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PP RUEHDBU
DE RUEHNT #1576/01 2471041
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 041041Z SEP 07
FM AMEMBASSY TASHKENT
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8414
INFO RUEHAH/AMEMBASSY ASHGABAT 3241
RUEHTA/AMEMBASSY ASTANA 9407
RUEHEK/AMEMBASSY BISHKEK 3854
RUEHDBU/AMEMBASSY DUSHANBE 3718

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TASHKENT 001576 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR SCA/CEN AND DRL 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/04/2017 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM UZ
SUBJECT: PULATOV FOR PRESIDENT? 
 
 
Classified By: CDA BRAD HANSON FOR REASONS 1.4 (B, D). 
 
¶1.  (C) Summary: A Birlik party member told poloff on August 
17 that an initiative group would be formed in September to 
announce the candidacy of Birlik Chairman Abdurakhmon Pulatov 
for the expected presidential elections in December.  The 
Birlik party member, who is also head of the Ezgulik human 
rights organization, added that Ezgulik was planning on 
issuing a shadow report on torture to present along with the 
Uzbek Government's official report to the UN Committee 
Against Torture (CAT) in Geneva in November.  We believe that 
Pulatov, who currently resides in the U.S., has little chance 
of being registered as a candidate, let alone polling many 
votes, but nevertheless, Pulatov would be the most prominent 
opposition figure who has yet declared his intention to run 
for president.  End summary. 
 
PULATOV PLANS TO ANNOUNCE CANDIDACY IN SEPTEMBER 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
 
¶2.  (C) On August 17, Birlik party member Vasila Inoyatova 
told poloff that an initiative group would be formed in 
September to announce the candidacy of Birlik Chairman 
Abdurakhim Pulatov for the expected presidential elections in 
December.  The initiative group will attempt to collect 300 
signatures and submit the necessary documents to the State 
Electoral Committee to register Pulatov as an official 
candidate.  According to Inoyatova, Pulatov, who has been 
living in the United States since 1998, is under no illusions 
that the current regime will register him as an official 
candidate and he has no plans to return to Uzbekistan to 
actually campaign.  Instead, Inoyatova said that Pulatov's 
candidacy will serve as a symbolic protest highlighting 
continued human rights abuses and the lack of political 
reform in Uzbekistan. 
 
EZGULIK PLANS SHADOW REPORT FOR UN COMMITTEE 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
¶3.  (C) Inoyatova, who is also head of the Ezgulik human 
rights organization, also said that Ezgulik is planning on 
issuing a shadow report on torture to present along with the 
Uzbek Government's official report to the UN Committee 
Against Torture (CAT) in Geneva in November.  Originally, 
Ezgulik was planning on issuing the shadow report in 
conjunction with the Rapid Reaction Group, a coalition of 
human rights organizations in Uzbekistan. However, in July, 
Ezgulik was asked to leave the Rapid Reaction Group by the 
other groups, which felt that Ezgulik was too political in 
nature because of its close ties to the Birlik party. 
Ezgulik now plans to issue the shadow report on its own, and 
Inoyatova has requested financial assistance from the U.S. 
Government to send two of its members to Geneva so that they 
could present the report to the committee in person. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶4.  (C) If Pulatov does announce in September his candidacy 
for the presidency, he joins a list of at least four other 
human rights and opposition activists, including Suhbat 
Abdullayev, Akhtam Shaymardanov, Jahongir Shosalimov and 
Abdillo Tojiboy ug'li, who have already announced plans to 
run in the expected December elections.  We agree with 
Inoyatova that Pulatov has little chance of being registered 
as a candidate, let alone polling many votes.  Given his many 
years in exile, Pulatov is no longer an influential figure in 
Uzbek society, and Birlik's influence and current membership 
levels also are negligible.  Nevertheless, Pulatov would be 
the most prominent opposition figure who has yet declared his 
intention to run.  His candidacy also may draw added 
publicity to Ezgulik's planned shadow report for the UN 
Committee Against Torture in November. 
 
BIO NOTE 
-------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) Born in 1945, Pulatov is an ethnic Uzbek from 
Tashkent province.  In 1968, he graduated from the Moscow 
Energy Institute and was a graduate student at the USSR 
Academy of Sciences' Computing Center in Moscow from 1968 to 
¶1973.  From 1973 to 1991, he worked in the Uzbekistan Academy 
of Sciences' Cybernetics Research Institute, and in 1984, he 
defended his doctoral dissertation on robotics and artificial 
intelligence.  In 1980, Pulatov joined the Communist Party of 
the Soviet Union, and in 1985, he became the Communist Party 
Committee Secretary at the Cybernetics Research Institute. 
Pulatov began his independent political activity in the 
 
TASHKENT 00001576  002 OF 002 
 
 
spring of 1988 as a member of the Committee to Save the Aral 
Sea.  In the same year, he became a founding member of the 
Birlik initiative group and was elected its chairman in 1989. 
 In 1992, Pulatov was beaten by unknown assailants and fled 
to Baku, Azerbaijan.  In 1998, Pulatov relocated to the 
United States and is currently living in northern Virginia. 
He is married and has two children. 
HANSON