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| August 27, 2003 |
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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 Independent, UK--SPY CHIEF UNDERMINES KEY PLANK OF CASE FOR WAR (One of the crucial claims in the Government's case for the Iraq war - that Saddam Hussein could threaten the West within 45 minutes with chemical and biological weapons - was seriously undermined at the Hutton inquiry yesterday. John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which was in charge of compiling the Iraq weapons dossier, revealed that the alleged threat related not to long-range missiles, which could hit the West, but "battlefield mortar shells or small-calibre weaponry" that did not threaten Britain or even Iraq's neighbours.) 2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--SETTING THE NORTH KOREA AGENDA (Here, the US insistence on multilateral rather than bilateral talks may backfire. A tete-a-tete for two would have been complex enough - but with a sextet, the permutations are endless. Sure, the other five all agree that Kim Jong-il and his nukes (if any) are a pain. But what to do? If Washington is counting on five against one telling the Dear Leader to disarm, the US in turn may get ganged up on by the other five over the terms. Principled communist that he is, the Dear Leader is not about to pull his pants down (a Pyongyang metaphor, I hasten to add..., if at all, unless the price is right. The US mantra that it will not reward malfeasance sounds high-toned, but is wholly unrealistic. If you want a deal, you deal.) 3//Daily
Times, Pakistan--TROOP DECISION UNLIKELY BEFORE OCTOBER: TURKEY
(NATO member Turkey has yet to decide on a US request
to contribute troops to an international security force in war-torn
Iraq, and any such decision needs to be approved by the parliament,
which is in recess until October 1. Asked whether MPs would be
summoned for an extraordinary session in September, Erdogan told
reporters: "No. Parliament will start work as scheduled." His
comments were widely interpreted to mean that there would be
no formal decision on sending troops to Iraq before October.) 5//Inter Press Service, Italy--WTO-CANCUN: TRANSNATIONALS URGE FLEXIBILITY FROM RICH NATIONS (An organisation of transnational corporate executives urged the United States, European Union and Japan to cede to some of the demands of developing countries -- particularly in regards to agriculture and drugs patents -- in order to jump-start the WTO trade liberalisation talks...The matter of access to medicine was on the verge of being resolved last December, when the chairman of the TRIPS council at the WTO, Mexican negotiator Eduardo Pérez Motta, achieved majority backing for a declaration that the developing countries found acceptable. But the U.S. trade delegation, under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, blocked the agreement at the WTO, an institution that takes many of its decisions based on consensus.) * * * 1//The
Independent 27 August 2003 SPY CHIEF UNDERMINES KEY PLANK OF CASE FOR WAR One of the crucial claims in the Government's case for the Iraq war - that Saddam Hussein could threaten the West within 45 minutes with chemical and biological weapons - was seriously undermined at the Hutton inquiry yesterday. John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which was in charge of compiling the Iraq weapons dossier, revealed that the alleged threat related not to long-range missiles, which could hit the West, but "battlefield mortar shells or small-calibre weaponry" that did not threaten Britain or even Iraq's neighbours. In last September's dossier, the 45-minute claim was made alongside details of Iraq's alleged possession of al-Hussain missiles that could strike British bases in Cyprus. Ministers and officials repeatedly stressed that this meant Iraq was a direct and imminent threat to British interests. In his report on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Andrew Gilligan had said his source believed that the 45-minute intelligence related to "warheads for [long-range] missiles". But Mr Scarlett said it was not. The 45-minute warning related to smaller range munitions, a fact that may have caused David Kelly - the subject of the Hutton inquiry - to be in a "state of genuine confusion about what the report actually said". The disclosure by one of the most senior intelligence chiefs in Britain is the first official statement on the exact nature of the threat. Lord Hutton himself said to Mr Scarlett that Dr Kelly had suggested the source of the 45-minute claim may have confused it with a "multiple barrelled weapon". Weapons experts said yesterday that the normal definition of an international WMD threat would exclude battle-field mortar shells and small-calibre weaponry, even if they had chemical or biological stocks attached. Such small-calibre arms represented no threat to Britain, they said. Last night, Doug Henderson, a former armed forces minister, said it was "extraordinary" that the 45-minute claim referred to munitions rather than missiles. "The news today is that the weapons that were being referred to were quite different. They were battlefield weapons," he said on the BBC's Newsnight programme. (MORE)
