|
World Media Watch
by Gloria R. Lalumia
BUZZFLASH NOTE: Once again, these are the views and perspectives of the individual papers, not of BuzzFlash or Gloria. They offer BuzzFlash readers a way of reading what other nations are saying about the crisis, whether we like it or not. We repeat: This is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.
* * *
1//The Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates--FORCES JOSTLE IN IRAQ'S POST-SADDAM VACUUM [A month after US forces demolished Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad, a range of paramilitary forces are posing fresh security threats as they jostle for power in the new political order... Tensions persist between rival Kurdish factions in the north, Kurds and Arabs in ethnically mixed areas closer to Baghdad, Sunnis and Shiites in the south and rival Shiite militias along the Iranian border. Add to this cocktail gangs of bandits armed with heavy weapons looted from abandoned military stockpiles, and it is clear why US President George W. Bush avoided saying the war was over in his victory speech last week...Diyala provides a snapshot of the types of problems that persist throughout the country. At least three paramilitary groups are vying for influence, amid ongoing lawlessness and fighting between Arabs and Kurds.]
2//Foreign Policy in Focus, USA--U.S. AND INDIA-A DANGEROUS ALLIANCE [In the wake of the Iraq War, growing tensions with Iran, and a possible confrontation with North Korea, it would be easy to miss the formation of yet another Washington think tank. But the freshly minted U.S.-India Institute for Strategic Policy is an organization to watch and one that may help reveal the next target of American power: containing China. The Institute, closely aligned with the ultra-conservative Center for Security Policy, is the outcome of a series of quiet meetings and low-profile joint military operations between the U.S. and the government of prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, dominated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).]
3//Inter Press Service News Agency, Italy--FRENCH PREPARE THEIR ANSWER TO BBC AND CNN [France is preparing to launch a state-owned international news channel to compete with the British, U.S. and Arab channels that dominate international television. The launch of the new channel, unofficially dubbed "CNN à la Francaise", has been delayed for years due to rivalry among TV companies in Paris. The war in Iraq, and the parallel battle among TV channels has now prompted French officials to speed up the project.]
4//The Independent, UK--BERLUSCONI SEEKS IMMUNITY AHEAD OF EU PRESIDENCY [Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has decided to save himself from possible criminal conviction by introducing a law that will grant legal immunity to members of parliament. The decision came after a dramatic court appearance in Milan on Monday by the billionaire media tycoon at the trial in which he is accused of bribing judges to swing a business deal. Without denying the charges, he told the court: "I am proud of my actions." ... For a conviction and perhaps a prison sentence to be handed down while Italy was in charge of the EU would be, in the Italian phrase, a brutta figura, an ugly mess.]
5//The Moscow Times, Russia--RUSSIA SEEN KEY TO KYOTO PROTOCOL [As the host of a key global warming conference this fall and as a potential signatory with a swing vote on the contentious Kyoto Protocol, Russia has found itself at the forefront of the climate change debate. "We are looking forward to serious, interesting discussions," Yury Izrael, chair of the conference's organizing committee, told reporters Wednesday. "We are not going to create new contradictions but ... find out what is really going on this planet -- warming or cooling."...Russia alone accounts for 17.4 percent of global emissions. Given the other, mostly European, signatories, Kyoto will pass if Russia joins.]
* * *
1//The
Khaleej Times 8 May 2003
http://www.khaleejtimes.co.ae/
FORCES JOSTLE IN IRAQ'S POST-SADDAM VACUUM
NORTHEASTERN IRAQ [AFP] - A month after US forces demolished Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad, a range of paramilitary forces are posing fresh security threats as they jostle for power in the new political order.
The destruction of the Baath Party regime, which ruled Iraq with an iron fist for more than 30 years, has lifted the lid on the country's fractious array of armed ethnic and religious groups. US commanders say winning the peace will be longer and possibly more difficult than the three-week war which wiped out Saddam's conventional military forces.
Tensions persist between rival Kurdish factions in the north, Kurds and Arabs in ethnically mixed areas closer to Baghdad, Sunnis and Shiites in the south and rival Shiite militias along the Iranian border.
Add to this cocktail gangs of bandits armed with heavy weapons looted from abandoned military stockpiles, and it is clear why US President George W. Bush avoided saying the war was over in his victory speech last week.
