September 26, 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 SEPTEMBER 26, 2005

1//The Independent, UK--BLAIR FALLS INTO LINE WITH BUSH VIEW ON GLOBAL WARMING (Tony Blair has admitted that he is changing his views on combating global warming to mirror those of President Bush - and oppose negotiating international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol. His admission, which has outraged environmentalists on both sides of the Atlantic, flies in the face of his promises made in the past two years and undermines the agreement he masterminded at this summer's Gleneagles Summit. And it endangers talks that opened in Ottawa this weekend on a new treaty to combat climate change. … Sharing a platform with the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, in New York this month, Mr Blair confessed: "Probably I'm changing my thinking about this," adding that he hoped the world's nations would "not negotiate international treaties." This contradicts his assertion in a speech a year ago - which drew a private rebuke from the Bush administration - that "a problem that is global in cause and scope can only be fully addressed through international agreement". … But instead of endorsing agreed limits on the pollution that causes climate change, Mr Blair told this month's meeting at the Clinton Global Initiative that he was putting his faith in "developing science and technology" - precisely Mr Bush's position.)

2//The Taipei Times, Taiwan--CONTAIN CHINA IN JOINT EFFORT: EXPERTS (Military experts from the US, Japan, and Taiwan yesterday stressed the necessity for the three countries to work together to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait at a symposium hosted by the World Taiwanese Congress (WTC) in Taipei. … Vice President Annette Lu gave a speech to WTC members saying that China's military threat against Taiwan is not just a verbal threat, but that China is ready to back up its threats with action. "The illustration of China's military capability and its deployment in the US Pentagon report released in August indicated that Taiwan is facing an unprecedented crisis," Lu said. The arms-procurement package was first brought up by the former ruling Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT], Lu said, noting that the reason why the KMT has changed its position on buying arms now is that it has lost the will to protect Taiwan after it lost power. Gary Schmitt, the executive director of the Project for the New American Century, said that often in newly democratized countries it takes time for the new ruling party to learn how to govern and for the party losing power to learn how to appropriately monitor the government.
The stalemate over the arms-procurement budget package might therefore stem from Taiwanese parties' struggle to adjust to their new roles, Schmitt said. However, he noted that the parties should hurry their pace since Taiwan is facing a growing military threat from China.)

3//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--IRAN KNOCKS EUROPE OUT – AGAIN (… Iran has already called the Europeans' bluff twice. It will do it again. Its right to a nuclear program - for civilian use - is a matter of national pride. The consensus extends from the hardliners who control all levers of power to the reformists and to the general population. Oil prices are going though the roof - and no government in its right mind would be willing to risk an Iranian oil embargo. The Iranians as much as the EU-3 foreign ministers know very well that uranium enrichment is not forbidden by the NPT. And they also know very well that absolutely nothing was done by the "international community" regarding the Israeli, Indian and Pakistani nuclear programs.)

4//MercoPress News Agency, Uruguay--US DENIES SETTING UP MILITARY BASE IN PARAGUAY (The United States Embassy in Asunción has denied an allegation which caused concern in Mercosur that Washington was planning to set up a military base in Paraguay. Kevin Johnson, an adviser for the embassy, said the US troops’ presence in Paraguay was in line with a programme of military manoeuvres carried out by both countries since 1948. “My government does not want to establish a military base,” he said in reports published on Friday in Asunción. He added that U S was concerned about what he described as “illegal activities” taking place in the Triple Frontier zone between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. “We know that there are illegal activities and that terrorist groups are financed there”. … Argentine Defence Minister José Pampuro said earlier this month that Argentina would be “concerned” if a temporary accord between Paraguay and the US to allow the presence of US troops on Paraguayan territory became permanent. Argentine Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa said that “the region needs no US base.” Paraguay two months ago granted limited immunity to some 400 US troops to enter its territory until December 2006 for joint manoeuvres and to train Paraguayan military forces. Argentine newspaper Ambito Financiero has speculated that Paraguay would allow a US base in its territory in exchange for a purported US offer of a bilateral free trade agreement.)

