July 1, 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 JULY 1, 2005

1//The Jordan Times, Jordan--MUSLIM CLERICS TO CONVENE IN AMMAN NEXT WEEK (Amman will host a wide array of Muslim clerics next week, who are convening to discuss the various aspects of Islam's relationship with the human community and how to repair the damage caused by certain groups to the image of this faith in the world, organisers said. Deliberations in the July 4-6 Islamic International Conference will revolve around “True Islam and its Role in Modern Society,” Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Abdul Salam Abbadi, spokesperson of the conference, told the press on Wednesday. The event is a continuation of systematic efforts initiated by the Kingdom last year to present the world with the true picture of Islam as a major contributor to world civilisation. . ... . As a result of the growing debate in the Muslim world over the takfiri approach (the tendency among certain Muslim fundamentalists to label Muslims as infidels, sometimes for mere differences in opinion) and the subsequent violence practised by takfiri groups, next week's meeting will seek to refute such ideas and set criteria for issuing a fatwa [religious edict]. Abbadi said a sense of chaos has prevailed in the way fatwas are issued in the Islamic world, with unqualified clerics giving their religious opinions haphazardly to the public with not enough knowledge or authority.)

2//The Korea Times, S. Korea--3 NK FIRMS TARGETED AS WMD PROLIFERATORS (The United States is targeting three North Korean firms, including a trading company involved in a joint venture with a South Korean carmaker, under a new executive order to freeze the assets of suspected weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators. The order, signed by U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday, singles out the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation, Tanchon Commercial Bank and the Korea Ryonbong General Corporation as companies believed to be assisting in the spread of WMDs. . ... However, experts in Seoul expressed surprise over the inclusion of Korea Ryonbong General Corporation, a Pyongyang-based company that in 2002 launched an automobile assembly line together with South Korea’s Pyonghwa Motors. The South Korean firm, owned by Rev. Moon Sun-myung’s Unification Church, invested about 71 billion won in the plant located in the North Korean city of Nampo, according to news reports. KOTRA, the South’s trade and investment agency, also includes Korea Ryonbong General Corporation on its list of North Korean trading companies, describing it as an "authoritative corporation’’ with "branch offices in many countries throughout the world.’’ . ... The South Korean government has sought to play down the significance of the U.S. executive order. But officials and experts in Seoul privately expressed concerns that it could slow inter-Korean economic engagement and damage hopes of resuming the stalled six-party nuclear talks. "The order is basically the same as imposing economic sanctions,’’ a government official said on condition of anonymity. "This kind of measure may make local firms, many of which have assets in the U.S., think twice before doing business with North Korea.’’)

3//Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, US-- UZBEKISTAN: KARIMOV, PUTIN SAY ANDIJON VIOLENCE WAS PLANNED ABROAD (Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who is in Moscow on an official visit, said last month's violence in his country was planned from abroad. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov are backing his claims. Karimov has also made thinly veiled accusations that the West orchestrated the unrest to strengthen its presence in Central Asia. Karimov has taken advantage of his visit to Moscow to make it clear he views the May uprising in Uzbekistan's eastern city of Andijan as an "operation" planned from abroad. During a meeting with Ivanov, he said the unrest had been carefully organized by people who had experience planning similar revolts in former Soviet countries. On Wednesday Ivanov announced that Russia is to conduct joint military exercises with Uzbekistan. The defense minister said the joint maneuvers would be the first since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The exercises will be held in central Uzbekistan over the summer. The Russian news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Ivanov as saying the maneuvers would be of a special nature in light of the events in Andijan. . ... . This is the first time Karimov, who sees himself as a US ally in the "war against terror", has made a direct link between the West and the Andijan events. The Kremlin has refrained from commenting on Karimov's accusations that the West was behind the revolt, but it did say it supports his claims that the revolt had been planned from abroad.)

RELATED: UZBEKISTAN: IS THE COUNTRY HEADED FOR REGIME CHANGE?

4//The Moscow Times, Russia--CHINESE PRESIDENT TO TALK ENERGY (Chinese President Hu Jintao was set to arrive in Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin on Thursday as part of a global mission to secure energy supplies for his country's booming economy. Trade will lead the agenda of Hu's four-day visit to Russia, with oil and electricity as top priorities. Bilateral trade topped $21 billion last year, with Russian government officials predicting it could triple by 2010. Even though the two countries have put aside Cold War-era disagreements in favor of commerce, the two giant neighbors still eye each other warily. "The whole world is afraid of China's economic growth, including us," said Boris Titov, head of the Russian-Chinese Business Council. "But they're afraid of us, too. They need our oil." Hu arrives in Moscow on his third visit to Russia at a time when Chinese foreign policy is increasingly focused on fueling its booming economy with reliable oil supplies. Last week, China took the United States by surprise when state-owned oil company CNOOC made a $18.5 billion bid for U.S. oil major Unocal.)

