January 19, 2005

World Media Watch

by Gloria R. Lalumia

BuzzFlash Note: WMW provides BuzzFlash readers foreign views and perspectives that are not usually available from the media here in the U.S. The presentation of these articles from these international publications is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.

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WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR JANUARY 19, 2005

1//Interfax, Russia--MINSK CRITICIZES CONDOLEEZZA RICE REMARK ON BELARUS (The Belarussian Foreign Ministry has expressed displeasure with the fact that U.S. secretary of state nominee Condoleezza Rice mentioned Belarus among the countries she labeled as "outposts of tyranny" while speaking at Senate on Tuesday. "The mentioning of Belarus in Rice's statement shows that her vision of the situation in Belarus is unfortunately too far from reality now," spokesman for the Belarussian Foreign Ministry Andrei Savinykh told Interfax on Tuesday.)

2//Inter Press Service News Agency, Italy--ELECTION BEGINS TO WORRY NEIGHBOURS (Iraq's neighbours have begun to worry seriously about the national election scheduled for Jan. 30. Almost every day a regional leader speaks out in favour of the vote because the alternative could be worse. High-ranking officials from Egypt, Jordan, and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council have recently called for voter participation. But in calling for high voter turnout, Arab leaders are running against a counter-current inside Iraq. The country's main Sunni political party has already announced it will boycott the elections. As many as 53 political parties and organisations have asked for their names to be dropped from the election lists in a bid to show their rejection of elections under U.S. occupation, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua… Indeed, the most likely outcome of the January elections is that a slate of Shia candidates will come to power. That would lead to the ascendancy of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, whose Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq has been funded by the Iranian government for close to two decades.)

3//The Daily Star, Lebanon--FEARS INCREASE THAT KUWAIT MAY FACE SAUDI-STYLE VIOLENCE AFTER CLASHES (Kuwait could face a cycle of violence similar to that rocking Saudi Arabia following last week's deadly clashes between security forces and Islamist militants, analysts and Western diplomats said Tuesday. The Gulf state is shocked by the fact that an elected Parliament, a free press and freedom of speech, all lacking in most other Gulf Arab states, have failed to prevent extremists from resorting to violence… Security measures around oil facilities and vital installations have been raised to the maximum and the government is planning to issue new legislation to search for unlicensed arms. "Now, we have entered the violence club in the region along with Iraq and Saudi Arabia. We have become a full member," Kuwait's leading liberal politician and former MP Ahmed al-Khatib told the same gathering. Liberal politicians have blamed the government for the violence due to its long association with Islamists.)

4//The Independent, UK--WHY THE HAWKS ARE CIRCLING OVER IRAN (…The military attack itself would pose daunting problems. True, US forces are now based in Afghanistan and Iraq. But its military is overstretched and the 150,000 troops in Iraq (a third of them reservists and national guard) are tied down by the insurgency. If attacked, Iran would pull every lever to cause trouble in Iraq, and redouble its support for terrorist groups. There is a second option, of smaller strikes from the air or commando raids aimed specifically at suspected nuclear sites and/or key military installations. These might be carried out with the help of Israel, which has warned that it cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. The implication is that Tel Aviv is ready to go ahead on its own, with (or perhaps even without) the tacit blessing of the US. But even a smaller-scale attack is riddled with difficulties. Iran's nuclear sites are scattered and, by all accounts, well protected. This would be no repeat of 1981, when Israeli jets destroyed Saddam's reactor at Ozirak, setting back his nuclear ambitions by a decade. And would the humiliation of an attack, large-scale or small, really make the Iranian population rise up, as the neo-cons believe, to overthrow the detested mullahs? That calculation bids fair to join the long list of US misjudgements over Iran - from the coup that overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, the nationalist prime minister, in 1953 and the failure to foresee the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.)

5//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--KARACHI OPENS DOOR TO US FORCES (Having teamed up with the US to help eliminate Taliban rule in Afghanistan, Pakistan is once again proving its worth in the "war on terror," this time in Washington's quest against Iran… Exclusive information gathered by Asia Times Online shows that Pakistan has provided extensive facilities to special United Kingdom and US units to train them in commando operations in Pakistan's port city of Karachi, which in many ways resembles the Iranian towns of Tehran, Shiraz, Isphan and other urban centers. Special forces from the US and Britain have staged unannounced exercises in Karachi. With its maze of high rises, communication networks and the division of the city (Sher-i-Bala and Sher-i-Payien), Tehran and Karachi are very similar. "Pakistan's support to the US against Iran is logical as Iran did not hesitate to hand over all evidence of Pakistan helping Iran in developing nuclear technology to the international agency [International Atomic Energy Agency]," commented one analyst.)

