A10 The World

by Janine Zacharia

cairo — Egyptian police on Tuesday beat and detained pro- democracy demonstrators in cen- tral Cairo who were calling for constitutional reforms and the repeal of a decades-old emergen- cy law that restricts an array of personal rights.

At least 90 people were de- tained, according to rally organ- izers from the 6th of April move- ment, a mostly youth-led organi- zation that was formed two years ago and is pushing for more polit- ical freedom. Protester Amal Sharaf, 35, an

office manager in an advertising agency, was hysterical after being beaten by a police officer with a baton. “I’ve been to protests be- fore, but I’ve never been beaten,” she said, grabbing her wounded arm. “We’re trying to change the emergency law that we’ve been living with for 28 years.” The demonstration came amid political uncertainty, with parlia- mentary elections slated for this year and a presidential election for next year. President Hosni Mubarak, 81, who had his gall- bladder and a growth on his

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Pro-democracy protesters beaten and arrested in Cairo

Instead, a few hundred demon-

strators ended up gathering on the sidewalk outside the Shura Council, the upper house of the parliament, on Kasr al-Aini Street. Police initially surrounded the protesters and tried to keep them out of traffic. They then began to beat some demonstrators with batons and haul them one by one into blue trucks. Police confiscat- ed people’s cameras and ordered passersby and journalists to stop taking photos. “I’m very disappointed,” said

JANINE ZACHARIA/THE WASHINGTON POST

“We’re trying to change the emergency law that we’ve been living with for 28 years,” said Amal Sharaf, who was beaten at a Cairo rally. At least 90 demonstrators were detained.

small intestine removed in sur- gery performed abroad last month, has ruled Egypt for nearly three decades. He has not said whether he will compete in next year’s election, fueling specula- tion that he might try to ensure that his son Gamal succeeds him. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyp- tian former head of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, returned to Egypt in February and has be- come a prominent opposition

leader, calling for reforms includ- ing a repeal of the emergency law. Authorities had denied the 6th of April movement a permit to demonstrate Tuesday, but it de- cided to protest anyway. Police, some dressed in riot

gear, others in plain clothes, filled Tahrir Square at noon Tuesday and waited outside metro sta- tions for demonstrators, who had originally planned to march from the square to the parliament building.

Mohamed Safeyeldin, managing director of business development at a construction company, as he watched the police round up demonstrators and looked for his son in the fray. He said it was his first time attending a demonstra- tion. “We have to change this con- stitution. We can’t continue like this,” he said.

A person who answered the phone in the media office of the Interior Ministry said the forces dealt with the demonstrators as is customary to ensure that the streets would not become chaot- ic. He declined to give his name and hung up.

zachariaj@washpost.com

White House hints it might cancel Karzai meeting

by Michael D. Shear

The White House offered fresh signals of its displeasure with Af- ghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday, hinting that it might cancel his Washington meeting with President Obama next month. Press secretary Robert Gibbs said a planned meeting between Obama and Karzai on May 12 is “still on the schedule.” But later, in a reference to a se- ries of anti-Western comments made recently by the Afghan leader, Gibbs said that “we cer- tainly would evaluate . . . contin- ued or further remarks” by Kar- zai before deciding whether it’s

“constructive to have such a meeting.”

Gibbs also pointedly declined to call Karzai a U.S. ally. The administration has typ- ically referred to him as a “part- ner” in its efforts to fight terror- ism. The Obama administration has been irritated by comments in which Karzai has denounced Western interference in his coun- try, accused foreigners of per- petrating a “vast fraud” in Af- ghanistan’s presidential election last year, and even suggested that his frustrations might lead him to join the Taliban. The outbursts, which contin-

ued even after a conversation with Secretary of State Hillary

Rodham Clinton, have prompted critics of Karzai to question his leadership. In an interview Tuesday morn- ing on MSNBC’s “Daily Run- down,” a former U.N. envoy to Af- ghanistan, Peter W. Galbraith, de- scribed Karzai as “off balance.” “He’s prone to tirades. He can

be very emotional, act impulsive- ly. In fact, some of the palace in- siders say that he has a certain fondness for some of Afghani- stan’s most profitable exports,” said Galbraith, apparently refer- ring to opium. Galbraith is among the West- ern leaders Karzai has publicly scorned. The broader question about the stability of the government

remains at the heart of the Amer- ican mission in Afghanistan. The months-long debate last year among Obama’s senior ad- visers about whether to increase U.S. troop levels there centered on whether the gains by the U.S. forces would be sustained in the long run by the Afghan govern- ment. “We want to see President Kar-

zai fulfill the commitments that he enunciated both at his inaugu- ral address and at a donors con- ference in London,” Gibbs said. “Those commitments he made not just to his people but to the international community that has invested in ensuring the secu- rity of his country.”

shearm@washpost.com

Meeting could reveal details about WWII massacre

Vladimir Putin and Donald

by Justine Jablonska

A historic meeting scheduled

for Wednesday between top lead- ers of Russia and Poland is expec- ted to provide new details about Russia’s mass execution of 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest in 1940 and may open the way toward improved relations be- tween the two countries. The mass slaying of the Polish prisoners of war by the Soviet se- cret police is one of the darker and less known chapters of World War II, said Kyle Parker, a Rus- sian expert and policy adviser to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an inde- pendent U.S. agency that helps formulate American policy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Tusk — the Russian and Polish prime ministers — will meet at the execution site in Smolensk, Russia, to mark the 70th anniver- sary of the massacre, which Rus- sia blamed on Germany until 1990. There is no longer any question about who did it. However, ex- perts say that some important questions remain about the coverup. Russia’s answers to those questions at the meeting could help determine the course of the key strategic relationship between the two countries. Putin’s presence at the cer-

