September 8, 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.

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1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--UN GAINS THE UPPER HAND (...the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who normally report only through the secretary of defense, have established an independent line to Powell in recent weeks to circumvent the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Long skeptical of the hawks' optimism about the plans for postwar Iraq, the uniformed military appears to have moved toward open revolt against Rumsfeld and chief deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary for Defense for Policy Douglas Feith...Worse, the military has long known what the Congressional Budget Office reported this week: the current troop presence in and around Iraq - about 180,000 soldiers - will be unsustainable in two months' time unless Washington recruits a bigger army or reduces its commitments elsewhere.)

2//The Jordan Times, Jordan-- TURKEY REPORTS PROGRESS IN TALKS ON IRAQ TROOPS, BUT WORRIED OVER KURDS (Turkish and US military officials, who met here Thursday, agreed that the Turkish army would be given a separate sector under its own command if Ankara decided to contribute peacekeepers to war-torn Iraq, Anatolia news agency quoted Gul as saying... Eager to mend fences over its failure to back the war in Iraq, the Turkish government is willing to send up to 10,000 troops to Iraq, but it has yet to take a formal decision. Such a move will also require the approval of parliament, where many legislators have expressed vocal opposition to the plan amid an equally hostile sentiment in the public opinion. To allay the misgivings of its sole Muslim NATO ally, Washington faces two uphill tasks - to take action against an estimated 5,000 Turkish Kurd rebels in hiding in northern Iraq and convince the Iraqi leadership - particularly the Iraqi Kurds - that neighbouring Turkey could help stabilise their country.)

3//The Toronto Star, Canada--AFGHAN MOUNTAIN PATROLS TO GO ON (Canadian troops will continue mountain reconnaissance missions because resistance will likely escalate around the Afghan capital even though there have been no attacks since June 7, says Canada's top soldier here...However, Leslie acknowledged leadership at the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, anticipates incidents will resume as the weather moderates...Yet he said allies have confirmed smaller groups of threes and fours are poised on the Afghanistan border with the intent to conduct suicide attacks on U.S. and ISAF forces in the country...Leslie said some incursions in Paktika and Paktia provinces just south of Kabul have numbered up to 300 at a time. Attacks and other incidents have been steadily creeping closer to Kabul in recent weeks.)

4//The Australian, Australia--N KOREANS' 'MASS DEFECTIONS' PLANS (North Koreans will attempt to defect en masse to Australia's embassy and two consulates in China this week as Australia becomes the focus of a campaign to bring down the Pyongyang Government with a flood of high-level asylum-seekers, a human rights activist warned yesterday. Joint naval exercises between Australia and the US set for next weekend to practise intercepting North Korean and other ships, plus tomorrow's 55th anniversary of North Korea's founding, create a "live opportunity" for defections targeting Australia, said Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor leading a campaign for mass North Korean defections to the West.)

5//The Moscow Times, Russia--YOUNGER VOTERS ARE SEEING RED (Despite a common perception that the Communist Party is a party of pensioners and that it will one day die out along with its members, thousands of young people like Melnik are filling its ranks, and the average age of party members is actually declining. If in 1993 the average age of party members was 60, in 2003 it was down to 55, according to the Communists' data. Of the 18,000 people who joined the party in 2002, 50 percent were aged 30 to 40, and 30 percent were under 30. Thus 80 percent of new members last year were under 40...The new members do not necessarily share the Communist ideology, Pribylovsky and other analysts and sociologists said. For most of them, joining the party is a way of expressing their opposition to the current social and political system, and a desire for a normal life.)

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1//Asia Times Online September 6, 2003
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EI06Ak02.html

UN GAINS THE UPPER HAND
By Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON - Now that US President George W Bush has decided to ask the United Nations Security Council to rescue Washington's occupation of Iraq, the question here is, "What will be the price?"

Will the Bush administration have to give up significant control over the political and rebuilding process in Iraq in order to get what it wants: a major infusion of foreign troops and international economic aid? Or will it be able to continue running the show, as implicitly suggested by the draft resolution that Washington began circulating to Security Council members this week?

Early returns indicate that the council will now become the focus of intense and possibly protracted negotiations on this question. France, which wields a veto on the council, and Germany have already denounced the proposal submitted by Secretary of State Colin Powell as inadequate.

The administration itself remains deeply divided on what it is prepared to give up. Powell and the State Department have long argued for a strong UN role in postwar Iraq, which, unlike the neo-conservative hawks in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, they do not see as the staging base for "remaking" the entire Muslim Middle East.