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1//Interfax, Russia Jan 18 2005 10:27PM
http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/28.html?id_issue=10740527

MINSK CRITICIZES CONDOLEEZZA RICE REMARK ON BELARUS

MINSK. Jan 18 (Interfax-West) - The Belarussian Foreign Ministry has expressed displeasure with the fact that U.S. secretary of state nominee Condoleezza Rice mentioned Belarus among the countries she labeled as "outposts of tyranny" while speaking at Senate on Tuesday.

"The mentioning of Belarus in Rice's statement shows that her vision of the situation in Belarus is unfortunately too far from reality now," spokesman for the Belarussian Foreign Ministry Andrei Savinykh told Interfax on Tuesday.

"False stereotypes and prejudices are a bad foundation for pursuing an efficient policy in the sphere of relations between countries," he said.

"Only a constructive dialog based on common sense and the existing realities will help normalize relations between our countries," Savinykh said.

(END)

2//Inter Press Service News Agency, Italy Jan 18 ,2005
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=27079

ELECTION BEGINS TO WORRY NEIGHBOURS
Aaron Glantz

CAIRO, Jan 18 (IPS) - Iraq's neighbours have begun to worry seriously about the national election scheduled for Jan. 30.

Almost every day a regional leader speaks out in favour of the vote because the alternative could be worse. High-ranking officials from Egypt, Jordan, and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council have recently called for voter participation.

(SNIP)

But in calling for high voter turnout, Arab leaders are running against a counter-current inside Iraq. The country's main Sunni political party has already announced it will boycott the elections.

As many as 53 political parties and organisations have asked for their names to be dropped from the election lists in a bid to show their rejection of elections under U.S. occupation, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Some opponents of the elections have been resorting to violence. Several election officials have been killed in the last few weeks, besides party campaigners and three senior Kurdish politicians.

"Carrying out the poll under the existing unstable security situation is not feasible and is fruitless," U.S. ally Masoud Barzani, whose Kurdistan Democratic Party controls half of Northern Iraq told his party daily al-Taakhi. Barzani quickly added, however, that Kurds would still participate in the election.

This was primarily to curtail the influence of Shia leader Ayatollah Ali Sistani over a new government, observers here say.

Indeed, the most likely outcome of the January elections is that a slate of Shia candidates will come to power. That would lead to the ascendancy of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, whose Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq has been funded by the Iranian government for close to two decades.

Egyptian political analyst Ashraf Firadi thinks this will not pose a problem to the United States or to peace in the region.

"The first thing they did was to refuse the theory of Ayatollah Khomeni," Firadi argues. "We have a statement from (Abdel Aziz's slain brother) Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim where he says he doesn't want to establish a religious government in Iraq, but a secular democratic government."

But other analysts are not so optimistic. When the United States tried to impose a constitution on Iraq last February, a group of Shia politicians lead by al-Hakim and advised by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani initially refused to sign it. They said the constitution afforded too many rights to women, and demanded that Islamic Sharia law be adopted as the family law.

Hakim and Sistani relented only when the United States promised to scrap the interim constitution after an elected government was in place.

"They will probably be able to pull the elections together," says Mohammed Waked of the independent Egyptian Anti-Globalisation Group. "But it will not change things, except that it will bring the Shias to power as an organised group. And when the Americans fail to deliver their aspirations, they'll have a double problem. So it's really going to get worse and worse as far as the American plan is concerned."

And that means more worries throughout the region. Egyptian researcher Samer Sulayman fears the same thing his government does -- that Iraq will fall into chaos and fundamentalism.

"It will mean that the whole region will be very fertile soil for fundamentalism," he said. "I think the Americans came to Iraq in order to impose a political project in the region, so they must know that their failure in Iraq will mean the success of Osama bin Laden and his projects."

3//The Daily Star, Lebanon Wednesday, January 19, 2005
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition...

FEARS INCREASE THAT KUWAIT MAY FACE SAUDI-STYLE VIOLENCE AFTER CLASHES
Elected Parliament, free press, freedom of speech fail to prevent bloodshed

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait could face a cycle of violence similar to that rocking Saudi Arabia following last week's deadly clashes between security forces and Islamist militants, analysts and Western diplomats said Tuesday. The Gulf state is shocked by the fact that an elected Parliament, a free press and freedom of speech, all lacking in most other Gulf Arab states, have failed to prevent extremists from resorting to violence.