5//Global Politician, US--CHINESE INFLUENCE ON THE RISE IN LATIN AMERICA (... . Why did Chinese leaders choose late 2004 and early 2005 to make their whirlwind spending tour of several Latin American nations? First, they may well have noticed that Latin American governments no longer race to sign onto the U.S.-backed Free Trade of the Americas agreement as they did previously to NAFTA in the 1990s. Because the free-trade-free-market model failed to perform as predicted – in Argentina it led to bankruptcy -- governments that question Washington’s economic model now sit in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba. Bolivia and Ecuador may be next. Indeed, if the radical populist Mexico City mayor Lopez Obredor succeeds in winning the 2006 Mexican presidential election – he is currently the leading contender -- U.S.-sponsored trade agreements in the region may all be doomed. Second, the petroleum mavens don’t expect supply to rise above demand in the near future. So, given this climate, China’s gaining access to oil and gas sources in the U.S. backyard has flustered the Bushies, who remain preoccupied with Iraq Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran, social security privatization and abortion criminalization.)

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1//The Jordan Times, Jordan Thursday, June 30, 2005
http://www.jordantimes.com/thu/homenews/homenews4.htm

MUSLIM CLERICS TO CONVENE IN AMMAN NEXT WEEK
By Mahmoud Al Abed

AMMAN — Amman will host a wide array of Muslim clerics next week, who are convening to discuss the various aspects of Islam's relationship with the human community and how to repair the damage caused by certain groups to the image of this faith in the world, organisers said.

Deliberations in the July 4-6 Islamic International Conference will revolve around “True Islam and its Role in Modern Society,” Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Abdul Salam Abbadi, spokesperson of the conference, told the press on Wednesday.

The event is a continuation of systematic efforts initiated by the Kingdom last year to present the world with the true picture of Islam as a major contributor to world civilisation.

The meeting is among a series of such events, particularly seeking to establish the values of moderation and understanding preached by the Amman Message.

The document, issued in November last year and translated into several languages, spells out Jordan's understanding of Islam as a religion that rejects violence and promotes dialogue and constructive interaction with other cultures.

Over the past months, His Majesty King Abdullah has referred to the Message in his meetings with world leaders and think tanks as the true representation of Islam, whose image has been distorted since the Sept. 11 attacks on the US.

(SNIP)

The foundation and an international committee began preparations for the conference months ago, meeting in February to determine the aspects to be discussed at the gathering.

Shabbouh said the participants would discuss 45 papers covering three subtopics: Basic aspects in Islam's dealings with the human community, difficulties Islam faces currently and how to correct the distorted image of Islam in contemporary world society.

As a result of the growing debate in the Muslim world over the takfiri approach (the tendency among certain Muslim fundamentalists to label Muslims as infidels, sometimes for mere differences in opinion) and the subsequent violence practised by takfiri groups, next week's meeting will seek to refute such ideas and set criteria for issuing a fatwa (religious edict).

Abbadi said a sense of chaos has prevailed in the way fatwas are issued in the Islamic world, with unqualified clerics giving their religious opinions haphazardly to the public with not enough knowledge or authority.

2//The Korea Times, S. Korea 6/30/05 06/30/2005623:39 Updated06/30/05 23:39 updated
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/...

3 NK FIRMS TARGETED AS WMD PROLIFERATORS

By Reuben Staines
Staff Reporter

The United States is targeting three North Korean firms, including a trading company involved in a joint venture with a South Korean carmaker, under a new executive order to freeze the assets of suspected weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators.

The order, signed by U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday, singles out the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation, Tanchon Commercial Bank and the Korea Ryonbong General Corporation as companies believed to be assisting in the spread of WMDs.

Four Iranian companies and one Syrian firm are also listed in an annex to the White House measure.

Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation, also known as the Changgwang Sinyong Corporation, has long been on Washington’s watch list for WMD proliferators. The U.S. State Department twice imposed sanctions against the firm during the 1990s for missile trading with China, Iran and Pakistan.

However, experts in Seoul expressed surprise over the inclusion of Korea Ryonbong General Corporation, a Pyongyang-based company that in 2002 launched an automobile assembly line together with South Korea’s Pyonghwa Motors.