PYONGYANG WATCH Right then. Slowly if unsurely, we make progress. One: There will (God and Kim Jong-il willing) be talks on the North Korean nuclear issue, any day now. Talks are better than no talks. We breathe again. Two: We know who's talking. It's 2 + 4: the two Koreas, plus the four powers - the United States, China, Japan, and Russia. As argued in our last column, that's the right group (Who whom: A North Korean hexagon, August 26). Everyone who should be there will be. Three: um, then it gets harder. Like: what exactly will they discuss? North Korean nukes for one thing, obviously. That alone is a knotty issue. Yet it by no means exhausts the long list of bones, military and more, which the world in general and these powers in particular have to pick with Pyongyang. Here, the US insistence on multilateral rather than bilateral talks may backfire. A tete-a-tete for two would have been complex enough - but with a sextet, the permutations are endless. Sure, the other five all agree that Kim Jong-il and his nukes (if any) are a pain. But what to do? If Washington is counting on five against one telling the Dear Leader to disarm, the US in turn may get ganged up on by the other five over the terms. Principled communist that he is, the Dear Leader is not about to pull his pants down (a Pyongyang metaphor, I hasten to add; see Catching Kim with his pants down, August 6), if at all, unless the price is right. The US mantra that it will not reward malfeasance sounds high-toned, but is wholly unrealistic. If you want a deal, you deal. Elsewhere, expect less unanimity. Five interlocutors means five agendas, which are bound to diverge on ends, means, and priorities. Thus Japan has already incurred North Korea's wrath - it's easily done - by saying it wants to discuss the abduction saga. Nearly a year after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's breakthrough summit with Kim Jong-il, relations are now stalemated amid a hostility if anything greater than before. Also, tough Japanese port inspections (not before time) of North Korea's rickety and often racketeering rustbucket merchant ships, while wholly justified, are hardly calculated to promote peace and goodwill. (MORE)
TROOP DECISION UNLIKELY BEFORE OCTOBER: TURKEY ANKARA: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday the government had no plans to recall parliament early, signalling that a decision on sending Turkish troops to Iraq was unlikely before October. NATO-member Turkey has yet to decide on a US request to contribute troops to an international security force in war-torn Iraq, and any such decision needs to be approved by the parliament, which is in recess until October 1. Asked whether MPs would be summoned for an extraordinary session in September, Erdogan told reporters: "No. Parliament will start work as scheduled." His comments were widely interpreted to mean that there would be no formal decision on sending troops to Iraq before October. Recent press reports had suggested that the government would recall parliament in mid-September. A parliamentary group chairman for Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) also confirmed that the government would wait until October to decide on troop deployment. "The motion (on troop deployment) will be evaluated when parliament opens," Faruk Celik told reporters. Both the Turkish government and some army commanders have already said that they favour extending military assistance to the United States, but the idea has attracted opposition from the public and several MPs. (MORE)
RISING RANKS OF JI KILLERS UNCOVERED The Jemaah Islamiah group blamed for the Bali bombings is far bigger than previously thought and is now producing a new generation of Islamic warriors from the children of its members, an in-depth study reveals. While police have arrested about 90 JI members in Indonesia, and another 120 in Malaysia and Singapore, the terrorist organisation is replenishing its ranks with young "jihadists", according to the report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG). These young recruits are now enrolled in a group of Indonesian Islamic boarding schools, spread across the archipelago, it says. In addition, serious doubts are raised about the prospects of containing JI's terrorist activities because of its extensive links with at least five other organisations that co-operate and share common ideology. The report warns that JI is "far from destroyed", with a network now extending "far beyond its formal members . . . a JI member can work with another organisation with the approval of his mantiqi [regional] or wakalah [district] leader". An example of how JI co-operates with other groups is provided by the bombing of a McDonald's restaurant and a car showroom in Makassar in Sulawesi. Less than two months after the Bali attacks, the bombings were originally thought to have been carried out by JI, but turned out to be the work of two South Sulawesi-based organisations, Wahdah Islamiah and Laskar Jundullah. These organisations "co-operated with