March 18, 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 MARCH 18, 2005

1//The Independent, UK--BUSH’S ‘SHOCKING’ CHOICE OF WOLFOWITZ FOR WORLD BANK PROVOKES OUTRAGE (President George Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank has triggered reactions ranging from polite acceptance to outright hostility among foreign governments and aid groups. Some believe he is unqualified for the job while others fear he will be all too effective in using the post to expand America's global dominance. Although his nomination is almost certain to be accepted by the World Bank's board of directors and participating states, both the European Union and the French government made a point of saying that his assumption of the presidency is not a foregone conclusion. … Clare Short, the former international development secretary, described the nomination of the Bush administration's leading neoconservative hawk as the equivalent of sticking up "two fingers to the world." "This is really shocking," she told Channel 4 News. "It's as though they are trying to wreck our international systems.")

2//Arab News, Saudi Arabia--IRAQ: DEADLOCK BY DESIGN (The Shiite coalition cannot contest the Kurdish claims by force — but neither can it accept them without being seen by most Arab Iraqis (including its own Shiite supporters) as a traitor to Iraq. That is why it’s taking so long to create a new transitional government in Baghdad, and may take quite a while yet. This is not just petty bickering over government jobs: The basic structure of the future Iraqi state is being negotiated between the Kurds and the Shiite Arabs right now [with practically no Sunni Arabs present at the table]. Paul Bremer did not design this whole mess, but he did write the voting rules that give the Kurds an effective veto on any coalition government in the new assembly (and a veto on the new constitution, too, if and when it is finally written). One is tempted to see a Machiavellian calculation here: Maybe we lose the rest of Iraq, but at least we get to keep Kurdistan and half the oil. However, the temptation should be resisted. The Bush administration hasn’t even accepted yet that it has lost in Iraq.)

3//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--ISLAMABAD MAKES A TRADEOFF (Although Pakistani forces conducted their customary vigorous anti-terrorism operations near the Afghanistan border prior to visits by US officials, the real interest in Wednesday's meeting between President General Pervez Musharraf and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice centered on Iran. Before Rice's whirlwind visit to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan (she also goes to Japan, South Korea and China) Washington was abuzz with talk that the Bush administration had convinced Musharraf to lend support to American action against Iran for its alleged nuclear weapons program. … In return, the US seems to be more receptive to Pakistan's long-term request for F-16 fighter aircraft. On Wednesday, Rice thanked Musharraf for "superb support in the war on terror," according to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. The possible sale of F-16 fighter planes came up, Boucher said, but he gave no details. There are further contours of the deal - Pakistan has provided material evidence to the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the items and scientific information that Pakistani scientists provided to support the Iranian nuclear weapons program.)

4//The Telegraph, UK--WATCH OUT BLAIR, THEY WANT HIM (Gordon Brown has overtaken Tony Blair as Labour's main electoral asset only weeks before an expected general election, according to a post-Budget YouGov poll for The Telegraph. With a broadly favourable response to Mr Brown's ninth Budget, the poll suggests that Labour would stand a better chance of securing a record third term in power if the Chancellor, not Mr Blair, was Prime Minister. … The findings are understood to be reflected in private polling conducted by the Tories. As a result, they have abandoned an earlier campaign strategy of suggesting that it would be a "vote Blair get Brown" election - implying that the Chancellor would take over from Mr Blair soon after a third election victory. Because of Mr Brown's growing popularity with the voters, the Tories are now concentrating all their firepower on trust in Mr Blair, which they see as the weak point of Labour's campaign.)

5//The Daily Star, Lebanon-- HITLER’S ‘MEIN KAMPF’ SELLS 50,000 COPIES IN TURKEY IN THREE MONTHS (Cheap cover prices and a rise in nationalist sentiment have made an unlikely best-seller in Turkey of Adolf Hitler's infamous autobiography, "Mein Kampf." The book was first published in Turkey in 1939, when Axis and Allied countries were competing for Turkey's soul as they tried to woo it away from the neutrality it would maintain until the very end of World War II. But since January, the book has sold more than 50,000 copies and is number four on the best-seller list drawn up by the D&R bookstore chain. … The readership? "Those who want to know about a man who wreaked death and destruction on the world," Tektas said. "Mostly young people," said Sami Kilic, owner of the Emre publishing house, another company on the "Mein Kampf" bandwagon, which sold 26,000 copies from a run of 31,000, released in late January.)

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1//The Independent, UK 18 March 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...