(SNIP)

Adel al-Falah, the undersecretary of Kuwait's Awkaf and Islamic Affairs Ministry, told the Al-Siyassah daily in remarks published Tuesday that the government has earmarked more than $18.7 million to spend on an anti-terror campaign. The effort will include television and radio programs, publications promoting tolerance, and public seminars to discuss the causes of extremism, he reportedly said. Security forces are still hunting for an unspecified number of militants who fled after the clashes, which were strikingly similar to regular shoot-outs between Saudi police and suspected Al-Qaeda militants. The commander of Kuwait's National Guard Sheikh Salem al-Ali Al-Sabah said the suspects were members of Al-Qaeda who had plotted to carry out terrorist bombings in the country. "I believe that the situation is very critical. ...There is a connection with Saudi groups, borders are open and difficult to control," a Western diplomat said. "I can't predict what would happen tomorrow, but it will not end at this. ...I am pessimistic. ...The situation in Iraq, too, is not good and it will impact on Kuwait," the diplomat said, requesting anonymity.

Kuwait has put its security forces on full alert and formed a joint operations room between various security agencies to coordinate raids on suspected hideouts.

Security measures around oil facilities and vital installations have been raised to the maximum and the government is planning to issue new legislation to search for unlicensed arms.

(SNIP)

"Now, we have entered the violence club in the region along with Iraq and Saudi Arabia. We have become a full member," Kuwait's leading liberal politician and former MP Ahmed al-Khatib told the same gathering.

Liberal politicians have blamed the government for the violence due to its long association with Islamists.

The Umm al-Haiman clashes show there is a "highly dangerous, well-organized group in Kuwait," said lawyer Osama al-Munawer, known for defending Islamist activists. But he ruled out Saudi-style terrorism in the emirate.

(MORE)

4//The Independent, UK 19 January 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas...

WHY THE HAWKS ARE CIRCLING OVER IRAN

As George W Bush prepares for a second term, his administration is setting its sights on Iran. But, Rupert Cornwell reports, a new foreign policy adventure could be disastrous.

The warning signs are aligned, as the stars in the heavens portending a great event.

There are stirrings in Congress and intensified contacts with exile groups from the Middle Eastern country in question. Once more, President George W. Bush is warning that he has not ruled out the use of force to make sure that a regime linked to terrorism does not acquire weapons of mass destruction.

(SNIP)

At her confirmation hearings yesterday, Condoleezza Rice, the incoming Secretary of State, sounded a similar note: "We must remain united in insisting that Iran [and North Korea] abandon their nuclear weapons ambitions."

Meanwhile the familiar precursors of "regime change" are visible. The Pentagon is working with an Iranian exile group based in Iraq. In the US, exiles are forming organisations of their own, most notably the ADI or "Alliance for Democracy in Iran," which wants the Iranian people to hold a referendum to restore the monarchy, overthrown in 1979, under the former Shah's son, Reva Pahlavi (a resident of Washington's Virginia suburbs).

For Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's pre-war poster boy for Iraqi "democracy," read Kamal Azari, president of the ADI. On Capitol Hill, conservative Republicans are pushing an Iran Freedom and Support Act, shades of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act.

(SNIP)

Just as before the Iraq war, the neo-conservatives, especially strongly represented in the Pentagon's civilian leadership, loudly demand action against Iran now. In their view, the EU initiative will fail - just as they were convinced the UN inspection would fail in pre-invasion Iraq. At that point however, the scenarios diverge.

The diplomatic uproar over an attack on Iran would eclipse the Iraq controversy. If the US went into Iran, it would do so virtually alone, with not even the semblance of the "Coalition of the Willing" that unseated Saddam. Even Britain would be missing. Instead Israel - the one country that could never go to war with Iraq - might be America's only ally, inflicting yet more damage, were that possible, to the standing of the US in the Islamic world.

The military attack itself would pose daunting problems. True, US forces are now based in Afghanistan and Iraq. But its military is overstretched and the 150,000 troops in Iraq (a third of them reservists and national guard) are tied down by the insurgency. If attacked, Iran would pull every lever to cause trouble in Iraq, and redouble its support for terrorist groups.

There is a second option, of smaller strikes from the air or commando raids aimed specifically at suspected nuclear sites and/or key military installations. These might be carried out with the help of Israel, which has warned that it cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. The implication is that Tel Aviv is ready to go ahead on its own, with (or perhaps even without) the tacit blessing of the US.

