April 8, 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 APRIL 8, 2005

1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--The Roving Eye: WHAT’S BEHIND THE NEW IRAQ (… It's emerging that the real meaty matters in Iraq - federalism, who gets oil-rich Kirkuk, and, crucially, what happens to the oil industry overall - will be settled by the constituent assembly. But two developments are ominous. The attribution of ministries for the "new" government once again will be sectarian. And every faction will remain armed to their teeth. The Kurds keep their independent peshmerga militia, and financed by Baghdad. The SCIRI keeps its Badr Brigades. The Da'wa Party also keeps its own militia. None of these will answer to Baghdad - which mobilizes its own, US-trained Iraqi security forces. Cynically, one might add that outside the political process, the Sunni resistance will also keep its thousands of fighters. … The big question now is how the Shi'ites and Kurds will deal with marginalized Sunni Arabs - paying close attention to their political grievances or clobbering them with peshmergas, Badr Brigades and Iraqi security forces. It's politics or civil war.)

2//Inter Press Service News Agency, Italy--NEW IRAQI GOV’T TO CONFRONT FUTURE WITH U.S. MILITARY (One of the first orders of business for the new Iraqi government under Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani and Shi'ite Islamist Ibrahim Jaafari will be to strike a deal with the United States military over the terms and conditions of the 150,000-troop-strong U.S. military presence. A United Nations Security Council resolution authorising the occupation ends in December. After that, the occupation will be technically illegal. Chris Toensing of the Washington-based Middle East Research and Information Project says the Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance, which won the most votes in January's election, has already abandoned its election promise to demand a timeline for U.S. withdrawal. … Toensing expects the U.S. military to become tightly linked to both the armed wings of Shi'ite religious parties and Kurdish peshmerga under the new government, since both support large-scale crackdowns on the largely Sunni insurgency, taking more prisoners and secretly locking them up in prisons like Abu Ghraib with minimal oversight. … Ken Livingstone is the CEO of the consulting company Global Options Inc and a leading neo-conservative thinker. … Livingstone says he doesn't trust the Shi'ite religious leaders who placed first in January's election in Iraq. He likened their election to Adolph Hitler's in Germany, telling IPS sometimes people come to power through legitimate elections who later need to be "dealt with.")

3//The Moscow Times, Russia--A STRING OF AUCTIONS GET CANCELED (A string of auctions for oil and gas development licenses have been canceled to prevent foreign companies from bidding, an official in the Natural Resources Ministry said. The cancellations appear to constitute a de facto widening of the ban on bids by non-Russian-controlled companies, contradicting recent assurances from Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev and other ministers. The latest cases also highlight uncertainties faced by foreign natural resource companies as the State Duma prepares to debate a long-anticipated bill on restricting foreigners' access to subsoil resources. … Auctions for the Trebs and Titov oil fields in the Barents Sea, originally scheduled for March 30, did not take place "because there were bids from TNK-BP," a 50-50 Russian-British venture, Ledovskikh said. The three fields could yield up to 200 million tons of oil, according to the Natural Resources Ministry's web site.)

4//Inter Press Service News Agency, Italy--U.S. PURSUES DISRUPTIVE ANTI-ABORTION AGENDA (As expected, the United States has once again raised the politically divisive issue of abortion at a crucial U.N. meeting here, refusing to reaffirm the landmark Programme of Action unanimously adopted at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. According to an amendment introduced by the United States, Washington has indicated its willingness to support the ICPD programme of action only "with the understanding that nothing therein creates a right to abortion." "As everyone knows, the Cairo conference made it clear that abortion was a national matter, not an international matter," a Third World delegate told IPS. "The [George W.] Bush administration is obviously bent on sabotaging these post-Cairo meetings with a politically sensitive issue that was settled as far back as 1994," he added. … The U.S. move also came on the eve of World Health Day Thursday, whose slogan this year is "Make Every Mother and Child Count" in light of alarming figures showing that women in the poorest countries face a one in 16 risk of dying during pregnancy or childbirth. U.N. experts note that providing family planning could reduce maternal mortality by 25 percent.)

5//The Toronto Star, Canada--U.S. DELAYS ROCKET AMID CONCERN OVER NFLD. OIL RIGS
(The U.S. Defence Department's plans to launch a rocket over the North Atlantic were postponed indefinitely today amid concerns in Newfoundland that falling debris could hit offshore oil platforms. Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams said he was stunned when he learned spent booster rockets from a Titan IV rocket, which was to be launched early Monday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., were expected to fall within 25 kilometres of the Hibernia platform. … Exxon-Mobil Corp. informed federal officials that the boosters, which are typically jettisoned from the main rocket, posed a threat to its operations. As a result, federal Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan called U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney. … "I don't think the Americans were aware, or had really thought it through, as to how close this was to the Hibernia platform," Williams said following two urgent phone conversations with McLellan and a call to Frank McKenna, Canada's ambassador to the United States. "Why would they drop a piece of space debris out of the sky and take a chance that it happens to be 15 miles in the right spot? If it's off, it could obviously have very serious consequences.")