BUSH’S ‘SHOCKING’ CHOICE OF WOLFOWITZ FOR WORLD BANK PROVOKES OUTRAGE
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

President George Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank has triggered reactions ranging from polite acceptance to outright hostility among foreign governments and aid groups.

Some believe he is unqualified for the job while others fear he will be all too effective in using the post to expand America's global dominance.

Although his nomination is almost certain to be accepted by the World Bank's board of directors and participating states, both the European Union and the French government made a point of saying that his assumption of the presidency is not a foregone conclusion.

The French Foreign Minister, Michel Barnier, pointedly described the nomination as a "proposal," while Jacques Chirac, the French President, was said to have "taken note" of the nomination. A European Union spokeswoman, Claude Veron-Reville, said she anticipated a round of talks to discuss Mr Wolfowitz's candidacy before any formal moves to endorse it. "A period of consultations with stakeholders is now starting," she told reporters.

Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, was quoted as saying the nomination "came as a surprise to some in Europe." In Britain, Gordon Brown's office described Mr Wolfowitz, currently Deputy Secretary of Defence, as a "very distinguished person" but said the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not had time to consider his nomination because of his preoccupation with the Budget.

Clare Short, the former international development secretary, described the nomination of the Bush administration's leading neoconservative hawk as the equivalent of sticking up "two fingers to the world." "This is really shocking," she told Channel 4 News. "It's as though they are trying to wreck our international systems."

Caroline Lucas, a British Green and member of the European Parliament, described the nomination as "an insult to the world's poor." "As a leader of the neoconservative movement," she added, "[Wolfowitz's] belief in unfettered free markets and a philosophy that what is in the US's interest is thereby in the interest of the entire world spells disaster for many countries in the developing world."

Much of the criticism of Mr Wolfowitz is focused on his lack of direct experience of the financial sector and his limited exposure to development issues - for much of his life he has been an academic and a diplomat focussed on military and strategic questions. Many experts and government officials also found it troubling that the Bush administration, in nominating someone for a job dependent on consensus-building, would pick someone who has become a symbol of US resistance to that very consensus.

(MORE)

2//Arab News, Saudi Arabia Friday, 18, March, 2005 (07, Safar, 1426)
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article...

IRAQ: DEADLOCK BY DESIGN
Gwynne Dyer, Arab News
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Six weeks after the Jan. 30 election that White House press flacks hailed as the “purple revolution,” the new Iraqi national assembly opened on Wednesday, March 16 — but there is still no new government in Iraq. Partly that is because of the attitude of the Kurds, summed up last month by Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani in a New York Times interview: “If the Kurdish people agree to stay in the framework of Iraq in one form or another as a federation, then other people should be grateful to them.” And partly it’s because the US wrote the rules in such a way that the Kurds would have a stranglehold on the political process.

An opinion poll conducted in Iraq recently by Zogby International showed that 82 percent of Sunni Arabs, and 69 percent even of Shiite Arabs, want the US out “now” or “very soon.” (The main reason for the high Shiite turnout in the January election was that their religious leaders told them a Shiite-dominated assembly was the quickest way to get the Americans out.) But the Kurds of Iraq, around one-fifth of the population, want the US occupation to continue, as it guarantees a weak Iraqi state and maximum freedom of action for them.

Since Sunni Arabs, another fifth of Iraq’s population, largely boycotted the election, the new national assembly will be dominated by the Shiite Arabs and the Kurds. The coalition of religious Shiite parties, the United Iraqi Alliance, won a slim majority in the new assembly — 140 seats out of 275 — which would entitle it to form a government almost anywhere else.

But the rules written for the assembly by former US Proconsul Paul Bremer require a two-thirds majority to pick the new president and vice presidents, who in turn select the prime minister. That means that the Shiite party has to make a deal with the Kurds.

The Kurdish parties managed to submerge their differences and offer the voters a single political front, the Kurdistan Democratic Alliance, which won 75 seats in the assembly. Any coalition government in which they are a key partner will not be able to demand that US troops leave Iraq (an outcome that would have appealed to Bremer) — and the Kurds also have a few demands of their own.

What the Kurds really want is independence from Iraq, but their mountainous homeland in the far north of Iraq is next to Turkey, which worries about the separatist aspirations of its own large Kurdish minority and has threatened to invade to prevent an independent Kurdish state from emerging on its eastern border. So for now the Iraqi Kurds are willing to stay in Iraq for a price, but their price is very high. The Kurds don’t just insist on the presidency (which the Shiites have already conceded to them).

