October 29, 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//The Moscow Times, Russia--IRAQI OIL MINISTER TO VISIT MOSCOW TO TALK CONTRACTS (Iraqi Oil Minister Ibrahim Mohammed Bahr al-Ulum will visit Moscow for the first time since taking up his post to discuss the future of contracts between Russian oil companies and the former regime, an Iraqi official said..."We want to meet him as we are looking to understand whether all the contracts signed with the previous regime are still considered valid," an Energy Ministry official said in Moscow. "We need to discuss at least six big projects, including those of LUKoil. We still believe that these contracts have been signed with the legitimate authorities and see no reason why they should not be respected.")

2/The Daily Star, Lebanon--WILL RUSSIA CHALLENGE OPEC IN GLOBAL OIL SUPPLY? (The surprise decision recently announced by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut daily production by 900,000 barrels starting November is widely expected by energy analysts to tighten the global market and also generate higher revenues for oil producers, especially those from the Gulf. But muddying the situation is what Russia which is the world's biggest oil producer outside OPEC- may do about increasing its exports this winter, the analysts say. Analysts ask if a confrontation between Russia and Saudi Arabia over market share is shaping up.)

3//The Chosun Ilbo, South Korea--TOP NK DEFECTOR ARRIVES IN WASHINGTON (Former North Korean Workers Party secretary Hwang Jang-yeop arrived at Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington D.C. on Monday afternoon after a stop-over in New York...U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in a regular briefing that Hwang's visit was initiated by the Defense Forum Foundation, a non-governmental organization, and was a private visit...The conservative daily paper the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that activists in the United States and South Korea are urging Hwang to announce the establishment of a refugee government during his visit. The paper also said that some supporters expect Hwang to become the new leader of North Korea if Kim Jong Il is deposed.)

4//World Press Review, USA--A BOLDER EGYPTIAN OPPOSITION? (Opposition to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government is getting louder and bolder. Public figures are more willing to trespass beyond the unwritten boundaries of political life. The economy is in dire straits. The Egyptian pound is sliding in value against the dollar and other foreign currencies, pushing up prices in a country that relies on subsidized basic commodities and a huge annual influx of U.S. aid...Anger is also bubbling beneath the surface over signs that Mubarak might try to anoint his son Gamal as his political heir.)

5//The Independent, UK--'PRESIDENT BUSH IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY WRONG' (Mosey says that assumptions within the BBC are "something we need to be alert about all the time", and he insists that he and all of his colleagues "recognise the need to make sure that our journalism tests all viewpoints. That includes challenging the liberal-left consensus." Mosey is responding to the persistent allegation that the corporation has an inherent left-wing bias. The charge is made most vocally in The Daily Telegraph's Beebwatch column, which was instigated by the paper's former editor Charles Moore six weeks after his proprietor, Conrad Black, wrote that a "virulent culture of bias" within the corporation had transformed it into "the greatest menace facing the country".)

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1//The Moscow Times Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2003. Page 7
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/10/29/046.html

IRAQI OIL MINISTER TO VISIT MOSCOW TO TALK CONTRACTS
Combined Reports

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi Oil Minister Ibrahim Mohammed Bahr al-Ulum will visit Moscow for the first time since taking up his post to discuss the future of contracts between Russian oil companies and the former regime, an Iraqi official said.

Ulum accepted an invitation to visit Moscow from Energy Minister Igor Yusufov, the official from the Oil Ministry said. The invitation was delivered to the minister by the Russian ambassador in Baghdad, said the official, who did not want to be identified.

"We want to meet him as we are looking to understand whether all the contracts signed with the previous regime are still considered valid," an Energy Ministry official said in Moscow.

"We need to discuss at least six big projects, including those of LUKoil. We still believe that these contracts have been signed with the legitimate authorities and see no reason why they should not be respected."

Ulum has accepted the invitation, saying he will carry out the visit "in the near future," without saying when, the official said.