The South Korean firm, owned by Rev. Moon Sun-myung’s Unification Church, invested about 71 billion won in the plant located in the North Korean city of Nampo, according to news reports.
KOTRA, the South’s trade and investment agency, also includes Korea Ryonbong General Corporation on its list of North Korean trading companies, describing it as an "authoritative corporation’’ with "branch offices in many countries throughout the world.’’ Little is known about Tanchon Commercial Bank.

The South Korean government has sought to play down the significance of the U.S. executive order. But officials and experts in Seoul privately expressed concerns that it could slow inter-Korean economic engagement and damage hopes of resuming the stalled six-party nuclear talks.

"The order is basically the same as imposing economic sanctions," a government official said on condition of anonymity. "This kind of measure may make local firms, many of which have assets in the U.S., think twice before doing business with North Korea.’’

Under the executive order, the U.S. Treasury Department is able to freeze assets not only of the listed companies but also those of any person or organization that has business dealings with them.

"President Bush signed an executive order to combat trafficking of weapons of mass destruction and proliferation-related materials by cutting off financing and other support for proliferation networks,’’ a White House fact sheet said.

Hopeful of a breakthrough in the protracted crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs following a rare meeting with its reclusive leader Kim Jong-il on June 17, South Korea has urged the U.S. to avoid provocative moves or statements that could upset the unpredictable communist regime.

(MORE)

3//Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, US 29 June 2005
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/...

UZBEKISTAN: KARIMOV, PUTIN SAY ANDIJON VIOLENCE WAS PLANNED ABROAD

By Claire Bigg

MOSCOW - Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who is in Moscow on an official visit, said last month's violence in his country was planned from abroad. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov are backing his claims. Karimov has also made thinly veiled accusations that the West orchestrated the unrest to strengthen its presence in Central Asia.

Karimov has taken advantage of his visit to Moscow to make it clear he views the May uprising in Uzbekistan's eastern city of Andijan as an "operation" planned from abroad. During a meeting with Ivanov, he said the unrest had been carefully organized by people who had experience planning similar revolts in former Soviet countries.

"The events in Andijan were planned in advance and were a very serious, thoroughly prepared operation, to put it accurately," Karimov said. "It is clear that it was prepared in headquarters and centers where there are people who have carried out operations like this before on the territory of both CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] and other states."

On Wednesday Ivanov announced that Russia is to conduct joint military exercises with Uzbekistan. The defense minister said the joint maneuvers would be the first since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The exercises will be held in central Uzbekistan over the summer. The Russian news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Ivanov as saying the maneuvers would be of a special nature in light of the events in Andijan.

Unrest in Andijan erupted on May 13, when militants seized a local prison and government headquarters after what many residents described as an unfair trial of local businessmen. Witnesses and rights group say a demonstration following the attack was violently crushed by government troops. The Uzbek authorities, who blame the attack on terrorists, say 176 people died in the confrontation - but human-rights groups have put the death toll at more than 500.

During his meeting with President Putin on Wednesday, Karimov linked the Andijan revolt to recent movements that toppled the governments in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. He then implicitly accused the US Congress, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the European Parliament of hearing a resolution that he claimed was prepared prior to the unrest and demanded the Uzbek government answer for the violence in Andijan.

"This wittingly prepared resolution was ready. And, of course, imagine: the US Congress would have discussed this resolution and passed the subsequent decisions, the European Parliament would have discussed it, NATO would have discussed it," he said.

Karimov gave no further details. There have been no previous reports that resolutions were prepared anywhere in anticipation of the Andijan violence, and the charge is impossible to verify independently.

This is the first time Karimov, who sees himself as a US ally in the "war against terror", has made a direct link between the West and the Andijan events.

The Kremlin has refrained from commenting on Karimov's accusations that the West was behind the revolt, but it did say it supports his claims that the revolt had been planned from abroad.

Ivanov told the Uzbek president that Russia had known about the revolt. "We, in fact, knew how all this was prepared [the events in Andijan], or at least we knew some of the elements [of the plan]," the Russian defense minister said. "It's quite clear there was an external link. This helped us to take really an objective stance [on the events in Andijan] based on all circumstances of what had happened and [to avoid] any one-sided assessment which has only political considerations."

(MORE)

RELATED:

UZBEKISTAN: IS THE COUNTRY HEADED FOR REGIME CHANGE?
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/06/5f2fb...

Following the unrest in the Uzbek city of Andijon last month, there is growing speculation about the future of Uzbek President Islam Karimov. And this week, a major essay in the British journal “Jane’s Intelligence Review” argues that “Uzbekistan is now spiraling irretrievably towards violent regime change.” Such an upheaval, the piece says, could leave in its bloody wake a “failed state” with continued violence driven by “an ugly cocktail of ethnicity, revenge, disparities of wealth, clan interests, organized crime, foreign interference, and religious extremism.”

