From April 22-26, 1996, Commission staff attended, along with 30 media professionals, the International Conference on Conflict in Trans-Caucasus [sic] and the Role of Mass Media, held in Kobuleti, Ajaria (an Autonomous Republic in Georgia). The conferences organizers were the OSCE Office of Democratic Institu- tions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the OSCE Mission to Georgia, the Council of Europe and the Tbilisi-based Black Sea Press Information Agency. The project was co-sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development, through the Eurasia Foundation. Participants came from Baku, Tskhinvali (South Ossetia), Stepanakert (Nagorno-Karabakh), Tbilisi and Yerevan. Organized by the ODIHR as a follow-up to the 1995 Human Dimension Implementation Review Meeting in Warsaw, the conference was one in a series on the role of the media in conflict situations and in systems undergoing the transition from communism. The stated aim of these conferences is to develop aware- ness of and working recommendations for the journalists working in conflict regions on the role the media can play in preventing and resolving conflicts. A secondary goal is to give journalists from states or regions in conflict the opportunity to meet, discuss common problems and establish personal contacts to promote the exchange of information. Other scheduled conferences examine the role of the media in the former Yugoslavia (June 1996) and the situation of the media in Uzbekistan (October 1996). One important reason conference organizers chose Kobuleti was that Ajaria has managed to avoid the destruction and disruption visited upon the rest of Georgia in the last several years by ethnic conflicts and by gangs of marauding criminals associated with various paramilitary groups. Under the iron grip of Aslan Abashidze, the Chairman of Ajarias Supreme Soviet, Ajaria has been relatively calm, and has taken in refugees from Georgias ethnic-separatist conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Since these conflicts are technically unre- solved, Tbilisi, the capital, would have been problematic for Abkhaz and South Ossetians, whereas Ajaria seemed a more neutral site.

On October 29, 1995, Croatia held elections for the 127 seats in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber in Croatia's "Sabor," or parliament. The elections were called earlier than required by President Franjo Tudjman in light of the new situation in Croatia created by the retaking of most of the territory occupied by Serb militants since 1991, and the mass exodus of ethnic Serbs from those regions into Serb-occupied parts of neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina and into Serbia itself Representatives for 80 of the seats were chosen on the basis of a nationwide, proportional vote in which 14 political parties or coalitions of parties participated. Representatives for 28 seats were chosen on the basis of a majority vote in electoral districts established for the elections. Twelve seats were chosen on the basis of a proportional vote of Croatian citizens, the so-called "diaspora" residing outside Croatia's borders, in which seven political parties or coalitions participated. The remaining seven seats were reserved for some of Croatia's national minorities, including three seats in a nationwide ,vote among members of the Serb community, one seat for those of the Italian minority, one for the Hungarian minority, one for the Czech and Slovak minorities, and one for the Ruthenian, Ukrainian, German and Austrian minorities in specified regional districts. The elections demonstrated disappointingly little democratic progress in Croatia since 1990, when multiparty elections were first held. In fact, the apparent unwillingness of the authorities to permit a truly open electoral system in which all had confidence, or a genuinely free media to permit a more competitive campaign period, seemed almost an expression of defiance of any democratic trend that may exist in Croatia at this time. Smaller flaws in polling practices observed on election day also become less excusable in that they indicated no attempt by the authorities to correct problems observed in all past elections. Thus, while the elections generally have been considered to be free in tenns of providing voters with a choice, they were not satisfactorily fair in the way that choice of candidates was presented to the voters.

From November 28 to December 1, 1995, the participating States of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) convened a seminar on the rule of law. The meeting was organized by the Warsaw-based OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). Thirty-eight of the 53 fully participating States attended, along with representatives from two Non-Participating Mediterranean States, six international organizations, and 25 non-governmental organizations. Over the course of two days, a number of emerging democracies described the constitutions and other legislative provisions that had been adopted in their countries to provide for the rule of law, at least on paper. Western participants, for their part, generally spoke of the specific and concrete challenges faced in their countries in actually implementing safeguards for the rule of law. In general, the participation of East-Central European and former Soviet countries—most of which attended this meeting—was more active than at the 1991 Oslo meeting, and Western participants, for their part, avoided the West-West bickering that marred the earlier seminar. At the end of the meeting, the rapporteurs produced summaries of the discussions.