October 17, 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.

* * *

WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR OCTOBER 17, 2005

1//The Scotsman/Scotland on Sunday, UK--GOVERNMENT'S EARTHQUAKE AID FAILURE FUELS CALLS FOR HOLY WAR (… . Analysts claim Musharraf's external battle, to be seen to be tackling fundamentalism, will now be overshadowed by his domestic battle, to placate Muslim hardliners within his own military and government who are angry at his apparent failure to lead his country in its time of need. "The militants are taking matters into their own hands and winning over members of the public on the ground," said political analyst Hasan Rizvi, "Their popularity will soar in these regions as a result and the government will appear directionless. It is a very dangerous situation." According to Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institute, a US think-tank that focuses on the region, Musharraf now faces a deeply uncertain future. He said: "Pakistan is unstable as a government and a society. This is often the case with one-man rule, and especially one-man rule in which serious people - al-Qaeda and its allies inside Pakistan - are trying to kill him. . … . "Add to that the thousands of madrassas inside Pakistan and the hundreds of thousands of potential jihadis, as well as Taliban sympathisers who travel back and forth across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. These people are all his enemies and now the public are angry at his response to a major disaster.")

2//The Daily Star, Lebanon--PRINCE NAYEF SAYS SAUDIS STILL WAITING FOR IRAQI SECURITY TEAM (Saudi Arabia's interior minister said Iraq had failed to send a security team as agreed in July to discuss security cooperation between the two neighbors. "When we met during the meeting of interior ministers of countries neighboring Iraq in Istanbul [in July], I and the Iraqi interior minister ... agreed on security cooperation and the creation of a security team that would come from [Iraq] and meet with security officials in the kingdom," Prince Nayef bin Abdel-Aziz said. "No one has come yet and we haven't been contacted" by the Iraqis on the issue, said Nayef, whose remarks were made in the Red Sea city of Jeddah late Saturday and carried by the official SPA news agency Sunday. …. . Many Saudis are believed to enter Iraq to join Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, despite attempts by Saudi security forces to stop the infiltrations.)

3//Gulf News Online, United Arab Emirates--PRINCE BANDAR TO HEAD NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL (Saudi Arabia, which has been battling a wave of Al Qaida terror, has set up a National Security Council headed by former longtime ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan. King Abdullah issued a decree on Sunday "approving the bylaws of the National Security Council," and in a separate decree named Bandar its secretary general, the official SPA news agency reported. Bandar, who is the son of Crown Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, was Riyadh's ambassador in Washington for 22 years until last July.)

4//The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia--WE'RE NOT MEDDLING WITH TERROR LAWS: PM (Prime Minister John Howard says new counter-terrorism laws have not been watered down and denies the government is trying to introduce some measures by stealth. The Law Council said yesterday the proposed laws will push Australia closer to a police state, while ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said he may not support some elements of the package. The draft laws were leaked by Mr Stanhope on Friday. He claimed they go much further than the measures agreed to by state and territory leaders at a Council of Australian Governments meeting last month. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock yesterday said the bill had changed since it was posted on Mr Stanhope's website, but Mr Howard said the changes were only minor. "What is going to be in that legislation is what I announced and the states agreed to - no more, no less," Mr Howard told the Nine Network. "I announced that we were going to have preventative detention, I announced that we were going to have control orders, I announced that we would be expanding the sedition offence to include incitement of violent behaviour against the community. … . "Now obviously people are entitled to have a look at the final form of the legislation and they will, but this idea that we have snuck in a whole lot of attacks on civil liberties beyond what I announced is completely wrong.")

5//Deutsche Welle/dw.World.de-- EUROPE'S GREEN DREAM WILTS BUT WON'T DIE (… . The news this week that Germany would be governed by a grand coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) saw that era finally come to a close as Germany's Greens succumbed to the fate that others had suffered as the sunflower started to wilt across Europe. The return of the Greens to opposition in Germany, and the self-imposed exile to the back benches of the party's most high profile minister Joschka Fischer, left western European governments without a Green representative. Having been ejected from government in Finland, France, Italy, Belgium and now Germany, the Green movement could not be blamed for being disheartened at the apparent failure of an environmental revolution in the corridors of European power. … . All is far from lost. There may be shoots of re-growth for the Green movement in other areas of Europe. The Greens play a role in Romano Prodi's left-wing alliance in Italy, a partnership which looks set to challenge hard in the elections next year, while in France the Greens are expected to be part of the left-wing bloc competing in the 2007 campaign.)

* * *

1//The Scotsman/Scotland on Sunday, UK Sun 16 Oct 2005
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/int....

GOVERNMENT'S EARTHQUAKE AID FAILURE FUELS CALLS FOR HOLY WAR
Dan McDougall in Kashmir

As dawn broke across the barren heights of the Margalla mountains on Wednesday morning, an Indian Air Force Ilyushin-76 transporter cut through the cloud and landed in Islamabad.

Earlier, the huge craft, carrying 25 tonnes of relief material from New Delhi, including blankets, tents, plastic sheeting, mattresses and medicine, had been forced to circle for more than an hour as aircraft from 30 different countries jostled for space below.