(SNIP)

LUKoil, Russia's second-largest oil producer, won a contract in 1997 to develop Iraq's West Qurna field, one of the largest deposits in the world. Hussein's government canceled the contract in February, saying LUKoil was not developing the field quickly enough. But LUKoil insists that contract is still valid.

(SNIP)

Iraqi Oil Ministry chief executive Thamer al-Ghadhban has said any oil contracts signed during Hussein's rule are frozen and it is up to the U.S.-appointed Governing Council to decide their fate.

Last week, Fluor, the largest publicly traded U.S. engineering and construction company, said it was in talks with LUKoil, leading Australian oil and gas company BHP Billiton and British rail maintenance company Amec about a $600 million project to develop West Qurna.

2//The Daily Star Beirut, Tuesday October 28, 2003. Updated 09:00 AM +2GMT
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/business/21_10_03_h.asp

WILL RUSSIA CHALLENGE OPEC IN GLOBAL OIL SUPPLY?
Pranay Gupte
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: The surprise decision recently announced by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut daily production by 900,000 barrels starting November is widely expected by energy analysts to tighten the global market and also generate higher revenues for oil producers, especially those from the Gulf. But muddying the situation is what Russia which is the world's biggest oil producer outside OPEC- may do about increasing its exports this winter, the analysts say.

Analysts ask if a confrontation between Russia and Saudi Arabia over market share is shaping up.

"The Saudi government is concerned about near-term revenue, first and foremost," Edward L. Morse, founder of the American Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and currently a top analyst with Hess Trading in New York, told The Daily Star.

"A battle for market share that sees prices plunging toward or below the $10 level reached in 1998 would punish the kingdom as much as it would other producers."

At the moment, the Saudis - and, indeed, other OPEC producers - don't have much to fear. Their oil export revenues so far this year have been the highest since the early 1980s. Saudi oil revenues are estimated to reach at least $85 billion this year.

(SNIP)

Still, OPEC producers are worried about what Russia - which currently produces 5 million barrels a day for export - might do. Russia's exports are larger than those of the United Kingdom and Norway combined. It has long aspired to be a global exporter in the oil and gas sectors rather than mainly to Europe, as it is currently. It could well "undermine and stymie" Saudi Arabia's oil sector objectives, including its ability to manage the market, Morse said.

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3//The Chosun Ilbo Updated Oct.28,2003 20:29 KST
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200310/200310280024.html

TOP NK DEFECTOR ARRIVES IN WASHINGTON
by Joo Yong-jung and Jung Kwon-hyun

WASHINGTON - Former North Korean Workers Party secretary Hwang Jang-yeop arrived at Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington D.C. on Monday afternoon after a stop-over in New York.

Hwang was closely guarded by security personnel from the U.S. State Department, while American and Japanese reporters jockeyed for position to cover his visit.

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in a regular briefing that Hwang's visit was initiated by the Defense Forum Foundation, a non-governmental organization, and was a private visit.

When asked whether he thought Hwang's visit would influence future six-way talks on the North's nuclear program, Boucher said he could not understand why and how Hwang's visit to the United States would affect the talks. He added that during his stay in Washington, Hwang would meet with Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs James Kelly, Undersecretary of State John Bolton and arms control specialist Fred Feitz, as well as members of Congress.

The conservative daily paper the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that activists in the United States and South Korea are urging Hwang to announce the establishment of a refugee government during his visit. The paper also said that some supporters expect Hwang to become the new leader of North Korea if Kim Jong Il is deposed.

(MORE)

4//World Press Review Oct. 28, 2003
http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/1632.cfm

A BOLDER EGYPTIAN OPPOSITION?
George Ziyad
World Press Review correspondent
Cairo, Egypt

Opposition to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government is getting louder and bolder. Public figures are more willing to trespass beyond the unwritten boundaries of political life. The economy is in dire straits. The Egyptian pound is sliding in value against the dollar and other foreign currencies, pushing up prices in a country that relies on subsidized basic commodities and a huge annual influx of U.S. aid. The ongoing Palestinian Intifada, the foreign occupation of Iraq, and Washington's calls for democratic reform in the region have added to the climate of frustration. Fewer Egyptians in political life are prepared to play by the old rules of the political system that has kept the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in power since Mubarak became president in 1981.