(SNIP)

Participation by the more experienced and better-equipped military forces of France, Germany and several other key North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies will almost certainly be contingent on a resolution similar to the one passed by the Security Council with regard to Kosovo in 1999. It gave political authority to a UN civil administrator, while leaving military and security operations in NATO's full control. But instead of NATO, Washington's European allies are considered likely to acquiesce to a US general retaining command of occupation military forces.

Will such a resolution be acceptable to the Bush administration? Powell clearly favors the idea, and the Kosovo model has been explicitly evoked by US diplomats in informal consultations with their foreign counterparts in recent days, according to sources. Britain also reportedly believes such a solution might be the best that can be achieved.

As indicated by the Journal's editorial, the hardliners, not surprisingly, oppose such a solution. But as a result of the increasingly bad news coming out of Iraq, they find themselves in a very weak position, a point made forcefully in a Washington Post article on Thursday noting that a new coalition between the uniformed military leadership and Powell has formed within the administration, tilting the balance of power against the hawks.

The article stressed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who normally report only through the secretary of defense, have established an independent line to Powell in recent weeks to circumvent the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Long skeptical of the hawks' optimism about the plans for postwar Iraq, the uniformed military appears to have moved toward open revolt against Rumsfeld and chief deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary for Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.

(SNIP)

Worse, the military has long known what the Congressional Budget Office reported this week: the current troop presence in and around Iraq - about 180,000 soldiers - will be unsustainable in two months' time unless Washington recruits a bigger army or reduces its commitments elsewhere.

In other words, the military concluded that unless the occupation becomes much more international, the Iraq situation spells institutional disaster. But it was not only the military's alignment behind Powell that brought Bush around. Karl Rove, his veteran chief political adviser, has also backed up Powell, reportedly warning that the bad news from Iraq could well prove fatal to the president's chances for being re-elected 14 months from now.

This week's latest estimates of how much the administration will need to run Iraq - at least US$65 billion for fiscal 2004 - have added to the clamor among lawmakers returning from the August recess for Washington to bring in the United Nations.

Given these considerations, it is not clear what bargaining chips the hawks have as negotiations begin over the terms of a new resolution. It appears that the world body - so disregarded and disdained by Bush and the hawks just three months ago - can name its price.

2//The Jordan Times Sunday, September 7, 2003
http://www.jordantimes.com/Sun/news/news12.htm

TURKEY REPORTS PROGRESS IN TALKS ON IRAQ TROOPS, BUT WORRIED OVER KURDS

ANKARA (AFP) - Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul on Saturday reported progress in talks with the United States over sending Turkish troops to Iraq, but signalled that the presence of Turkish Kurd rebels in northern Iraq and hostile sentiment among the Iraqi Kurds continued to worry Ankara.

Turkish and US military officials, who met here Thursday, agreed that the Turkish army would be given a separate sector under its own command if Ankara decided to contribute peacekeepers to war-torn Iraq, Anatolia news agency quoted Gul as saying.

"There is an agreement on a separate sector and command," Gul told reporters in a plane on his way to an EU meeting in Italy.

The United States has offered Turkey several options on the region where its troops would be deployed and it will be up to Ankara to choose, Gul said, without giving details.

Talks on the conditions of a possible Turkish military assistance were to continue in the coming weeks, he said.

Eager to mend fences over its failure to back the war in Iraq, the Turkish government is willing to send up to 10,000 troops to Iraq, but it has yet to take a formal decision.

Such a move will also require the approval of parliament, where many legislators have expressed vocal opposition to the plan amid an equally hostile sentiment in the public opinion.

To allay the misgivings of its sole Muslim NATO ally, Washington faces two uphill tasks - to take action against an estimated 5,000 Turkish Kurd rebels in hiding in northern Iraq and convince the Iraqi leadership - particularly the Iraqi Kurds - that neighbouring Turkey could help stabilise their country.

Ankara is urging Washington to purge northern Iraq of militants of the Kurdish Labour Party (PKK), an armed separatist group which both countries consider a terrorist organisation.

The stance the United States will adopt is of critical importance for Turkey now that the PKK, also known as KADEK, has ended a four-year unilateral ceasefire.

(MORE)

3//The Toronto Star Sep. 7, 2003. 02:06 PM
[LINK]

AFGHAN MOUNTAIN PATROLS TO GO ON
Canadian troops continue reconnaissance missions

KABUL (CP) - Canadian troops will continue mountain reconnaissance missions because resistance will likely escalate around the Afghan capital even though there have been no attacks since June 7, says Canada's top soldier here.