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1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Apr 8, 2005
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD08Ak04.html

The Roving Eye: WHAT’S BEHIND THE NEW IRAQ
By Pepe Escobar

It took more than nine weeks, fiery haggling and backroom deals for Iraq's politicians to compose a new government.

The president is Kurdish warlord Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who enjoys close ties with both Washington and Tehran. The two vice presidents are: Adel Abdel Mahdi of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), a senior Shi'ite leader of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) in Iraq and the interim finance minister, and a former Maoist turned free-marketer who last December promised in Washington to privatize the Iraqi oil industry; and the previous president, Ghazi al-Yawer, a former exile and influential Sunni sheikh of the Sammar tribe. Talabani is finally set to appoint Da'wa Party senior leader Ibrahim Jaafari of the UIA as prime minister.

It's about time. Iraqis have grown increasingly exasperated with the political haggling since the elections on January 30 - on the lines of "how could we have elected those people?" It got so bad that the four grand ayatollahs in the now de facto shadow capital Najaf were about to call a massive street protest to bring the politicians to their senses. This was compounded by the fact that many Iraqis repudiate political life reduced to religious sectarianism, a legacy of the United States' Coalition Provisional Authority, which imposed the current institutional arrangement.

It's emerging that the real meaty matters in Iraq - federalism, who gets oil-rich Kirkuk, and, crucially, what happens to the oil industry overall - will be settled by the constituent assembly. But two developments are ominous. The attribution of ministries for the "new" government once again will be sectarian. And every faction will remain armed to their teeth. The Kurds keep their independent peshmerga militia, and financed by Baghdad. The SCIRI keeps its Badr Brigades. The Da'wa Party also keeps its own militia. None of these will answer to Baghdad - which mobilizes its own, US-trained Iraqi security forces. Cynically, one might add that outside the political process, the Sunni resistance will also keep its thousands of fighters.

Lebanonization?

It's too soon to perceive the substantial details of the Shi'ite-Kurd deal - between them they hold more than two-thirds of the 275 seats in parliament. But what's happened since January 30 is definitely not a good omen.

(SNIP)

The big question now is how the Shi'ites and Kurds will deal with marginalized Sunni Arabs - paying close attention to their political grievances or clobbering them with peshmergas, Badr Brigades and Iraqi security forces. It's politics or civil war.

2//Inter Press Service News Agency, Italy Apr 6, 2005
http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=28187

NEW IRAQI GOV’T TO CONFRONT FUTURE WITH U.S. MILITARY
Aaron Glantz

WASHINGTON, Apr 6 (IPS) - One of the first orders of business for the new Iraqi government under Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani and Shi'ite Islamist Ibrahim Jaafari will be to strike a deal with the United States military over the terms and conditions of the 150,000-troop-strong U.S. military presence.

A United Nations Security Council resolution authorising the occupation ends in December. After that, the occupation will be technically illegal. Chris Toensing of the Washington-based Middle East Research and Information Project says the Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance, which won the most votes in January's election, has already abandoned its election promise to demand a timeline for U.S. withdrawal.

"Right now, the United States is the protector of the United Iraqi Alliance," Toensing said, noting the U.S. military had promised to protect whatever government was elected.

Today on Capitol Hill, the Senate Appropriations Committee considered adding 80 billion dollars more for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the total emergency monies for the two wars to 210 billion dollars.

"That's the structure," Toensing said. "Now the big danger is that relationship will become entrenched even though the Iraqi side will not be really happy with it, but they will perceive that they will have no other choice if they want to stay in power."

Toensing expects the U.S. military to become tightly linked to both the armed wings of Shi'ite religious parties and Kurdish peshmerga under the new government, since both support large-scale crackdowns on the largely Sunni insurgency, taking more prisoners and secretly locking them up in prisons like Abu Ghraib with minimal oversight.

"I couldn't get close to the prison when I was there two weeks ago," Democratic Senator Dick Durban of Illinois told IPS. "”Members of Congress who go there are not allowed to leave the Green Zone so I couldn't get close to it."

(SNIP)

Beyond that are the substantive differences between the two factions. Shi'ite political parties want Islamic law to form the basis for government, a move rejected by Kurds who want autonomy and control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Ken Livingstone is the CEO of the consulting company Global Options Inc and a leading neo-conservative thinker.