Anger is also bubbling beneath the surface over signs that Mubarak might try to anoint his son Gamal as his political heir. As yet, Mubarak has no deputy, but Gamal has stormed onto the public stage in recent years, taking a lead role in the NDP and receiving extensive coverage from Egypt's all-powerful and monopolistic state media. Egyptian journalists know they must be careful what they say about Mubarak, his family, and his closest friends. Rumor has it that the Egyptian human-rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim's connections with the Mubarak family (he taught two of the Mubarak boys and knew the first lady) were no longer enough to protect him after he publicly criticized father-son presidential successions in the Arab world. When Ibrahim was imprisoned for eight months in 2001 on charges of sullying Egypt's image abroad, it disabused journalists of any notions they might of had that restrictions on the press were loosening.

Still, sharper criticism is creeping back into public discourse in Egypt. On Oct. 22, Sonallah Ibrahim, a celebrated novelist whose novels once banned, created a stir when he rejected the Supreme Council for Culture's annual award for the Arab novel. Ibrahim took the podium and briefly but eloquently explained that he would not accept such an award-of 100,000 Egyptian pounds-from a government that "oppresses the people, protects corruption, and has weak foreign policy," the independent weeklies Sawt al-Umma and Al-Osboa both reported on Oct. 27.

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5//The Independent 28 October 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=457932

'PRESIDENT BUSH IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY WRONG'
The BBC must not give in to a liberal agenda, says its head of television news, Roger Mosey. But the constant attacks by the right-wing press are mean-spirited, he tells Tim Luckhurst

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(SNIP)

Mosey says that assumptions within the BBC are "something we need to be alert about all the time", and he insists that he and all of his colleagues "recognise the need to make sure that our journalism tests all viewpoints. That includes challenging the liberal-left consensus."

Mosey is responding to the persistent allegation that the corporation has an inherent left-wing bias. The charge is made most vocally in The Daily Telegraph's Beebwatch column, which was instigated by the paper's former editor Charles Moore six weeks after his proprietor, Conrad Black, wrote that a "virulent culture of bias" within the corporation had transformed it into "the greatest menace facing the country". Mosey is scathing about the Telegraph campaign; he calls it mean-spirited. But he respects the assertion that the BBC must be alert to liberal assumptions among its journalists.

(SNIP)

Has the allegation of instinctive liberal prejudice been discussed by news executives? "We talk all the time about lessons you learn about particular perspectives." In the 1980s, he remembers: "There was probably a general view around most newspaper columnists and most metropolitan dinner-tables that Reagan and Thatcher were wrong in not supporting détente or going for an arms build-up that might potentially bankrupt the Soviet Union. In fact, you look back now and see that Reagan and Thatcher had rather more going for them than the Guardian editorials of the time thought they had."

Does a similar world-view corrupt the BBC's coverage today? "I don't think this is true of the BBC, but I think it's true somewhere that people automatically assume that George Bush is wrong about everything. That is an example of a perspective that can set in if you are not careful."

Mosey will not talk about the David Kelly affair until Lord Hutton has published his report. But, speaking in Bonn last month, he hinted at the mood among his senior colleagues by telling a story about Will Wyatt, former managing director of BBC Television. In the 1980s, Wyatt was invited to take responsibility for all the BBC's journalism. He contemplated the fate of colleagues who had taken the plunge and been destroyed by controversy. Wyatt concluded: "No thanks." But Mosey defended the value of controversial reporting, and promised: "The BBC will therefore continue to support investigative journalism, and reporting which shines a light into darkness."

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