5//The Moscow Times, Russia--KREMLIN READIES POWER-STRIPPING BILL (Dmitry Kozak, the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, said Friday that his office had finished drafting a bill that would allow federal authorities to confiscate powers from provincial leaders who fail to raise standards in their regions. Under the reform, leaders of regions whose budgets are heavily subsidized by the federal government would lose their authority to appoint regional officials and decide how regional funds are spent. … The reform would trim the powers of regional leaders and mayors in regions and cities where subsidies account for more than 30 percent of the budget. Dozens of the country's 89 regions receive federal subsidies of more than 30 percent. … "Administrative involvement is excessive," Putin told a meeting of leaders from 13 southern regions, including Chechnya. "The authorities are often used as instruments for unfair advantage and, to put it bluntly, are getting corrupt." Kozak said the reform did not imply "introducing federal rule" in the regions. "We are speaking about symbolic measures," he said, without elaborating, Interfax reported.)

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1//The Independent, UK 25 September 2005 15:37
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/article314991.ece

BLAIR FALLS INTO LINE WITH BUSH VIEW ON GLOBAL WARMING
By Geoffrey Lean and Christopher Silvester

Tony Blair has admitted that he is changing his views on combating global warming to mirror those of President Bush - and oppose negotiating international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol.

His admission, which has outraged environmentalists on both sides of the Atlantic, flies in the face of his promises made in the past two years and undermines the agreement he masterminded at this summer's Gleneagles Summit. And it endangers talks that opened in Ottawa this weekend on a new treaty to combat climate change.

The U-turn will inevitably bring accusations that he has, once again, sold out to Mr Bush, just at the time that the US President is coming under unprecedented pressure to change his policy in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Last week the UK Government's chief scientific advisor, Sir David King, said that global warming might have increased their severity.

Over the past two years Mr Blair has consistently claimed global leadership in tackling what he described as "long term, the single most important issue we face as a global community" and has stressed that it "can only properly be addressed through international agreements." President Bush repeatedly expressed anger at his position.

Sharing a platform with the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, in New York this month, Mr Blair confessed: "Probably I'm changing my thinking about this," adding that he hoped the world's nations would "not negotiate international treaties."

This contradicts his assertion in a speech a year ago - which drew a private rebuke from the Bush administration - that "a problem that is global in cause and scope can only be fully addressed through international agreement."

It also denies what his ministers claimed to be his main achievement on global warming at Gleneagles. He had succeeded in getting all the leaders except Mr Bush to sign up to negotiating a successor to the Kyoto treaty, and in arranging a meeting between the G8 and leading developing countries to discuss it.

But instead of endorsing agreed limits on the pollution that causes climate change, Mr Blair told this month's meeting at the Clinton Global Initiative that he was putting his faith in "developing science and technology" - precisely Mr Bush's position.

(MORE)

2//The Taipei Times, Taiwan Sunday, Sep 25, 2005 Page 1
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives...

CONTAIN CHINA IN JOINT EFFORT: EXPERTS
Experts at a World Taiwanese Conference forum said that Taiwan, Japan and the US must work together to deter an aggressively rising China

By Shih Hsui-Chuan, Staff Reporter

Military experts from the US, Japan, and Taiwan yesterday stressed the necessity for the three countries to work together to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait at a symposium hosted by the World Taiwanese Congress (WTC) in Taipei.

The WTC, an organization made up of overseas pro-independence Taiwanese from around the world, is currently holding its fifth annual conference in Taipei. The group plans to attend a rally today staged by the Hand-in-Hand Taiwan Alliance, to join the call for legislators to pass the long-stalled US arms procurement budget.

Kaneda Hideaki, who once served in Japan's maritime self-defense force, said at the symposium that China has been more aggressive in projecting its power abroad.

"China has been using its economic growth to expand its military capability," he said. "Starting with threatening Taiwan, China's ultimate goal is the whole world. The democratic countries in the Asia-Pacific region should therefore work together to counter China."

Vice Minister of the National Defense Ministry Michael Tsai echoed Kaneda, saying that the joint military exercise between China and Russia at the end of last month proved that the China's military goals stretch beyond Taiwan and are also aimed at the US and Japan.

"The modernization and expansion of China's military force has been beyond expectations," Tsai said. "Its annual military budget of US$30 billion is three times higher than that of Taiwan, not to mention the under-the-table budget, which is about three times [that amount]."