(MORE)

4//The Moscow Times, Russia Thursday, June 30, 2005, 2005. Issue 3198. Page 1
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/06/30/001.html

CHINESE PRESIDENT TO TALK ENERGY

By Greg Walters
Staff Writer

Chinese President Hu Jintao was set to arrive in Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin on Thursday as part of a global mission to secure energy supplies for his country's booming economy.

Trade will lead the agenda of Hu's four-day visit to Russia, with oil and electricity as top priorities.
Bilateral trade topped $21 billion last year, with Russian government officials predicting it could triple by 2010.

Even though the two countries have put aside Cold War-era disagreements in favor of commerce, the two giant neighbors still eye each other warily.

"The whole world is afraid of China's economic growth, including us," said Boris Titov, head of the Russian-Chinese Business Council. "But they're afraid of us, too. They need our oil."

Hu arrives in Moscow on his third visit to Russia at a time when Chinese foreign policy is increasingly focused on fueling its booming economy with reliable oil supplies.

Last week, China took the United States by surprise when state-owned oil company CNOOC made a $18.5 billion bid for U.S. oil major Unocal.

Moscow, while still wavering on an oil pipeline to China, will boost oil deliveries by rail to 11 million tons this year from 6 million tons in 2004.

This year state-owned oil company Rosneft took over from Yukos as the main oil exporter to China. In February, China gave Rosneft a $6 billion loan, which many observers speculated was used for the Russian firm's purchase of Yuganskneftegaz, the Yukos production unit auctioned off in December. Rosneft later said that the money was simply an advance payment for future deliveries.

Putin and Hu originally signed off on the Pacific pipeline during the Chinese president's first visit to Moscow in May 2003.

Now Beijing is likely to want more specific commitments on access to Russian oil and gas projects than Moscow is prepared to give, said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank.

China's top two priorities are beating out Japan as the main beneficiary of a trans-Siberian oil pipeline and gaining access to a huge natural gas field at Kovykta, Weafer said.

Yet Moscow is drawing out the decision on the oil pipeline's construction. And for the moment, Russian-British oil company TNK-BP has the license to develop Kovykta.

(SNIP)

Attempts by Putin and Hu to assert their countries' positions on the world stage are not only economic.

Both men have said they regret the collapse of the Soviet Union, with Hu reportedly calling Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev a "traitor to history" for allowing it to happen. Putin this year called the fall of the Soviet Union the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

"The more we see of Hu Jintao, the more we see him shifting back toward Mao," said David Wall, a China specialist at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London.

"Putin and Hu respect each other's positions on suppression of internal dissent and on raising the status of their own countries in the eyes of the world."

But Wall added that "they still look at each other out of the corners of their eyes."

A key issue in bilateral relations is the Russian fear of being overrun by Chinese migrants along the countries' 3,400-kilometer border.

Chinese businessmen are pouring funds into investment projects across the border, though many of them go unregistered, Wall said.

"The Russian economy in that area is increasingly dependent on China for capital, for labor, for everything," he said. "A lot of it is illegal. But the rate of growth of that trade is phenomenal."

5//Global Politician, US 6/30/2005
http://www.globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=939&cid=5&sid=30

CHINESE INFLUENCE ON THE RISE IN LATIN AMERICA
Saul Landau

(Saul Landau is a Foreign Policy In Focus scholar (online at www.fpif.org). He wrote Dangerous Doctrine: National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy. He is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and teaches at CalPolyPomonaUniversity. This is a revised version of an article that originally appeared in Progreso Weekly.)

(SNIP)

In 2005, the weak and vulnerable “prize” that feuding Europeans had carved up for imperial aspirations at the end of the 19 th and early 20 th Centuries now blankets all continents with its goods – and its capital. As the “made in China” label has become ubiquitous in U.S. department stores and on the wings of commercial airplanes, the Chinese government has scooped up U.S. Treasury securities worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Maybe that makes the U.S. China’s “prize.” Indeed, U.S. officials may well worry that the Chinese might stop recycling dollars they earn from trade surplus back into the U.S. economy.

In early March, a U.S. Embassy official confided to a visiting businessman that he believed that Chinese leaders viewed the United States as a declining superpower whose time had passed and will be forced to share world power with other powerful nations, including China.

Latin American Invasion

To demonstrate how China ’s strategic position has changed in the last two decades, the Embassy official explained that China not only captured the U.S. consumer market, but has invaded Latin America, a region that the U.S. has traditionally dominated.

