Sadegh <intcons@ix.netcom.com>

From wire services
01/02/97

WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday it had begun a declassification review of two vast bodies of documents that could shed new light on the Cold War and may open up many secrets.

The reviews involve all records that flowed in and out of the office of the director of central intelligence for the past 50 years, as well as all CIA studies on the former Soviet Union from the spy agency's inception in 1947.

The twin initiatives were being carried out by the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence, a kind of in-house think tank, at the urging of the director of central intelligence's historical review panel of outside historians,CIA spokesman David Christian said.

The CIA declined to cite a target for making public the eligible parts of this material,but said its long-delayed release of files from another major declassification project -- involving 11 key Cold War covert actions -- would begin in a matter of weeks,``subject to final review by senior officials.''

The first of the declassified covert actions would concern the 1954 coup that overthrew Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, the elected president of Guatemala,Christian said. He said these documents were ``on the verge of release.''

He said that could be followed within weeks by release of records on the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Next up would be files on the 1953 coup that installed the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in Iran, Christian said.

But alluding to chronic problems in meeting its own timetable for making such material public, the CIA spokesman declined to name a target for release of the Iran records or any of the other Cold War covert actions.

Christian said the CIA's plans to declassify its covert actions, first promised in 1992 by then-CIA Director Robert Gates, had been set back two years by the 1992 John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Law under which the CIA made public more than 200,000 pages of records.

The declassification review of the files of the 17 men who have served as the nation's top spymaster would stretch back to 1946, when the office of director of central intelligence was created to manage the transition from the wartime Office of Strategic Services to the CIA.

Although not all reviewed material would necessarily be made public because of the need to protect intelligence sources and methods, the review would involve things like telephone logs, appointment books, memos written by the directors, and memos that they received, Christian said. `This could be very interesting,'' he added.The CIA studies on the former Sovi et Union that are under declassification review are distinct from ``national intelligence estimates'' on the same subject, which are the work of the entire intelligence community. More than 450 of these have already been released in recent years.

John Lewis Gaddis, a Cold War historian who is a former member of the historical review panel, said he would not be satisfied with the CIA's declassification effort until he saw what they actually turned over to the National Archives, the independent agency that catalogues government documents.

``The proof is going to be in the pudding,'' he said in a telephone interview from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. ``The real issue is when are actual documents going to show up at the National Archives, as opposed to the CIA's own highly selective publications of historical materials ... What a historian wants is to see the archives.''

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Group Accuses Iran of Abuses

Tuesday, January 7, 1997 3:43 am EST

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- The number of executions in Iran more than doubled last year and many of the death sentences were carried out after unfair trials, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

The London-headquartered human rights group said it recorded at least 110 executions in Iran in 1996, compared with 50 in 1995.

``The true figure may be much higher,'' it said, because ``many executions are never reported...''

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Will State Dept. Rights Advocate Get a Bigger Role?

By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
Jan. 7, 1997

WASHINGTON -- When he was elected four years ago, President Clinton promised to be a human-rights President and refuse to "coddle dictators."

As a sign of that intention he named John Shattuck -- with a background as a top official at Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union -- as the State Department's point man for promotion of human rights abroad.

The human-rights record of the first Clinton term was mixed, however. Mr. Clinton's reluctance to get tough on the abuses of big trading partners like China, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Indonesia left rights advocates frustrated, even as they applauded the Administration's encouragement of democracy in places like Haiti and Bosnia.

Many proponents of human rights agreed with Aryeh Neier, president of a private foundation called the Open Society Institute, who said Mr. Clinton had embraced a new post-cold-war double standard: Before, Washington excused repressive anti-Communist allies while attacking the ample abuses of Communist countries.

Today, Mr. Neier notes, the new dividing lines are trade and security, with Washington ready to denounce or sanction "pariah states" like Iraq or Iran and "governments of countries that are not considered politically or economically important..."

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Russian-Made Sub En Route to Iran

Reuter
Thursday, January 2 1997; Page A12
The Washington Post

A Russian-made, diesel-powered submarine has arrived at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal on its way to join the Iranian navy, shipping sources said...

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From: Reza F. Bourghani <davood@ix.netcom.com>

From wire services 01/06/97

Three opposition members killed in mine blast in Iran

TEHRAN, Jan 6 - Three alleged members of Iran's main armed opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen, were killed after hitting mines planted in border regions with Iraq, Iran's official news agency IRNA reported Monday.

The three, one of them a woman, were trying to cross the border into Iraq, where the Mujahedeen are based, when they were spotted and chased by government forces in border regions in western Kermanshah province.

They consequently entered the mine field and were killed, IRNA said, quoting a local official in Kermanshah.

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