"There have been no attempted suicide bombs and there have been no persons shot . . . since the German bus attack," Maj.-Gen. Andrew Leslie said in an interview Sunday.

However, Leslie acknowledged leadership at the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, anticipates incidents will resume as the weather moderates.

(SNIP)

Leslie, deputy commander of the NATO-led force to which Canada is contributing 1,950 troops, said informants warn them of potential attacks daily. Arrests have been made and plots foiled, he said.

He said reports of insurgents crossing the border from Pakistan are coming in every couple of days. But many of the reports, he suspects, are hoaxes.

"Most of the informers are not very reliable," he said. "Some of them get paid, and some of them may tell us what we want to hear or don't want to hear. You have to sort the wheat from the chaff."

Yet he said allies have confirmed smaller groups of threes and fours are poised on the Afghanistan border with the intent to conduct suicide attacks on U.S. and ISAF forces in the country.

ISAF is responsible for the security of Kabul and the transitional government of President Hamid Karzai.

Leslie said some incursions in Paktika and Paktia provinces just south of Kabul have numbered up to 300 at a time. Attacks and other incidents have been steadily creeping closer to Kabul in recent weeks.

(MORE)

4//The Australian September 08, 2003
[LINK]

N KOREANS' 'MASS DEFECTIONS' PLANS
By Catherine Armitage, China correspondent

North Koreans will attempt to defect en masse to Australia's embassy and two consulates in China this week as Australia becomes the focus of a campaign to bring down the Pyongyang Government with a flood of high-level asylum-seekers, a human rights activist warned yesterday.

Joint naval exercises between Australia and the US set for next weekend to practise intercepting North Korean and other ships, plus tomorrow's 55th anniversary of North Korea's founding, create a "live opportunity" for defections targeting Australia, said Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor leading a campaign for mass North Korean defections to the West.

Australia's leading role in the Proliferation Security Initiative to halt exports of weapons of mass destruction, the perceived sympathy of the Australian people and relatively lax security made Australian missions in China an attractive target, Dr Vollertsen said.

Ri Chae-woo, said to be a North Korean biological weapons expert, attempted to enter the Australian consulate in China's southern port city of Guangzhou on Friday night, but was arrested by Chinese security agents in the building's stairwell.

"We will focus on Australian institutions in China as a target of North Korean defectors' attempts, also in the very near future around the birthday party of North Korea," Dr Vollertsen said yesterday.

(SNIP)

Between 100,000 and 200,000 North Koreans are believed to be hiding in China, and more than 1000 reached South Korea through China and other countries last year.

China has an agreement with North Korea to send defectors back, but they say they face torture, imprisonment and possible death on their return.

(MORE)

5//The Moscow Times Monday, Sep. 8, 2003. Page 1
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/09/08/002.html

YOUNGER VOTERS ARE SEEING RED
By Francesca Mereu
Staff Writer

Waiving a yellow scarf with red letters reading "Soviet Union," Andrei Melnik, 23, joined the crowd of mainly graying men and women listening to Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov speak at a recent political fair.

Melnik, who is writing his Ph.D. thesis at Moscow State University in the biology faculty, said he joined the Communist Party a few months ago because it is "the only party able to change things in Russia."

Despite a common perception that the Communist Party is a party of pensioners and that it will one day die out along with its members, thousands of young people like Melnik are filling its ranks, and the average age of party members is actually declining.

If in 1993 the average age of party members was 60, in 2003 it was down to 55, according to the Communists' data. Of the 18,000 people who joined the party in 2002, 50 percent were aged 30 to 40, and 30 percent were under 30. Thus 80 percent of new members last year were under 40.

The number of new members also increased last year, up from 17,000 in 2001. The party claims to have more than 500,000 members nationwide.

Ahead of this year's parliamentary elections, the Communists have brought in a young former Yukos executive to help them attract even more young members and voters.

(SNIP)

The new members do not necessarily share the Communist ideology, Pribylovsky and other analysts and sociologists said. For most of them, joining the party is a way of expressing their opposition to the current social and political system, and a desire for a normal life.

Andrei Ryabov, of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the party appeals to people who are frustrated by their inability to get ahead in today's Russia. Back in the early and mid-1990s, there was much more social mobility, he said.

"People then with nothing in their pockets could make a brilliant career," he said, "Now the old possibilities are over. You have political clans that control all these possibilities. Now you need family ties and money to make a career."

(MORE)