They want an autonomous Kurdish region that elects its own government, collects its own taxes and decides how much to send to Baghdad. They want to keep their own separate army, the formidable Pesh Merga militia, allowing no other armed forces in Kurdistan without their permission. They want to control all natural resources on their territory and decide how revenues will be split with the federal government.

(SNIP)

The Shiite coalition cannot contest the Kurdish claims by force — but neither can it accept them without being seen by most Arab Iraqis (including its own Shiite supporters) as a traitor to Iraq. That is why it’s taking so long to create a new transitional government in Baghdad, and may take quite a while yet. This is not just petty bickering over government jobs: The basic structure of the future Iraqi state is being negotiated between the Kurds and the Shiite Arabs right now (with practically no Sunni Arabs present at the table).

Paul Bremer did not design this whole mess, but he did write the voting rules that give the Kurds an effective veto on any coalition government in the new assembly (and a veto on the new constitution, too, if and when it is finally written).

One is tempted to see a Machiavellian calculation here: Maybe we lose the rest of Iraq, but at least we get to keep Kurdistan and half the oil. However, the temptation should be resisted. The Bush administration hasn’t even accepted yet that it has lost in Iraq.

3//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Mar 18, 2005
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GC18Df08.html

ISLAMABAD MAKES A TRADEOFF
By Kaushik Kapisthalam
Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance defense and strategic affairs analyst based in the United States.

Although Pakistani forces conducted their customary vigorous anti-terrorism operations near the Afghanistan border prior to visits by US officials, the real interest in Wednesday's meeting between President General Pervez Musharraf and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice centered on Iran.

Before Rice's whirlwind visit to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan (she also goes to Japan, South Korea and China) Washington was abuzz with talk that the Bush administration had convinced Musharraf to lend support to American action against Iran for its alleged nuclear weapons program.

This reinforces a number of reports by Asia Times Online's Syed Saleem Shahzad over the past months that Pakistan had agreed to host American troops and intelligence assets near its long border with Iran in Balochistan province in preparation for a possible attack on Iran, including the training of special US forces in Karachi - see, for example, US keeps Iran in its sights
of January 28.

In return, the US seems to be more receptive to Pakistan's long-term request for F-16 fighter aircraft. On Wednesday, Rice thanked Musharraf for "superb support in the war on terror," according to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. The possible sale of F-16 fighter planes came up, Boucher said, but he gave no details.

There are further contours of the deal - Pakistan has provided material evidence to the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the items and scientific information that Pakistani scientists provided to support the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

(SNIP)

For the Americans, this Pakistani admission is vital since it gets the US off the hook from the task of proving that Iran is cheating on its promise not to develop nuclear weapons. Even though many people (especially in Washington) believe that Iran is working on enriching uranium for weapons purposes, material evidence carries enormous weight in the diplomatic world. Until now, Iran had been stalling the IAEA by arguing that Western intelligence sources are wrong about its nuclear program, a claim that is strengthened by the Iraq weapons of mass destruction fiasco.

But a centrifuge sample handover by Pakistan changes the playing field, making it hard for Iran to wriggle out of its dealings with the IAEA, should they contain incriminating material. As a result, should Iran's nuclear weapons program be found out publicly, the matter can theoretically be referred to the United Nations Security Council, leading to sanctions or even military action, although China may have something to say about that.

A few weeks ago, Richard Sale, the intelligence correspondent for United Press International, wrote that Musharraf had allowed Iranian anti-regime fighters to operate from Pakistan's Balochistan province that abuts Iran. Sale claimed that the fighters included those from the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which is officially listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department. This report once again tallies with ATol's January 28 story, which said that the US was using the MEK to work against Iran from southern Iraq, "... [the MEK] will attempt to play the role of a catalyst to organize an insurgency against the rule of Islamic hardliners in Tehran."

(SNIP)

Many Pakistani and Western experts have noted that Pakistan has followed the development paradigm of a "rent-seeking state," meaning that Pakistani leaders have always tried to parlay their country's strategic geographical location to greater powers in return for aid and diplomatic recognition. The US, obviously, has been the biggest partaker of the services provided by the Pakistani elite, from the days of the Cold War to the current "war on terror."

However, such acts of renting their country out have not always worked out well for Pakistan in the long term. It would be interesting to see how this latest move by Pakistan against Iran turns out, especially if the Iranian leaders are able to come out of the current nuclear crisis unscathed.