But despite the threat to Washington's plans to form a "mosaic" democratic government in Iraq, US military officers believe they have the situation under control.
"I think there may be a tendency to blow this out of proportion," said Lieutenant Colonel John Miller, commander of the 2-8 Infantry Battalion of the Fourth Infantry Division, which moved into northern Iraq late last month.
"While there is a threat to stability in this region I do not believe it is of a scale that the coalition will not be able to stabilise the area."
Miller was referring to the northeastern province of Diyala, where his mechanised infantry has been trying to establish security for almost two weeks. The province stretches from the edge of Baghdad to the Iranian border.
US officers say the main threat to peace here comes from the Badr Brigade, pro-Iran Iraqi Shiites who fought to overthrow Saddam's regime and impose an Islamic government, and their enemies the People's Mujahedeen, a pro-Saddam Iranian Shiite militia which wants to overthrow the Islamic system in Iran.
Officials in Washington have accused Iran of sending agents into Iraq to undermine the US presence here, possibly disguised as Badr members who reportedly number up to 9,000 guerrillas.
Badr is linked to the Iran-based Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), the largest Iraqi Shiite group which opposed Saddam.
Iran has angrily denied accusations that Tehran was using the Badr Brigade as a proxy force. It has also condemned a ceasefire brokered between US forces and the People's Mujahedeen, which is listed as a "terrorist organisation" by the US State Department as well as the European Union.
Miller said neither Badr nor the People's Mujahedeen was known to have fired a shot at US troops in Diyala, but they were not being taken lightly.
[MORE]
2//Foreign Policy in Focus May 6, 2003
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305india.html
U.S. AND INDIA-A DANGEROUS ALLIANCE
By Conn Hallinan | May 6, 2003
In the wake of the Iraq War, growing tensions with Iran, and a possible
confrontation with North Korea, it would be easy to miss the formation
of yet another Washington think tank. But the freshly minted U.S.-India
Institute for Strategic Policy is an organization to watch and one
that may help reveal the next target of American power: containing
China.
The Institute, closely aligned with the ultra-conservative Center for Security Policy, is the outcome of a series of quiet meetings and low-profile joint military operations between the U.S. and the government of prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, dominated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In May of last year Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and one of the most hawkish members of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's inner circle, hosted a meeting of the U.S.-India Defense Policy Group to map out joint defense strategies for the two countries. These included planning joint naval patrols of the strategic Malacca Strait, workshops on ballistic missile defense, and cooperation in defense technology. While the goal, according to conference documents, was to build "stability and security in Asia and beyond," according to PR Chari of the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, "stabilization" is a code: "What they really mean is how to deal with China."
China is certainly on the minds of administration-linked think tanks. As Lloyd Richardson of the Hudson Institute told the Financial Times, India has the "economic and military strength to counter the adverse effects of China's rise as a regional and world power. India is the most overlooked of our potential allies in a strategy to contain China." That analysis was paralleled in a recent, classified U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) document revealed by Jane's Foreign Report. The document argues that "China represents the most significant threat to both countries' (India and the U.S.) security in the future as an economic and military competitor." The document also quoted an unnamed U.S. admiral as saying that both the U.S. and India view China as a strategic threat, "though we do not discuss this publicly." The document goes on to observe that U.S. relations with its "traditional" allies in Asia--South Korea and Japan--have become "fragile," and concludes that "India should emerge as a vital component of U.S. strategy."
[SNIP]
Joining up with the Bush administration's strategy to "contain" China may not be a path India wants to follow. China is indeed a growing power in Asia, with the sixth-largest economy in the world. But there is no evidence it is particularly aggressive. It has certainly played a peacemaker role on the Korean peninsula.
And military competition with China will be painful for the average Indian. India spends $14 billion a year on its military, while half of its children are malnourished, and 350 million people go to bed hungry. One third of India's one billion people are illiterate, and the country spends only 1.9% of its Gross Domestic Product on education, about half of what most East Asian countries spend.
The burdens of poverty and illiteracy are likely to be far more destabilizing to India than Chinese influence in Asia, and India should have no illusions that a military alliance with the U.S. will open the aid spigots. American foreign aid has been declining for decades, and U.S. economic difficulties, coupled with the Iraq War, will undoubtedly accelerate that trend.
The burdens of empire eventually outweigh the benefits.
