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| February 27, 2004 |
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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. * * * WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR FEBRUARY 27, 2004 1//The Jordan Times, Jordan--US MIDDLE EAST DEMOCRACY PLAN RILES ARABS (A US master plan for the democratisation and economic liberalisation of the Middle East is riling Arabs who fear direct meddling in their affairs. Washington wants to launch the international plan, dubbed the "Greater Middle East Initiative", at a summit of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialised nations in June...In the wake of the Iraq invasion, the project would promote deep transformations in a region that, if left untended, US officials say, could become in the long-term a cauldron of tension and terrorism. To encourage the targeted countries to cooperate, Western governments would propose increasing political cooperation and aid, facilitating membership in the World Trade Organisation and fostering security agreements, according to The Washington Post.) 2//Arab News, Saudi Arabia--KINGDOM LIKELY TO JOIN WTO IN THE SUMMER (Negotiations on Saudi Arabia's bid for membership of the WTO are almost complete after talks in Geneva on Tuesday and yesterday, and observers now expect the Kingdom to join the organization as early as the middle of the year...Negotiations with just five countries now need to be finalized - China, Panama, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United States. However, Al-Alamy said he expected agreements to be signed with the first four "in the next couple of weeks". He anticipated there would be just one more session of negotiations with the United States...Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer, Russia and Ukraine are the three largest economies still not admitted to the WTO. All three opened talks in the mid-1990s.) 3//The Independent, UK--'CALAMITY CLARE' IS ACCUSED
OF SABOTAGE AS SHE FIRES ANOTHER FURIOUS BROADSIDE
AT TONY BLAIR (When Clare Short arrived at the BBC's
Millbank studio in Westminster yesterday morning,
she knew she was about to drop a bombshell. Her explosive
allegation that Britain spied on the United Nations
Secretary General Kofi Annan may have sounded unplanned
and certainly took John Humphrys, the presenter of
Radio 4's Today programme, by surprise... As a member
of Tony Blair's war cabinet, Ms Short had been troubled
to see transcripts of Mr Annan's telephone conversations.
She had been tempted to tip him off at the time,
but resisted. Her failure to do so has worried her
ever since.) 5//The Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippines--POE TOPS MACAPAGAL IN SWS SURVEY (The Presidential race is turning into a battle of surveys. This time, actor Fernando Poe Jr. is leading the field, according to a private group which the opposition presidential candidate had commissioned to do the latest survey. Poe got 37.5 percent and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo received 28.7 percent of the votes in the nationwide survey that Social Weather Stations conducted from Jan. 28 to Feb. 6, 2004. SWS is headed by Mahar Mangahas, Poe's first cousin.) * * * 1//The
Jordan Times Thursday, February 26, 2004 US MIDDLE EAST DEMOCRACY PLAN RILES ARABS CAIRO - A US master plan for the democratisation and economic liberalisation of the Middle East is riling Arabs who fear direct meddling in their affairs. Washington wants to launch the international plan, dubbed the "Greater Middle East Initiative", at a summit of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialised nations in June. But throughout the Middle East, the yet-to-be-unveiled
project is already raising hackles. "Egypt does not wait for instructions from anyone to undertake (political) reforms" and democratise its institutions, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher told reporters Sunday. Besides, he added, his country attaches "no importance" to what is currently being said about the subject. Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa denounced the US initiative, which he said ignores "the principal regional issues and affects the stability of the region". Speaking in Cairo Saturday after meeting here with Lebanese Foreign Minister Jean Obeid, Musa said the Arab states could adopt a united position on the Western reform proposals at a March 29-30 summit in Tunis. Obeid said Feb. 22 that the United States cannot "export prefabricated democratic regimes" to the Middle East. Moreover, he said, the broad US plan "includes no mention of an overall and just solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict, and we cannot accept such a plan". (SNIP) In an attempt to explain the initiative, the US undersecretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs, Alan Larson, left Feb. 20 on a Middle East tour that was to take him to Ramallah in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Amman, Riyadh and Cairo. The Egyptian state newspaper Al Ahram noted that the US official was going to "sound out the states in the region on the American Greater Middle East Initiative". (SNIP) Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington was considering a major international initiative aimed at encouraging democratic reforms in the greater Middle East and looking for ways to "institutionalise" such a project. In the wake of the Iraq invasion, the project would promote deep transformations in a region that, if left untended, US officials say, could become in the long-term a cauldron of tension and terrorism. To encourage the targeted countries to cooperate, Western governments would propose increasing political cooperation and aid, facilitating membership in the World Trade Organisation and fostering security agreements, according to The Washington Post. (MORE)
KINGDOM LIKELY TO JOIN WTO IN THE SUMMER JEDDAH, 27 February 2004 - Negotiations on Saudi Arabia's bid for membership of the WTO are almost complete after talks in Geneva on Tuesday and yesterday, and observers now expect the Kingdom to join the organization as early as the middle of the year. During the two days of meetings, bilateral agreements were signed with Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Thailand, Ecuador, Cuba, Sri Lanka and Poland. The Kingdom is also due to sign with India today, according to Fawaz Al-Alamy, deputy minister of commerce and industry for technical affairs and head of the Saudi technical team negotiating the country's membership bid. He told Arab News that the Indian team had said yesterday that it was a "done deal". This brings to 30 the total of WTO members with which the Kingdom has signed agreements on trade in goods and services. Such agreements are a prerequisite before Saudi membership can be approved. Negotiations with just five countries now need to be finalized - China, Panama, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United States. However, Al-Alamy said he expected agreements to be signed with the first four "in the next couple of weeks". He anticipated there would be just one more session of negotiations with the United States. Negotiations on multilateral issues are also "more or less" complete, he said. Responding to comments on the way the negotiation process had visibly speeded up over the past eight months, the deputy minister said that this was primarily due to economic reforms initiated by Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard. It was these changes that "really helped move the negotiations along," he said. (SNIP) Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer, Russia and Ukraine are the three largest economies still not admitted to the WTO. All three opened talks in the mid-1990s. Saudi Minister of Commerce and Industry Hashim Yamani said he was optimistic that the remaining agreements could be completed soon. "The few gaps that remain are narrowing," he said. (MORE)