4//The Telegraph, UK (Filed: 18/03/2005)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main....

WATCH OUT BLAIR, THEY WANT HIM
By George Jones and Toby Helm

Gordon Brown has overtaken Tony Blair as Labour's main electoral asset only weeks before an expected general election, according to a post-Budget YouGov poll for The Telegraph.

With a broadly favourable response to Mr Brown's ninth Budget, the poll suggests that Labour would stand a better chance of securing a record third term in power if the Chancellor, not Mr Blair, was Prime Minister.

According to YouGov, 63 per cent see Mr Brown as an "asset" to Labour compared to 34 per cent for Mr Blair. Asked who is doing the better job, 52 per cent say Mr Brown compared to 17 per cent for Mr Blair.

The findings are understood to be reflected in private polling conducted by the Tories. As a result, they have abandoned an earlier campaign strategy of suggesting that it would be a "vote Blair get Brown" election - implying that the Chancellor would take over from Mr Blair soon after a third election victory.

Because of Mr Brown's growing popularity with the voters, the Tories are now concentrating all their firepower on trust in Mr Blair, which they see as the weak point of Labour's campaign.

The poll shows general satisfaction with the Budget, with 44 per cent regarding it as "fair" and more people still preferring increased investment in public services to tax cuts.

But Michael Howard's charge that it was a "vote now, pay later" Budget, with tax rises deferred until after the election, has struck a chord with voters. Sixty-three per cent believed Mr Brown knew that taxes would have to go up to fund his spending plans but was putting off any increases until the election was over.

The sharp drop in public confidence in Mr Blair is a further blow to Labour's faltering election campaign. Mr Brown has been sidelined in Labour's campaign but the poll is likely to increase demands from the party's MPs for him to be brought back in a front-line role.

Labour was on the back foot again yesterday after attempts to portray the Conservatives as a party of "savage" public spending cuts backfired.

(MORE)

5//The Daily Star, Lebanon Friday, March 18, 2005
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition...

HITLER’S ‘MEIN KAMPF’ SELLS 50,000 COPIES IN TURKEY IN THREE MONTHS
Sales reflect rise in nationalist sentiment

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

ANKARA: Cheap cover prices and a rise in nationalist sentiment have made an unlikely best-seller in Turkey of Adolf Hitler's infamous autobiography, "Mein Kampf." The book was first published in Turkey in 1939, when Axis and Allied countries were competing for Turkey's soul as they tried to woo it away from the neutrality it would maintain until the very end of World War II.

But since January, the book has sold more than 50,000 copies and is number four on the best-seller list drawn up by the D&R bookstore chain.

"'Mein Kampf' has always been a sleeper, a secret best-seller," said Oguz Tektas of Mefisto editions, one of several publishing houses to re-release the book Hitler wrote while in jail in 1925. "We took it out of the closet for purely commercial reasons." His company's sole aim, he stressed, was "to make money," which they did by slashing the cover price.

"Mein Kampf," published by about a dozen companies over the years, always sold at a fairly steady annual rate of about 20,000 copies at some 20 New Turkish Lira ($15) a copy.

The Mefisto edition retails at YTL5.90 and sold 23,000 copies in two months.

The readership? "Those who want to know about a man who wreaked death and destruction on the world," Tektas said.

"Mostly young people," said Sami Kilic, owner of the Emre publishing house, another company on the "Mein Kampf" bandwagon, which sold 26,000 copies from a run of 31,000, released in late January.

"The times we live in have a definite impact on sales," Kilic said. "It is an astonishing phenomenon." He linked interest in the book to Turkey's bid to join the EU, seen by the right wing as a desertion of national values, and rising sentiment against the U. S. and its ally Israel over the treatment they are perceived as meting out to the Iraqis and the Palestinians, respectively.

"This book, which does not contain a single ounce of humanity, unfortunately appears to be taken seriously in this country," political scientist Dogu Ergil complained in a recent newspaper interview.

He agreed that the unexpected popularity of "Mein Kampf" in this Muslim-majority country has its roots in a rise in anti-American sentiment sparked by the occupation of Iraq and anti-Semitism resulting from Israel's Palestinian policy.

"Nazism, buried in the dustbin of history in Europe, is beginning to re-emerge in Turkey," he warned.

But despite what the sales may imply, Turkey has never been an anti-Semitic country - on the contrary, it has been a safe haven for Jews ever since the 15th century, when Sultan Bayezit II first took in Spanish Jews fleeing the inquisition.

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