He referred to two high-level visits. In November 2004, Chinese President Hu Jintao signed 39 commercial agreements with five Latin American nations. Chinese investments in Argentina alone totaled some $20 billion. He then made an investment trip to the Caribbean as well.

In January and February, Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong followed his boss’s visit with his own entourage of officials and top business executives. During these two aggressive trips to pursue investment in strategic areas, China stepped into potentially contentious turf when they signed an accord with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez for future Venezuelan oil and gas exploration. Zeng also offered Venezuela a $700 million credit line for new housing construction to help reduce Venezuelan poverty, ignoring U.S. whining over Chavez’s “authoritarianism.”

Chavez, who has won three free and fair elections in the last six years, gets stuck with the “authoritarian” label while his pro-U.S. opponents who staged a 2002 military coup, merit the “democratic” badge. This labeling mystifies those who continue to think logically.

For all the tension between the two nations, the U.S imports from Venezuela still stood at $25 billion last year, far outweighing exports to that country, which totaled $4.8 billion.

But Beijing’s real poke in Washington’s mostly blind eye came with the announcement that it would give credits to Cuba. In the globalization era, Cuba remains the exception to all rules. The Bush Administration’s Latin American policy targets the “containment” of Chavez or the “punishing” of Fidel Castro, who holds the World Record for “Most Years of Disobedience.”

So far, official Washington has ignored or denied the significance of China’s Latin America strategy. Indeed, “President Hu Jintao spent more time in Latin America last year than President Bush,” Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer has observed. “ China’s vice president, Zeng Qinghong, spent more time in the region last month than his U.S. counterpart, Vice President Dick Cheney, over the past four years.”

Helping Meet China’s Demand for Energy

At the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005, China offered more than $50 billion in investment and credits to countries inside the traditional Monroe Doctrine’s shield. That’s beginning to rival the cash infusion from President John F. Kennedy’s highly-publicized Alliance for Progress, which pumped $20 billion into the region in the 1960s (that would be worth about $120 billion today after adjusting for inflation).

Trade with Latin America can help meet China’s wildly expanding energy demands. In 2007, the CIA estimated, China will import half its oil. China also needs to import other raw materials and food as its economy grows.

As U.S. dependency on foreign oil grows and the price of crude reaches record levels, most recently the $60 per barrel mark, the Chinese might maneuver themselves into a position to actually sell some of that viscous substance to the United States – long before the Alaska drilling results in a drop of crude prices, China’s new investments have targeted oil, gas and minerals, signs that the Chinese pursue strategic and market rather than simple profit designs.

(SNIP)

Why did Chinese leaders choose late 2004 and early 2005 to make their whirlwind spending tour of several Latin American nations? First, they may well have noticed that Latin American governments no longer race to sign onto the U.S.-backed Free Trade of the Americas agreement as they did previously to NAFTA in the 1990s.

Because the free-trade-free-market model failed to perform as predicted – in Argentina it led to bankruptcy -- governments that question Washington’s economic model now sit in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba. Bolivia and Ecuador may be next. Indeed, if the radical populist Mexico City mayor Lopez Obredor succeeds in winning the 2006 Mexican presidential election – he is currently the leading contender -- U.S.-sponsored trade agreements in the region may all be doomed.

Second, the petroleum mavens don’t expect supply to rise above demand in the near future. So, given this climate, China’s gaining access to oil and gas sources in the U.S. backyard has flustered the Bushies, who remain preoccupied with Iraq Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran, social security privatization and abortion criminalization.

(SNIP)

Now China expects the United States to offer it “equal and liberal trading advantages.” Senator Richard Lugar (R- IN), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has worried aloud about the contradictions that arose from Venezuela’s new deals with China. Like other prudent and truly conservative Republicans, Lugar wonders whether Bush’s aggressive anti-Chavez rhetoric and actions might lead Venezuela to retaliate and cut the U.S. off from its oil supply. After all, China will pick up the purchase slack.

“For years and years, the hemisphere has been a low priority for the U.S.,” a Lugar aide told The New York Times. “The Chinese are taking advantage of it. They’re taking advantage of the fact that we don’t care as much as we should about Latin America.”

Likewise, China has undercut Washington’s policy of starving Cuba for resources. Chinese leaders pledged large investment credits for Cuban nickel.

Beijing thus befriends U.S. enemies, Chavez and Castro, as U.S. prestige slips in its own “backyard.” It has used the “open door” ploy against the United States in Latin America as the U.S. once used it against Europe to get at Chinese resources and labor.

Hey, doesn’t globalization mean that all’s fair in the game of trade?