JI and may even have been modelled after it, but were completely independent in terms of leadership. The Makassar bombings appear to have been conducted without much, if any, consultation with JI leadership." (SNIP) Critical in helping JI to survive is a group of Islamic boarding schools, or pesantren, which have harboured JI members on the run from police and which have some sympathy to the aims of JI to create an Islamic state in South-East Asia. Although the Indonesian Government has ruled out following Malaysia's example by closing down some of these schools, the report says this relative handful out of Indonesia's 14,000 pesantren are one way JI is replenishing its ranks. (SNIP) Another key feature helping JI survive is a web of marriage alliances, often organised by senior JI members, that means the organisation can resemble a "giant extended family", the report says. "In some cases, JI leaders appear to have arranged marriages for their subordinates to serve the interests of their organisation", with the reliability of the wife apparently a criterion for JI membership. (SNIP) While JI has undoubted links with the terrorist group al-Qaeda, the report says the relationship "may be less one of subservience . . . than of mutual advantage and reciprocal assistance". Although al-Qaeda may help fund specific programs, it "neither directs nor controls it", the report concludes.
WTO-CANCUN: TRANSNATIONALS URGE FLEXIBILITY FROM RICH NATIONS GENEVA, Aug 22 (IPS) - An organisation of transnational corporate executives urged the United States, European Union and Japan to cede to some of the demands of developing countries -- particularly in regards to agriculture and drugs patents -- in order to jump-start the WTO trade liberalisation talks. The International Business Council, a group of top executives from major corporations, outlined its concerns in a statement issued Friday, less than three weeks ahead the Fifth World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference, to be held Sep. 10-14 in the Mexican resort city of Cancun. There, the trade ministers of the WTO's 146 member countries will assess the state of international trade negotiations of the Doha Round, launched at the fourth ministerial conference in the Qatar capital in November 2001. (SNIP) Poor countries facing public health crises related to HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, among other diseases, want the right to produce or purchase low-cost or generic drugs for their populations. But the big pharmaceutical firms hold the patents to many of these essential medications. According to the IBC, the Cancun conference must produce "concrete results on TRIPS and health for the poorest countries" so that their access to necessary medications is enhanced. But the business leaders also voiced the argument of the major pharmaceutical laboratories, saying that access should be achieved "while safeguarding incentives that lead to the development of new drugs for existing and emerging diseases." The IBC document, presented at an informal press conference Friday in Geneva, bears the signature of Henry A. McKinnell, chairman and chief executive officer of the U.S.-based Pfizer Inc., one of the world's top pharmaceutical firms. The other signatories were Niall FitzGerald, co-chairman and CEO of the British-Dutch company Unilever, which produces food, cosmetics and household cleaning products; Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, vice-chairman and CEO of Nestle, the world's leading food company; and Josef Ackerman, chairman of Deutsche Bank, and head of the IBC. The matter of access to medicine was on the verge of being resolved last December, when the chairman of the TRIPS council at the WTO, Mexican negotiator Eduardo Pérez Motta, achieved majority backing for a declaration that the developing countries found acceptable. But the U.S. trade delegation, under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, blocked the agreement at the WTO, an institution that takes many of its decisions based on consensus. Sources involved in the negotiations said Washington is working with drug companies to draw up a formula that would comply with the Doha mandate, aimed at facilitating poor countries' ability to handle health crises. The intention of the United States, according to the sources, is to reach an accord and present it before the Cancun meeting begins, for fear that if the issue remains unresolved it will only fuel protests by the civil society groups that will also be gathering in the Mexican beach city. The other key issue in the current WTO negotiations is agricultural trade. In their document the transnational executives took a more progressive stance than that of the farm trade superpowers: the United States and EU. The IBC says the ministers in Cancun need to establish "clear and ambitious frameworks for removing damaging trade barriers in agriculture and manufacturing." For agriculture in particularly, they urge the "rapid phasing out of all trade distorting farm subsidies" in the industrialised world, including export subsidies. (MORE) | |||||
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