(SNIP)

Vice President Annette Lu gave a speech to WTC members saying that China's military threat against Taiwan is not just a verbal threat, but that China is ready to back up its threats with action.

"The illustration of China's military capability and its deployment in the US Pentagon report released in August indicated that Taiwan is facing an unprecedented crisis," Lu said.

The arms-procurement package was first brought up by the former ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Lu said, noting that the reason why the KMT has changed its position on buying arms now is that it has lost the will to protect Taiwan after it lost power.

Gary Schmitt, the executive director of the Project for the New American Century, said that often in newly democratized countries it takes time for the new ruling party to learn how to govern and for the party losing power to learn how to appropriately monitor the government.

The stalemate over the arms-procurement budget package might therefore stem from Taiwanese parties' struggle to adjust to their new roles, Schmitt said. However, he noted that the parties should hurry their pace since Taiwan is facing a growing military threat from China.

3//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Sep 24, 2005
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI24Ak03.html

IRAN KNOCKS EUROPE OUT – AGAIN
By Pepe Escobar

The EU-3 (France, Britain and Germany) should underestimate Ali Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council and Iran's top nuclear negotiator, at their peril. He's extremely close to the all-powerful Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Larijani's comments this week - comparing the nuclear row with the fight to nationalize Iran's oil industry in the early 1950s, then controlled by the British - struck a powerful chord not only internally but with an array of developing countries.

Larijani said, "The Europeans have been trying to humiliate the Iranians. Do not doubt that enrichment is a national desire." Popular reaction in Iran at the mosque, at the bazaar and at the teashop attests that it is. But Larijani went one step further. "Those countries that have economic transactions with Iran, especially in the field of oil, have not defended Iran's rights so far."

The conclusion was loud and clear. "Based on how much they defend Iran's national right will facilitate their participation in Iran's economic field." So a logical possibility is that under pressure, Iran may resort to an oil embargo, just like the one imposed in the aftermath of 1973 Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur war.

This is the first time the Iranian leadership has publicly established a direct, sensitive link between nuclear policy and oil. Of course, it's all part of psychological warfare. But it set alarm bells ringing. Analysts in Europe tend to agree that were Iran to resort to an oil embargo in the next few months, the barrel of oil could easily reach US$100. According to Thierry Demarest, chief executive of TotalFinaElf, "the world cannot live without Iranian oil".

Us against them

What happened in Vienna this week at the 35-member International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors meeting was one more graphic illustration of how the world really does business - with the EU-3 and the US on one side, the developing world on another.

The EU-3 were in fact defeated - again - in Vienna from the moment a one-page resolution drafted by the 14-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was circulated, stating that the Iran nuclear row "should remain in the purview of the International Atomic Energy Agency." That is, no referral to the United Nations Security Council, which would open the way for possible sanctions against Tehran.

The NAM argument is iron-clad: these countries - in Asia, Africa, Latin America - don't want the Iranian case to set a precedent, since Iran's earlier suspension of uranium enrichment activities was "a voluntary and non-legally binding confidence-building measure," as the head of the NAM, Malaysian ambassador Rajmah Hussain, had been repeating for weeks.

So staunch opposition to the EU-3 did not come only from Security Council members Russia and China - both engaged in multibillion-dollar energy deals with Iran. After the NAM resolution, there was no way out for the EU-3 but to drop its confrontational, US-backed draft resolution.

In the new draft there's no explicit threat that Iran will be hauled to the Security Council, although this remains a possibility, at the discretion of the IAEA board. But the EU-3 draft still declares that Iran has been in "non-compliance" with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - which is not true.

Earlier in the week, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that taking Iran to the Security Council was "counterproductive" because Iran was cooperating with the IAEA. The IAEA itself recognized it - before Tehran, exasperated with European procrastination, resumed uranium enrichment at its Isfahan plant.

Talking heads
The outcome, at least for moment, has only reinforced popular perception inside Iran that both the EU and the US have no support from the so-called "international community."

(SNIP)

But even if Iran is taken to the Security Council, the country won't abandon the NPT, according to Iranian negotiator Ali Asghar Soltani - and this despite some threats uttered by Larijani earlier in the week. The country instead would resume uranium enrichment and withdraw from voluntary inspection agreements with the IAEA.