Nationalists in the Indian capital whispered of conspiracy theories. In reality, the backlog of aircraft on the ground told a more compelling story - that Pakistan's response to the biggest natural disaster in its history was hindered by a lack of planning and a military unable to deal with a natural disaster on such an epic scale.

(SNIP)

"The government effort has been non-existent," claimed Imran Khan on Pakistani television that same morning, the cricketer turned opposition politician who had just toured the hard-hit town of Balakot, close to Kashmir.

He also accused the Pakistani president of failing to implement a coherent strategy.

"There is no direction to the effort. Ordinary citizens are stuffing their cars and coming here, but the government is nowhere," he said.

(SNIP)

Since he swept to power, Musharraf has repeatedly referred to the army as Pakistan's most competent and incorruptible institution.

"The government now effectively is the army and Musharraf and when you see both bumbling, or not doing well anywhere, then it's a blot on the entire government and it's a blot on Musharraf," said Ayaz Amir, a columnist for the English-language newspaper Dawn.

"What they like to say about it is that it is the only functioning institution in the state and when all else fails, it's the army that holds everything together. The one institution which failed above all is the army."

The army's disorganised response to the disaster, some analysts said, could now provide an opening for hard-line Islamic political parties and their associated social welfare groups, which have quickly and prominently swung into action.

One such group is Jamaat-e-Islami, which is ideologically linked to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as well as Hamas, the Palestinian militant group.

Jamaat-e-Islami has a charitable arm, the Al-Khidmat Foundation, which operates numerous social welfare programmes and has rushed to respond to the earthquake by organising relief convoys, appealing for donations and providing medical help.

As a result of the Pakistani government's failure to get aid to the most remote areas, Kashmiris living in towns such as Bagh have turned for help to the comparatively well-organised Islamic militant groups, officially banned by Musharraf.

In the mosques of Kashmir they are now talking of a new jihad. Pakistan-based Islamic militants, who spent the past decade fighting Indian rule in the region, have announced a "holy war" to help victims of the earthquake.

The United Jihad Council, a loose alliance of a dozen pro-Pakistan militant organisations, this week also announced a temporary truce in the areas hit by the quake but it also warned it wouldn't allow Indian troops to carry out relief work in their territory.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa, formerly the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was blacklisted as a "terrorist organisation" by the US, was also among the first groups to offer aid in Bagh. Musharraf outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002 following pressure from the US.

Analysts claim Musharraf's external battle, to be seen to be tackling fundamentalism, will now be overshadowed by his domestic battle, to placate Muslim hardliners within his own military and government who are angry at his apparent failure to lead his country in its time of need.

"The militants are taking matters into their own hands and winning over members of the public on the ground," said political analyst Hasan Rizvi, "Their popularity will soar in these regions as a result and the government will appear directionless. It is a very dangerous situation."

According to Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institute, a US think-tank that focuses on the region, Musharraf now faces a deeply uncertain future.

He said: "Pakistan is unstable as a government and a society. This is often the case with one-man rule, and especially one-man rule in which serious people - al-Qaeda and its allies inside Pakistan - are trying to kill him.

"There were serious attempts on Musharraf's life within the last year or so, one of which came very close to succeeding.

"Add to that the thousands of madrassas inside Pakistan and the hundreds of thousands of potential jihadis, as well as Taliban sympathisers who travel back and forth across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. These people are all his enemies and now the public are angry at his response to a major disaster."

2//The Daily Star, Lebanon Monday, October 17, 2005
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?e...

PRINCE NAYEF SAYS SAUDIS STILL WAITING FOR IRAQI SECURITY TEAM
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia's interior minister said Iraq had failed to send a security team as agreed in July to discuss security cooperation between the two neighbors. "When we met during the meeting of interior ministers of countries neighboring Iraq in Istanbul [in July], I and the Iraqi interior minister ... agreed on security cooperation and the creation of a security team that would come from [Iraq] and meet with security officials in the kingdom," Prince Nayef bin Abdel-Aziz said.

"No one has come yet and we haven't been contacted" by the Iraqis on the issue, said Nayef, whose remarks were made in the Red Sea city of Jeddah late Saturday and carried by the official SPA news agency Sunday.

Baghdad has long complained of its neighbors tolerating Islamist militants infiltrating Iraq to join the insurgency against Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition.

Many Saudis are believed to enter Iraq to join Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, despite attempts by Saudi security forces to stop the infiltrations.

Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr last week hailed the "wise" policies of Saudi Arabia, days after calling the kingdom's foreign minister "a bedouin on a camel" for expressing concern at purported Iranian meddling in Iraq.

Jabr said he would send a delegation to Riyadh "to reach a memorandum of understanding on security issues."

(MORE)

3//Gulf News Online, United Arab Emirates Published: 16/10/2005, 00:00 (UAE)
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=187115

PRINCE BANDAR TO HEAD NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
Agencies

Riyadh: Saudi Arabia, which has been battling a wave of Al Qaida terror, has set up a National Security Council headed by former longtime ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan.

