TURKMENISTAN: FORMER FULBRIGHTER INVOLVED IN

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ASHGABAT 000115 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR SCA/CEN, SCA/PPD, EUR/ACE USAID/W FOR EE/AA E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL EAID ECON ELAB TX SUBJECT: TURKMENISTAN: FORMER FULBRIGHTER INVOLVED IN LEGISLATIVE REFORM ¶1. (U) Sensitive but unclassified. Not for public Internet. ¶2. (SBU) SUMMARY: In a meeting with a law professor who is currently serving on an experts' working group in the national parliament, we learned about the process by which these groups are revising old or drafting new legislation as part of the larger legislative reform process in post-Niyazov Turkmenistan. The members of this particular working group are highly educated and have had a great deal of international experience; they said they do not need much assistance from foreign experts. The professor described some of the details of his work on a regional People's Council commission. He will likely play a significant role in helping regional authorities develop their self-governing capacity. END SUMMARY. MAN OF THE YEAR ¶3. (SBU) On January 17, PolOff met with Professor Murad Haitov, a 2004 Fulbright Visiting Scholar and newly-elected representative to the Ashgabat City People's Council. Named "Man of the Year" by a government association of trade unions for his work on state development, Haitov is a consultant to the government on legal reform. He is a member of a national parliament experts' working group that has been revising the old Soviet labor law that has been in use since independence in 1991 and is also developing a new "labor market" (employment) law. His working group provides research and recommendations on legislative reform to the parliament's Commission for Economic and Social Policy. ¶4. (U) Haitov said that many talented academics in the higher-education system are involved with numerous working groups supporting legislative reform. His own group has 11 Turkmen academics from a variety of legal, social, and economic backgrounds, and it has also received input from the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights. The only international assistance the working group sought as it conducted its work was from an International Labor Organization (ILO) representative to the CIS who works in Moscow. This representative had earlier assisted the working group when it had been tasked to produce national reports for the ILO about Turkmenistan's labor environment and legislation. ¶5. (U) Although in 2007 the parliament gave its commissions four years to reform Turkmenistan's laws, Haitov said his working group had not been given a timeline for completing their work on the new labor laws. The revision of the Soviet-era labor law is done, he said, and should be approved by the parliament and be published in the next two to three months. (NOTE: Speaker of Parliament Akja Nurberdiyeva stated during a January 19 Cabinet of Ministers meeting the Labor Law will be approved shortly. END NOTE.) An original draft law on the labor market, the contents of which he was unwilling to explain in more than generalities, will probably take longer. The next project his group will tackle will be a law on foreign economic relations. He also expects to be involved in a law on investment climate. LOTS OF INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE ¶6. (U) Asked why no international partners had been brought in to assist with the effort to overhaul Turkmenistan's labor laws, Haitov responded that the experts in his group are highly educated and internationally experienced. Offering himself as an example, he said he had served as a legal consultant for eight years in Moscow before the break-up of the Soviet Union, as well as in Kyrgyzstan. He had been a scholar-in-residence in Eastern Europe and the United States, as well as an arbitration judge, and has also worked closely ASHGABAT 00000115 002 OF 002 with foreign organizations such as the German government's assistance group, GTZ, to develop arbitration courses at the Turkmen State University Law School. His point was that the working-group experts know what they are doing. ELECTED OFFICIAL ¶7. (U) Turning to his newly-acquired position as member of Ashgabat city's regional People's Council, Haitov expressed a bit of surprise that he had been elected in December. Shortly after his election, he had been placed on a legislative commission to assess the need to reform city regulations regarding law and order. It is one of five city-level commissions formed by the regional People's Council organizing committee that is assessing the operations and developmental needs of the capital, including legislation, education, health, municipal utilities, business activity, and agriculture. ¶8. (U) Haitov said these commissions are the first to be created in Turkmenistan, but since he has received numerous phone calls from local government officials in other cities, he predicted that other regional People's Councils would follow suit as they are encouraged to develop their capacity to manage their own resources in the future. Haitov noted that he had previously conducted research and done other work on developing self-government capacity. He has been involved with a UNDP project for the last three years that also works toward achieving this goal. ¶9. (SBU) COMMENT: Haitov was friendly and forthcoming in describing his work for the Mejlis and for the city. Although the government seems to be assessing that the international community has a valuable role to play in getting Turkmenistan's bureaucracy up to speed on the processes involved in fulfilling international obligations or providing comments on laws, at least Haitov believes Turkmenistan has the homegrown expertise it needs to draft the laws on its own. The message seems to be that while it is willing to have someone explain the blueprints, it prefers to build the house on its own. END COMMENT. HOAGLAND