But even a smaller-scale attack is riddled with difficulties. Iran's nuclear sites are scattered and, by all accounts, well protected. This would be no repeat of 1981, when Israeli jets destroyed Saddam's reactor at Ozirak, setting back his nuclear ambitions by a decade. And would the humiliation of an attack, large-scale or small, really make the Iranian population rise up, as the neo-cons believe, to overthrow the detested mullahs? That calculation bids fair to join the long list of US misjudgements over Iran - from the coup that overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, the nationalist prime minister, in 1953 and the failure to foresee the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.

The lessons of Iraq, including the debacle over non-existent WMD and the rush to embrace Chalabi, display the limits of US understanding of that country. Why should Iran be any different? If the post-war occupation and the absence of an "exit strategy" have been disasters in Iraq, they will be surely be double disasters in Iran.

Last autumn, at the height of the election campaign, the Atlantic Monthly organised a fascinating war game. At its centre was a mock "principals" meeting on Iran to examine America's military options and recommend the most suitable. Its conclusions were sombre.

The magazine warned that next President - whom we now know to be Mr Bush - "must through bluff and patience, change the actions of a government whose motives he does not understand well, and over which his influence is limited."

Sam Gardiner, who for two decades has conducted such exercises at the National War College and who played the role of National Security Adviser, summed up its judgements in two blunt sentences. Mr President, "you have no military solution for the issues of Iran. You have to make diplomacy work."

The indications are that Mr Bush may grasped this reality; in other words a President who prides himself on telling it like it is, may for once be bluffing. Certainly his pre-inauguration deeds, as well as his words, tilt toward a strategy of negotiation.

It may be true that the most prominent foreign policymakers to depart the administration - Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage - have been moderates, while the civilian architects of the Iraq mess, including the Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, and the Pentagon's Undersecretary for Policy, Douglas Feith, have kept their jobs.

But Condoleezza Rice is no neo-con and her deputy, Robert Zoellick - while a vigorous defender of US interests - comes from the old pragmatic and multilateralist Republican foreign policy mainstream. For the moment at least, John Bolton, the hawkish former Under Secretary of State whom many feared might be promoted to the No 2 job at State, is nowhere to be seen.

(MORE)

5//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Jan 19, 2005
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GA19Df05.html

KARACHI OPENS DOOR TO US FORCES
By Syed Saleem Shahzad and Masood Anwar

KARACHI - Having teamed up with the US to help eliminate Taliban rule in Afghanistan, Pakistan is once again proving its worth in the "war on terror," this time in Washington's quest against Iran.

Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker has reported that since at least last summer, US teams have penetrated eastern Iran, reportedly with Pakistan's help, to hunt for secret nuclear and chemical weapons sites and other targets in the hardline Islamic country, which features prominently on the Bush administration's "axis of evil", along with now "liberated" Iraq and North Korea.

Exclusive information gathered by Asia Times Online shows that Pakistan has provided extensive facilities to special United Kingdom and US units to train them in commando operations in Pakistan's port city of Karachi, which in many ways resembles the Iranian towns of Tehran, Shiraz, Isphan and other urban centers. Special forces from the US and Britain have staged unannounced exercises in Karachi. With its maze of high rises, communication networks and the division of the city (Sher-i-Bala and Sher-i-Payien), Tehran and Karachi are very similar.

"Pakistan's support to the US against Iran is logical as Iran did not hesitate to hand over all evidence of Pakistan helping Iran in developing nuclear technology to the international agency [International Atomic Energy Agency]," commented one analyst.

During the exercises, the troops got to know different localities, residential areas, roads and exit points of the city, including railway and bus stations and the airport. For the exercises, the troops were provided with detailed maps of Karachi, including important buildings. The exercises, which started several weeks ago, ended on January 17, highly informed sources revealed to Asia Times Online. The troops were barracked at Malir Cant, the cantonment area of the Pakistan army adjacent to Karachi airport.

On January 11, the troops conducted anti-hijacking exercises on a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) aircraft at an isolated yard several kilometers from the main terminal and runway, although they were provided with detailed maps of the airport.

While confirming the exercises, a spokesman of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Colonel Tahir Idrees Malik, said they were anti-terrorist drills. He said it was an honor for Pakistan to be able to give training "to these friendly countries". When asked why Karachi had been chosen, and why the troops did not do the drills in their own countries, he said exercises always took place where action was expected.

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