Iran has already called the Europeans' bluff twice. It will do it again. Its right to a nuclear program - for civilian use - is a matter of national pride. The consensus extends from the hardliners who control all levers of power to the reformists and to the general population.

Oil prices are going though the roof - and no government in its right mind would be willing to risk an Iranian oil embargo. The Iranians as much as the EU-3 foreign ministers know very well that uranium enrichment is not forbidden by the NPT. And they also know very well that absolutely nothing was done by the "international community" regarding the Israeli, Indian and Pakistani nuclear programs.

4//MercoPress News Agency, Uruguay Sunday, 25 September 2005
http://www.mercopress.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=6494

US DENIES SETTING UP MILITARY BASE IN PARAGUAY

The United States Embassy in Asunción has denied an allegation which caused concern in Mercosur that Washington was planning to set up a military base in Paraguay.

Kevin Johnson, an adviser for the embassy, said the US troops’ presence in Paraguay was in line with a programme of military manoeuvres carried out by both countries since 1948.

“My government does not want to establish a military base,” he said in reports published on Friday in Asunción. He added that U S was concerned about what he described as “illegal activities” taking place in the Triple Frontier zone between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil.

“We know that there are illegal activities and that terrorist groups are financed there.”

One year ago, on the occasion of the kidnapping and killing of Cecilia Cubas, daughter of former Paraguayan president Raúl Cubas, President Nicanor Duarte Frutos asked for the cooperation of his US counterpart George W. Bush, said Johnson.

Investigation results showed that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, that country’s largest rebel group, was operating in Paraguay, he added.

Johnson said that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) would open an office in Asunción in 2007. It would be similar to those it has maintained since the 1990s in Buenos Aires and other South American capitals.

(SNIP)

Argentine Defence Minister José Pampuro said earlier this month that Argentina would be “concerned” if a temporary accord between Paraguay and the US to allow the presence of US troops on Paraguayan territory became permanent. Argentine Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa said that “the region needs no US base.”

Paraguay two months ago granted limited immunity to some 400 US troops to enter its territory until December 2006 for joint manoeuvres and to train Paraguayan military forces.

Argentine newspaper Ambito Financiero has speculated that Paraguay would allow a US base in its territory in exchange for a purported US offer of a bilateral free trade agreement.

5//The Moscow Times, Russia Monday, September 26, 2005. Issue 3260. Page 3
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/09/26/011.html

KREMLIN READIES POWER-STRIPPING BILL
By Francesca Mereu, Staff Writer

Dmitry Kozak, the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, said Friday that his office had finished drafting a bill that would allow federal authorities to confiscate powers from provincial leaders who fail to raise standards in their regions.

Under the reform, leaders of regions whose budgets are heavily subsidized by the federal government would lose their authority to appoint regional officials and decide how regional funds are spent.

Five impoverished regions in the North Caucasus -- Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkessia -- received more than 70 percent of their budgets from the federal government last year, while two Siberian regions, Tuva and the Koryak autonomous district, received similar levels of assistance.

The reform would trim the powers of regional leaders and mayors in regions and cities where subsidies account for more than 30 percent of the budget. Dozens of the country's 89 regions receive federal subsidies of more than 30 percent.

President Vladimir Putin complained on Friday that huge cash subsidies from the federal budget had not led to any positive changes in the southern regions. "In the past four years, they have risen to nearly 3.5 times what they were per capita," he said. "But the rift between economic indicators of the region and Russia on the whole has not narrowed."

Putin also harshly criticized authorities in the North Caucasus regions, saying nepotism and corruption were hurting their economies and creating a fertile ground for terrorism.

"Administrative involvement is excessive," Putin told a meeting of leaders from 13 southern regions, including Chechnya. "The authorities are often used as instruments for unfair advantage and, to put it bluntly, are getting corrupt."

Kozak said the reform did not imply "introducing federal rule" in the regions.

"We are speaking about symbolic measures," he said, without elaborating, Interfax reported.

Kozak suggested that decisions on removing and returning powers should be made once a year, saying the worst-off regions should be financially managed from Moscow for at least a year.

(MORE)