emony is particularly significant, Parker said. “There are incredible possibil- ities for forward movement and reconciliation in what he may say,” Parker said. “Sincere, heart-

felt, unequivocal remarks by Pu- tin would mean even more . . . be- cause Putin was the head of the successor agency of the NKVD,” or the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the agency that killed the Polish officers in 1940. Putin headed the KGB before be- coming Russian president and then prime minister. “I understand that Russia will be turning over new documents and will be releasing some new information” that could shed light on the massacre’s coverup, Parker said. In March 1940, Joseph Stalin signed an order for the mass ex- ecution of more than 22,000 Pol- ish officers being held as pris- oners of war. The April 1940 ex- ecutions were systematic: Each officer’s hands were tied behind his back, and each was shot with

a single bullet through the base of the skull.

According to Poland’s con- scription system, the Polish offi- cer corps included anyone with a university degree — Poland’s in- telligentsia.

“By murdering these people,

the Russians created a leadership vacuum,” said Alex Storozynski, the president of the Kosciuszko Foundation. The mass graves were discov- ered in 1943 by the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, after their defeat at Stalingrad. The discovery caused a diplo-

matic crisis, Storozynski said: The United States was allied with Russia against Germany. When Russia blamed Germany for the massacre, the United States stayed silent, Parker said.

— Medill News Service

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2010

Tentative deal ends acrimonious talks

schools from A1

sides came out ahead. “Although it was a long, some- times difficult process, it was the right process to go through,” Rhee said. “We’ve come to an agreement everyone thinks is a good agreement. . . . It took a lot of courage to get here.” Weingarten said: “There was a lot of anger and a lot of misin- terpretation of each other’s posi- tions, but the best collective bar- gaining processes are ones you are solving problems. Here the is- sue was how do we help kids in D.C. public schools and ensure teachers have the tools to help them.” The agreement includes a vol-

untary pay-for-performance pro- gram that will allow teachers to earn annual bonuses for student growth on standardized tests and other measures of academic suc- cess. It also calls for dramatically expanded professional develop- ment opportunities for teachers — including school-based profes- sional development centers — and mentoring and induction programs for new educators. The pact, if approved, will also

afford Rhee and her school prin- cipals more latitude in deciding which teachers to retain in the event that budget cuts or enroll- ment declines force the closure of some schools. The 103-page deal is signifi- cantly different from Rhee’s origi- nal vision for a collective bargain- ing agreement, which she prom- ised would “revolutionize education as we know it” when she first developed it in 2008. Rhee garnered national atten- tion from school reform advo- cates with a two-tier salary pro- posal that offered experienced educators a chance to make as much as $130,000 annually in salary and performance bonuses. The plan required teachers who aspired to the top pay range to give up tenure protections for a year, essentially exposing them to dismissal without appeal. Rhee’s effort to weaken tenure

protections won her rock star- dom in segments of the educa- tional reform community hostile to teachers unions. It also helped her attract an estimated $200 million in funding commitments from private foundations. But it touched off a furor among Dis- trict teachers and union leaders, and languished at the bargaining table. Asked Tuesday whether her

views on teacher tenure have evolved, Rhee said: “What has evolved is our common under- standing of what is important and what is not important. The thing that is important is that everyone understands that tenure doesn’t mean a job for life.” Although Rhee and Weingar-

ten expressed satisfaction with the pact, it lands in the midst of a politically charged environment in the District, one that could complicate its ratification by teachers and approval by the council. In addition to the may- or’s race, Washington Teachers’

Union President George Parker faces a reelection challenge next month from union General Vice President Nathan Saunders, an outspoken Rhee critic. Parker now will face that elec- tion with a contract deal in hand. “We really hit on something that can move kids forward,” he said. The private funding sources for the contract are expected to draw scrutiny from teachers and council members. The proposed pay package would be financed with grants from four private do- nors: the Eli and Edythe Broad, Laura and John Arnold, Rob- ertson and Walton Family foun- dations. Letters of commitment from each of the private funders were submitted Tuesday to D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gan- dhi, who must certify them as fis- cally sound for the deal to move forward. Private money has played a sig-

nificant role in public education for years. But union officials said Tuesday that there was no prec- edent for private foundations un- derwriting salaries of school- teachers. What makes the ar- rangement more unusual is that some of the proposed private fun- ders are not known for their sup- port of unionized teachers. The Walton Family Founda- tion, created in 1987 by Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, has invest- ed heavily in supporting non- unionized charter schools, and critics say many of its contribu- tions reflect an agenda that pro- motes privatization of public education. Weingarten said the District’s fiscal situation and the national economic downturn left few options for putting together a substantial financial package for teachers. She also said she expec- ted that public funds would even- tually sustain the raises when the private funds were exhausted “Given the crisis, this is a very novel and clever way of trying to solve an immediate problem,” Weingarten said. The pay package covers five years, with base salary increases of 3, 3, 5 and 5 percent. If the council ratifies the deal, the first 11 percent will be paid retroac- tively to the District’s 3,800 teachers, who have not had a raise in nearly three years. The 266 teachers who were laid off in October as a result of the Dis- trict’s budget crunch also will re- ceive the 11 percent retroactive payment. The other major piece of the deal would allow Rhee and school administrators more free- dom in deciding whether to re- tain teachers who are “excessed” from their jobs when schools are closed or consolidated because of budget or enrollment issues. Un- der current rules, teachers with the least amount of service are excessed first. Under the proposal, teachers would be cut according to a for- mula that gives greatest weight to the previous year’s performance evaluation. Length of service would be weighted the least.

turqueb@washpost.com

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