"When they craft a constitution, which is the first effort that is going to be made by the new Parliament, there they've got to have checks and balances. Without those checks and balances they're probably going to end up with a majority Shi'ite state that is going to create an Islamic Republic," he said.

Livingstone says he doesn't trust the Shi'ite religious leaders who placed first in January's election in Iraq. He likened their election to Adolph Hitler's in Germany, telling IPS sometimes people come to power through legitimate elections who later need to be "dealt with."

Like many neo-cons, he also believes Iraq will eventually be fractured with an independent Kurdistan emerging in the North. "The Kurdish self-determination is something that they have had for more than a decade and we should recognise it's a reality," Livingstone said.

Then, he says, Kurds who feel oppressed by governments in Iran, Turkey, and Syria, could move to an independent Kurdistan in Iraq rather than destabilising their own ethnically diverse countries.

Livingstone isn't the only prominent Republican to say the dissolution of Iraq and the creation of Kurdistan is desirable.

His view is shared by Henry Kissinger, who wrote two years ago that a "breakup into three states is preferable to refereeing an open-ended civil war."

3//The Moscow Times, Russia Friday, April 8, 2005. Issue 3142. Page 1.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/04/08/001.html

A STRING OF AUCTIONS GET CANCELED
By Alex Fak, Staff Writer

A string of auctions for oil and gas development licenses have been canceled to prevent foreign companies from bidding, an official in the Natural Resources Ministry said.

The cancellations appear to constitute a de facto widening of the ban on bids by non-Russian-controlled companies, contradicting recent assurances from Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev and other ministers.

The latest cases also highlight uncertainties faced by foreign natural resource companies as the State Duma prepares to debate a long-anticipated bill on restricting foreigners' access to subsoil resources.

Among the auctions canceled are those for oil and gas fields in the Krasnoyarsk region and the Barents Sea involving the Russian-British joint venture TNK-BP.

In the latest setback for a foreign bid, a long-awaited auction for a coal field in the Kemerovo region involving Italian miner Coeclerici -- scheduled for 9:00 a.m. Thursday -- was postponed less than 24 hours before it was supposed to take place.

Anatoly Ledovskikh, head of the ministry's Federal Subsoil Resource Use Agency, said Wednesday that the auctions for the licenses for the Lodochnoye oil and gas field in the Krasnoyarsk region had been canceled on "state orders," Izvestia reported Thursday.

"It seems the country did not wish ... that foreigners take part," the paper quoted him as saying.

Auctions for the Trebs and Titov oil fields in the Barents Sea, originally scheduled for March 30, did not take place "because there were bids from TNK-BP," a 50-50 Russian-British venture, Ledovskikh said. The three fields could yield up to 200 million tons of oil, according to the Natural Resources Ministry's web site.

Previously, the government had indicated that non-Russian-controlled entities would be barred from bidding for only six specific oil, gas, copper and gold deposits -- including the Trebs and Titov fields but not the Lodochnoye block.

(SNIP)

Analysts said Ledovskikh's comments showed that the ban on non-Russian companies was being extended to include a wider range of natural resource deposits.

"Yesterday's news shows that it goes beyond that," said Kakha Kiknavelidze, an oil and gas analyst at Troika Dialog.

He said that the country's auction politics had never been transparent. "What has changed is that the government is now openly saying, 'We will not allow foreign-controlled companies to participate in certain auctions.'"

(MORE)

4//Inter Press Service News Agency, Italy April 6, 2005
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=28191

U.S. PURSUES DISRUPTIVE ANTI-ABORTION AGENDA
Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 6 (IPS) - As expected, the United States has once again raised the politically divisive issue of abortion at a crucial U.N. meeting here, refusing to reaffirm the landmark Programme of Action unanimously adopted at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo.

According to an amendment introduced by the United States, Washington has indicated its willingness to support the ICPD programme of action only "with the understanding that nothing therein creates a right to abortion."

"As everyone knows, the Cairo conference made it clear that abortion was a national matter, not an international matter," a Third World delegate told IPS.

”The (George W.) Bush administration is obviously bent on sabotaging these post-Cairo meetings with a politically sensitive issue that was settled as far back as 1994,” he added.

Werner Fornos, president of the Washington-based Population Institute, said that paragraph 8.25 of the unanimously adopted 1994 Cairo Programme of Action clearly states that "in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning."

”What could be more precise or concise than that?” he asked.

”Once again the Bush administration throws raw meat to placate fundamentalist zealots who use the abortion issue as a backdoor ploy to suppress family planning,” Fornos told IPS.