3//Inter Press Service News Agency May 7, 2003
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=18042
FRENCH PREPARE THEIR ANSWER TO BBC AND CNN
Julio Godoy
PARIS, May 7 (IPS) - France is preparing to launch a state-owned international news channel to compete with the British, U.S. and Arab channels that dominate international television.
The launch of the new channel, unofficially dubbed "CNN à la Francaise", has been delayed for years due to rivalry among TV companies in Paris. The war in Iraq, and the parallel battle among TV channels has now prompted French officials to speed up the project.
A new channel is "a necessity and an opportunity," says minister for culture and communication Jean-Jacques Aillagon. "It is a necessity because France must enlarge its international audience; it is an opportunity because it will allow us to rationalise and organise the French world broadcasting systems," Aillagon told the French parliament last week.
Much of French media supports creation of a new French channel. "World viewers had only the images from U.S., British, or Arab television," the daily Le Monde writes. "The need for an information counterweight became evident."
President Jacques Chirac had sought a debate among state-owned and private TV channels on the proposal in February last year. Speaking before officials from several French-speaking countries, Chirac urged the creation of "a great information channel of international reach, which would compete with CNN and the BBC."
In swift action in recent weeks, a government-led working group proposed that the new channel should broadcast in French, English, Arab, and Spanish. It should be available through satellite broadcast, and have an accompanying Internet site.
[SNIP]
TV executives are also concerned about the willingness of satellite relay companies to offer the channel. "Such a channel must be attractive enough to convince satellite companies to offer it," Daniel Renard, director of the French satellite company Tele Satéllite told IPS. "By now, there are several thousand channels broadcasting via satellite or cable networks. If you cannot broadcast over them, nobody will see you or hear from you."
4//The Independent 08 May 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=404103
BERLUSCONI SEEKS IMMUNITY AHEAD OF EU PRESIDENCY
By Peter Popham in Rome
Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has decided to save himself from possible criminal conviction by introducing a law that will grant legal immunity to members of parliament.
The decision came after a dramatic court appearance in Milan on Monday by the billionaire media tycoon at the trial in which he is accused of bribing judges to swing a business deal. Without denying the charges, he told the court: "I am proud of my actions."
On Tuesday, a group of four "wise men" in the ruling right-wing coalition proposed introducing immunity only for ministers and their deputies and secretaries, but yesterday a decision was taken to apply it to all sitting MPs.
The legal change would freeze Mr Berlusconi's numerous court actions as long as he remained an MP. It would also rescue the Prime Minister's close friend and colleague, Cesare Previti, sentenced to 11 years last week for bribing judges. Previti is a senator in Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.
Since Previti's conviction, and with Italy due to assume the EU's rotating presidency on 1 July, Mr Berlusconi's legal problems have become pressing. For a conviction and perhaps a prison sentence to be handed down while Italy was in charge of the EU would be, in the Italian phrase, a brutta figura, an ugly mess.
Italy's
MPs were protected by an immunity law until 1993. It was swept
away during the political meltdown that followed the Tangentopoli
("Bribesville") investigations that exposed immense and
endemic bribery and corruption in Italy's ruling elite.
[MORE]
5//The Moscow Times Thursday, May. 8, 2003. Page 6
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/05/08/042.html
RUSSIA SEEN KEY TO KYOTO PROTOCOL
By Yevgenia Borisova
Staff Writer
As the host of a key global warming conference this fall and as a potential signatory with a swing vote on the contentious Kyoto Protocol, Russia has found itself at the forefront of the climate change debate.
"We are looking forward to serious, interesting discussions," Yury Izrael, chair of the conference's organizing committee, told reporters Wednesday. "We are not going to create new contradictions but ... find out what is really going on this planet -- warming or cooling."
This question and whether or not global warming poses a big enough threat to warrant the solution's price tag are at the heart of reports -- more than 500 of them -- submitted for experts' discussion in Moscow this September when they gather at the third International Conference on Climate Changes.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol seeks to minimize climate changes by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, gases believed to cause global warming by trapping the sun's heat in the atmosphere.
In order for it to graduate into a binding treaty, nations representing 55 percent of global emissions must sign on. Russia alone accounts for 17.4 percent of global emissions. Given the other, mostly European, signatories, Kyoto will pass if Russia joins.
[MORE]
* * *
©2003, Gloria R. Lalumia, insight@zianet.com
Radio for the Left at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical/radio.htm