King Abdullah issued a decree on Sunday "approving the bylaws of the National Security Council," and in a separate decree named Bandar its secretary general, the official SPA news agency reported.

Bandar, who is the son of Crown Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, was Riyadh's ambassador in Washington for 22 years until last July.

Saudi Ambassador to London and former intelligence chief Prince Turki Al Faisal was nominated to succeed Bandar in the US capital.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, in his first television interview on Friday as monarch, had vowed to eliminate Al Qaida.

Prince Turki Al Faisal, the former Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom and Ireland and ambassador-designate to the US, has said terror acts perpetrated by the Al Qaida have changed the perspective of the world, and will continue to remain the contributing factor in establishing international relations.

Prince Turki was speaking on Wednesday at the Society of the Philosophical, Political and Economic Studies at Oxford University in London.

(MORE)

4//The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia October 17, 2005 - 9:19AM
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/terror-l...

WE'RE NOT MEDDLING WITH TERROR LAWS: PM

Prime Minister John Howard says new counter-terrorism laws have not been watered down and denies the government is trying to introduce some measures by stealth.

The Law Council said yesterday the proposed laws will push Australia closer to a police state, while ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said he may not support some elements of the package.

The draft laws were leaked by Mr Stanhope on Friday.

He claimed they go much further than the measures agreed to by state and territory leaders at a Council of Australian Governments meeting last month.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock yesterday said the bill had changed since it was posted on Mr Stanhope's website, but Mr Howard said the changes were only minor.

"What is going to be in that legislation is what I announced and the states agreed to - no more, no less," Mr Howard told the Nine Network.

"I announced that we were going to have preventative detention, I announced that we were going to have control orders, I announced that we would be expanding the sedition offence to include incitement of violent behaviour against the community.

"All of those things have been out in the public domain.

"Now obviously people are entitled to have a look at the final form of the legislation and they will, but this idea that we have snuck in a whole lot of attacks on civil liberties beyond what I announced is completely wrong."

Mr Howard said the changes were "drafting things, they're not areas of substance", and he accused Mr Stanhope of playing politics on the issue.

(SNIP)

Mr Howard said concerns about an erosion of freedom of speech were unwarranted.

"There's no way that any of these provisions are going to stop people attacking the government's policy on Iraq, attacking the government's policy on terrorism," Mr Howard said.

"But what it will stop is encouraging people overseas to attack our soldiers in Iraq, for example."

Mr Howard said discussions would continue with the states and the government's own backbench committee, which had raised some concerns with the detail of the laws.

(MORE)

5//Deutsche Welle/dw.World.de 15.10.05
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,5830,1742070,00.html

EUROPE'S GREEN DREAM WILTS BUT WON'T DIE

Germany's Green party held a one day conference in the city of Oldenburg on Saturday. The conference presented the former junior coalition partner with the opportunity to look back over the last seven years of power-sharing in the government while planning ahead for a future back in opposition.

However, a more productive use of the meeting would have been for the party to take a long, hard look at where the Green dream went wrong, not only at the last election but in German, and European, politics in general over the past half a decade.

At the turn of the century, the Greens were not only part of a serving government in Germany but in four other European countries. France, Italy, Finland and Belgium all had parties pushing environmental issues closer to the forefront of policy-making through their Green representatives.

The news this week that Germany would be governed by a grand coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) saw that era finally come to a close as Germany's Greens succumbed to the fate that others had suffered as the sunflower started to wilt across Europe.

The retreat of Germany's Greens ends an era

The return of the Greens to opposition in Germany, and the self-imposed exile to the back benches of the party's most high profile minister Joschka Fischer, left western European governments without a Green representative.

Having been ejected from government in Finland, France, Italy, Belgium and now Germany, the Green movement could not be blamed for being disheartened at the apparent failure of an environmental revolution in the corridors of European power.

(SNIP)

All is far from lost. There may be shoots of re-growth for the Green movement in other areas of Europe. The Greens play a role in Romano Prodi's left-wing alliance in Italy, a partnership which looks set to challenge hard in the elections next year, while in France the Greens are expected to be part of the left-wing bloc competing in the 2007 campaign.

Solid policies, awareness the Green legacy

However, the fact remains that there is no current Green representation in the big western Europe governments and as a result there will be no Green ministers at cabinet tables or EU ministerial meetings. Who will be the force of environmental change without the Greens in power? Will all that the movement, specifically in Germany, achieved be undone?

Political analysts believe that it is unlikely that the shutting down of nuclear energy plants and the huge increase in the use of renewable energy in Germany will be reversed without the Green party, who instigated these policies, in power.

On the one hand, these ideas are now entrenched in the political mainstream and on the other, the European electorate realizes the importance of environmental protection, and they will not allow any political party to neglect that in its policy making.

The Green party's sunflower may have wilted but there seems to be enough of a reservoir of belief and support around to keep it alive. And who knows, the shoots of recovery may start to appear again in time.

Copyright 2005, Gloria R. Lalumia