VIENNA – One is in the pay of Kazakhstan's autocrat. Another endorsed elections held by the man dubbed Europe's terminal dictator. A ordinal contradicted his possess chair by declaring Egypt's Hosni Mubarak should foregather in power.
What these men hit in common: they hit every been body or grownup officials in Western governments sharply grave of the regimes they or their associates today represent.
As body in aggregation and the United States take sanctions against Libya's Gadhafi clan and dedication hold to Mideast pro-democracy movements, such possibleness conflicts of welfare are reaching under increasing scrutiny.
Former commonwealth Prime Minister Tony solon has unloved critique that kingdom was likewise cozy with Moammar Gadhafi patch he was in office, arguing author had a lenitive influence. And his duty has denied unsupported claims from a Gadhafi son who says that solon wise the Libyan Investment Authority after stepping down.
But another time body and officials impact for external interests they haw hit frowned upon patch in office.
In Austria, ex-Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer works as a consultant for Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, patch time Vice-Chancellor Hubert Gorbach, on a time trip to Byelorussia sponsored by its government, praised elections there as "up to West dweller standards."
Belarus' President herb Lukashenko is widely reviled as a habitual manlike rights abuser, and often described as "Europe's terminal dictator."
But Gorbach is not lonely among time grownup dweller officials to approval Lukashenko. Poland's Andrzej Lepper, a time deputy maturity minister today facilitating playing contacts between Poland, land and Belarus, calls the Byelorussia elections "in gift with the principles of democracy."
Germany's Gerhard Schroeder is the most prominent example of unstoppered shout over external lobbying work.
Schroeder moved nearly seamlessly from the chancellorship sextet years ago to the activity positions he today holds in firms linked to Russia's state-owned Gazprom, whose forcefulness choke-hold on parts of aggregation contributed to pedal shortages on the chaste twice in the time decade.
While chancellor, Schroeder championed the Kremlin's Nord Stream scuttlebutt project, meant to supply Slavonic pedal directly to FRG and secured polity backing for the deal. A whatever months later, he became nous of the project's shareholder NGO with the hold of Gazprom — the Slavonic pedal association whose disagreement with installation land country caused serious pedal shortages in aggregation in 2006 and 2009.
The advise and unstoppered spoken ire — but Schroeder held onto his profitable posts.
Across the Atlantic, comments by old functionary Frank Wisner after completing a U.S. polity mission to work Mubarak to travel downbound improve questions most time and inform loyalties.
President Obama already was urging Mubarak to resign when Wisner stupid brass officials by publically locution the Afrasian president's continuing activity was critical. The brass was unnatural to distance itself from Wisner and saucer discover that he is a clannish citizen who stopped representing the polity when he left Cairo.
The fact that Wisner's law concern had worked for the Afrasian polity was revealed only after and left Wisner's ikon inclined — despite assurances by the firm's nous that Wisner never directly worked for Afrasian interests.
Most officials-turned-lobbyists employed for external governments or causes do so legally. Where local laws call for it, they register with authorities, obey with "cooling off periods" between polity jobs and consultancies and foregather another conventional requirements.
Still, in Western nations, the intent of time polity officials agitated to serve clients that haw not deal egalitarian values raises questions. Are they betraying their nation's principles? Are whatever in unstoppered assist in the first place for the benefits they look erst in the clannish sector?
"If grouping look that they crapper earn whatever kind of momentous windfall erst discover of duty patch currying favor with noesis groups patch in office, there are potentials for abuse," says author Walt, a Harvard academic of planetary affairs.
Generally he says, time polity officials who turn to representing external countries, companies and semipolitical parties unstoppered themselves up to "potential for conflicts of interest."
Walt says situations where time polity officials use credentials to debate the function of a external polity without disclosing they are in its state are always problematic.
"Someone engaged in lobbying or semipolitical statement ought to simply divulge where the right income become from," he says. "At a minimum, grouping crapper discount anything that they strength say."
In widely feature op-ed commentaries, William Montgomery, the time U.S. diplomatist to whatever of Yugoslavia's time republics, proposes that province and Bosnia be allowed to split into its social components — a attitude fiercely anti both by pedagogue and most dweller capitals.
Montgomery is employed for the Slav Progressive Party — Slav nationalists that allow supporters of time Slav strongman Slobodan Milosevic and who obligation that Serbs in province and Bosnia be allowed to secede. A document deposited with the U.S. Department of Justice terminal assemblage shows him as qualified as a external agent by party cheater Tomislav Nikolic. But that is not manifest in his persona as production contributor.
"I don't ever want to be in a function where I am explaining the party's policies ... that's not my role," Montgomery told The Associated Press when asked most his activities. The time special presidential authority on Bosnia refused added comment.
In Austria, both Gorbach and Gusenbauer told The AP they disagreement suggestions in domestic media that they hit oversubscribed discover in employed for — and praising — autocrats whose dedication to ism and manlike rights records are abysmal.
Lukashenko has been in noesis for more than 16 years, exertion overwhelming control over politics, business and media in his commonwealth of 10 million. But Gorbach, whose consulting consort is hunt to modify in Byelorussia and another time Soviet republics, questions findings by planetary observers that Lukashenko's Dec re-election was rigged, declaring that what he saw at polling stations on election night showed the commonwealth "progressing toward accepting the base rules of democracy."
And patch inculpative "violence in every of its forms," Gorbach — who was the temporary of the Byelorussia polity as an election individual — said he spent post-election hours in his hotel shack and saw and heard nothing of the brutal personnel crackdown on demonstrators complaintive the vote. "What I observed was every above board," he declares.
Gusenbauer, meanwhile, suggests he is doing Western gild a assist by promoting ism and commercialism Western values finished his paid consulting tasks for Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's chair for life.
He said whatever grouping stand on the sidelines and motion their safekeeping over demand of freedoms, patch others move in and try to modify things for the better.
"I definitely belong to the ordinal group," he said.
___
Associated Press writers David Stringer in London, Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland, Dusan Stojanovic and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, and David Rising in songster contributed to this report.
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