The U.S. move also came on the eve of World Health Day Thursday, whose slogan this year is "Make Every Mother and Child Count" in light of alarming figures showing that women in the poorest countries face a one in 16 risk of dying during pregnancy or childbirth.

U.N. experts note that providing family planning could reduce maternal mortality by 25 percent.

According to several delegates, the U.S. decision to block consensus on the resolution is being backed by at least four countries: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Qatar and Egypt.

Fornos said it is unfortunate that a small group of nations "buys into this transparent subterfuge by the United States."

"I am particularly dismayed that Egypt --where the historic Cairo conference was held --has chosen to join a cozy coalition of the unwilling in a retrogressive reversal of reason," he added.

The resolution, which among other things reaffirms the ICPD programme of action, was expected to be adopted by consensus at the end of a one-week meeting of the U.N. Commission on Population and Development (CPD) which began Apr.4 and is expected to conclude Apr 8.

The theme of the CPD session is population, development and HIV/AIDS, with particular emphasis on poverty.

The commission is also expected to discuss the implementation of ICPD programme of action and the achievement of the internationally-agreed development goals, including those contained in the Millennium Declaration adopted in September 2000.

But the Bush administration, which draws strong support from right-wing Christian fundamentalists, has been trying to hijack the CPD meeting -- as it has done at several previous meetings -- by raising the issue of abortion.

At a two-week U.N. conference aimed at taking stock of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, the Bush administration pressed its anti-abortion agenda, triggering strong protests from developing nations and from non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The anti-abortion issue threatened to also disrupt that meeting, held at U.N. headquarters last month, whose primary agenda was to advance women's equality.

Although the U.S. delegation subsequently dropped the amendment, the New York Times said the "damage" by then had already been done.

"An apology is due from the United States delegation for the weeklong disruption it caused," the Times said in an editorial titled 'The Bush Team's Abortion Misstep.'

"At a moment when the United States should be leading the world on advancing women's equality, the Bush administration chose instead to alienate government ministers and 6,000 other delegates at an important U.N. conference on that issue with a burst of anti-abortion zealotry," the editorial added.

Addressing the CPD session Monday, the Executive Director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) Thoraya Obaid told delegates that governments in all regions have reaffirmed their commitment to the ICPD programme of action, and to the achievement of universal access to reproductive health by the year 2015.

(MORE)

5//The Toronto Star, Canada Apr. 7, 2005 08:04 PM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer...

U.S. DELAYS ROCKET AMID CONCERN OVER NFLD. OIL RIGS
Offshore oil platforms were in process of being evacuated

From Canadian Press

ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. - The U.S. Defence Department's plans to launch a rocket over the North Atlantic were postponed indefinitely today amid concerns in Newfoundland that falling debris could hit offshore oil platforms.

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams said he was stunned when he learned spent booster rockets from a Titan IV rocket, which was to be launched early Monday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., were expected to fall within 25 kilometres of the Hibernia platform.

Soon after Williams announced evacuation of the platform had begun, Defence Minister Bill Graham emerged from the House of Commons to say the launch had been delayed.

"We strongly urge the United States government not to follow this trajectory but to choose a trajectory which will take their rocket further away from these very important installations," Graham said.

Graham said U.S. officials informed Transport Canada of the launch, as is normal practice with any launches targeted over Canadian waters.

Exxon-Mobil Corp. informed federal officials that the boosters, which are typically jettisoned from the main rocket, posed a threat to its operations.

As a result, federal Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan called U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Graham said the Americans initially delayed the scheduled launch for 48 hours, then postponed it indefinitely.

(SNIP)

Col. Stefano Boccino, of the U.S. Air Force Space Command at Cape Canaveral, said the launch was postponed because of mechanical problems with ground support equipment.

When asked if the missile's trajectory was an issue, he said: "Right now we don't have an answer to that. I believe that will be readdressed once a new launch date is confirmed."

It remains unclear how long the federal government was aware of the rocket's trajectory or when the Americans told Graham they had changed their plans, but Williams said he found out about the launch today.

"This just simply can't happen," Williams said before Graham announced the postponement.

Williams said the Hibernia platform, the Terra Nova development and the drilling rig Glomar Grand Banks are all in the area.

"I don't think the Americans were aware, or had really thought it through, as to how close this was to the Hibernia platform," Williams said following two urgent phone conversations with McLellan and a call to Frank McKenna, Canada's ambassador to the United States.

"Why would they drop a piece of space debris out of the sky and take a chance that it happens to be 15 miles in the right spot? If it's off, it could obviously have very serious consequences."

(MORE)