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criticisms of the government’s security operation in GBAO. Both have Russian citizenship. The two flew from Yekaterinburg to Moscow on July 29 and vanished at Moscow’s Domodedevo Airport, reappearing in Tajikistan shortly after where they were shown in a video saying they had returned voluntarily.
Another GBAO activist and blogger, Maksud Guyosov, was detained in Moscow on August 17.
On May 18, the Aga Khan released a statement calling on Pamiris to “remain calm, abide by the laws of the land, and
reject any form of violence.
In late July there were reports that the government was looking to seize the schools the Aga Khan Development Fund (AKDN) has built and funded in GBAO and there was a surprise audit of the microfinance bank that the AKDN supported.
In August, the Khorog city park that was built by and belonged to the AKDN was confiscated and given to the state.
The president of the Ismaili Shiite Coun- cil of Tajikistan and former consul of the
Aga Khan, Sharofat Mamadambarova, was questioned by Tajikistan’s security service on August 13 and 14.
Human Rights Watch, the European Union, the International Commission of Jurists, and others have called for the Tajik authorities to cease their campaign against the Pamiris, but to no avail.
A culture that has existed for centuries is now on the verge of extinction as the Tajik authorities purge Pamiri leaders and cut off the region from outside help.
End of Vienna talks means US, Iran political approvals now needed to revive nuclear deal
Will Conroy in Prague
The Vienna talks are at long last over – but that doesn’t mean
an agreement to relaunch the nuclear deal is done. For that to hap- pen, the Biden administration in the
US and Iran’s ultimate authority, its supreme leader, must approve the “final text” drafted by Iranian and European representatives at the negotiations in the Austrian capital over the past five days. And that’s far from a certainty, especially perhaps where US leader Joe Biden is concerned, given the volatile American political environment that will exist in the run-up to the November midterm elections.
"We worked for four days and today the text is on the table," an EU official at the talks told reporters. "The negotiation is finished, it's the final text... and it will not be renegotiated."
Further outlining the situation as it now stands, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Twitter that everything that could be negotiated had been nego- tiated. He added that behind every part of the drafted proposals "lies a political decision that needs to be taken" in the capitals of the countries involved.
Responding to the announcement of the final drafted text, a US State Department spokesman said the US was ready to "quickly conclude a deal" to revive the nuclear deal, or JCPOA, on the basis of proposals put forward by the European Union. Tehran, he added, had repeatedly said it was ready for a return to mutual implementation of the agreement and Washington would now wait to see if "their actions match their words".
And therein lies the rub. For in Tehran, Iranian officials were saying much
the same thing about the US. The line was that Iran would await whether Washington would show enough “flexibility” to get the deal over the line.
If it returns, the JCPOA – designed
to curb Iran’s nuclear development programme to guarantee it is kept entirely civilian in return for the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran – would come back at a time that the Iranians are thought to have reached the point where they could stockpile enough highly enriched uranium to make
at least one crude nuclear device. Preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East is clearly a priority for
Biden, but the final provisions in the deal that must be accepted by the US and Iran to seal the return of the JCPOA are troublesome given the political constituencies that must be persuaded of the merits of a restored agreement.
One final issue is to what extent the US will guarantee that sanctions are lifted not just in name but in effect, by providing credit guarantees. Tehran is wary that Biden’s successor could
The protracted, stop-start Vienna talks on reviving the nuclear deal, held at the Austrian capital's Palais Coburg hotel, have at last produced a final, draft agreement. / IRNA.
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