'CALAMITY CLARE' IS ACCUSED OF SABOTAGE AS SHE FIRES
ANOTHER FURIOUS BROADSIDE AT TONY BLAIR When Clare Short arrived at the BBC's Millbank studio in Westminster yesterday morning, she knew she was about to drop a bombshell. Her explosive allegation that Britain spied on the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan may have sounded unplanned and certainly took John Humphrys, the presenter of Radio 4's Today programme, by surprise. But for the former International Development Secretary, the time had come to speak out after the collapse of the case against the GCHQ whistleblower Katherine Gun, who leaked the fact that the United States had asked Britain to mount a "dirty tricks" operation against members of the UN Security Council in the build up to the Iraq war. As a member of Tony Blair's war cabinet, Ms Short had been troubled to see transcripts of Mr Annan's telephone conversations. She had been tempted to tip him off at the time, but resisted. Her failure to do so has worried her ever since. "It troubled me and I decided to bring it into the public domain and that's what I've done," she said. "This is the journey of my conscience. I don't mean it's a perfect journey." After lighting the fuse, Ms Short left to address a London conference - appropriately enough, on international law. By lunchtime, she was under siege by the media asking her to amplify her remarks to the BBC. She planned her next moves with her aides in her House of Commons office, deciding to reject demands from government loyalists for a "period of silence" and agreeing to interviews with Channel 4 and the BBC's Newsnight programme. Channel 4's Jon Snow asked: "You've had many noisy days but few noisier than this. Where do you think it's going to end for you?" She replied: "I'm not troubled about myself. I've reached an age and stage where I'm free to tell the truth and be responsible to my conscience." There was a rich irony in the timing of the latest and biggest bombshell of Ms Short's career. It ensured that Tony Blair's long-planned announcement of an international commission on Africa at his monthly press conference was completely overshadowed. (MORE)
PUTIN'S WORDS AND DEEDS DOMINATE NEWSCASTS From national television newscasts over the past two weeks, viewers could be forgiven for thinking there was only a single candidate running in the presidential election. Monitoring conducted by The Moscow Times over the first two weeks of the official campaign period shows that state-controlled television channels have given President Vladimir Putin -- the undisputed pre-election favorite -- widespread, favorable coverage at the top of primetime newscasts. Meanwhile, his six opponents have received paltry, often unfavorable coverage. Media observers have said that the campaign coverage bears a striking resemblance to that for the State Duma elections in December, when newscasts were flooded with coverage of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. The monitoring, conducted between Feb. 12 and Feb. 26, shows that Putin was featured prominently on state-controlled Channel One, Rossia and NTV in primetime newscasts 45 times. Of the other candidates, Communist Nikolai Kharitonov was mentioned 22 times, Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov -- who is campaigning for votes for Putin -- 17 times, liberal Irina Khakamada 14 times, Liberal Russia's Ivan Rybkin 11 times, the LDPR's Oleg Malyshkin nine times and nationalist Sergei Glazyev seven times. In the first four days of the official campaigning period, from Feb. 12 to Feb. 15, Channel One and Rossia made no mention of any candidates besides Putin in their primetime newscasts, with the exception of former Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin, who was mentioned only in connection with his five-day disappearance from Feb. 5 to Feb. 10. (SNIP) Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said the situation is similar to the Duma election campaign, which was harshly criticized by international organizations, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as unfair and one-sided. (SNIP) Irina Petrovskaya, Izvestia newspaper's television critic, said the unfair coverage is turning the campaign into a farce. "State-controlled media are sending a message that there is only one favorite in the race and are doing it shamelessly," Petrovskaya said. OSCE representatives are due to issue a report on media coverage of the election next week.
POE TOPS MACAPAGAL IN SWS SURVEY The Presidential race is turning into a battle of surveys. This time, actor Fernando Poe Jr. is leading the field, according to a private group which the opposition presidential candidate had commissioned to do the latest survey. Poe got 37.5 percent and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo received 28.7 percent of the votes in the nationwide survey that Social Weather Stations conducted from Jan. 28 to Feb. 6, 2004. SWS is headed by Mahar Mangahas, Poe's first cousin. Raul Roco was third with 17.4 percent, followed by Sen. Panfilo Lacson with 8.4 percent, Eduardo Villanueva, 1.7 percent, and Eddie Gil, 0.2 percent. Six percent were undecided. The SWS survey of voters' first choice for president used a statistically representative sample of 3,600 registered voters. It had a margin of error of 1.6 percentage points at the 95-percent confidence level. Another nationwide survey, a more recent one conducted by Pulse Asia Inc., showed Ms Macapagal catching up with Poe. Ms Macapagal received 31.9 percent and Poe, 31.7 percent of the votes, a tie because the survey of 1,800 respondents on Feb. 16-20 had a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points. But some government officials claimed that Ms Macapagal had overtaken Poe. A big percentage of the respondents (23 percent) in the Pulse Asia survey said the possibility that they would change their preference was big. (MORE) |
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