January 18, 2006

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 JANUARY 18, 2006

1//The Independent, UK--COMMENT: US SHOULD TALK TO IRAN, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE (There is something of 1914 in the air. The Greys and Poincarés fret as the wheels of conflict trundle inexorably forward. The Iran crisis brings together every world problem: nuclear weapons in the hands of theo-cons who want to exterminate Jews; the economic future of China; and, above all, the inability of a world system or its most powerful state to impose a solution. Instead of plodding through the rituals of UN Security Council debates with a drift to war, can the United States offer a grand bargain that would transform Iranian politics? … America broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 overthrow of the Shah and the hostage-taking in the US embassy in Tehran. Now is the time to send an ambassador to Iran - why not Bill Clinton for the first 12 months? - and initiate a new policy of trade, travel, tourism and mass contact between the people of Iran and the West. Iran has vibrant politics, a growth rate which matches that of China, and seven out of 10 Iranians are under the age of 30. This generation wants an end to the whippings, executions and endless fear of arrest. Finding a way of engaging with this Iran with its huge pride in Persian history and culture is a priority. … Can the United States drop its politics of non-recognition of Iran? Have Bush and Rice the same vision as Nixon and Kissinger? The Iranians need America as a partner, not an enemy. Washington should play this card before tragedy takes over.)

2//The Daily Star, Lebanon--THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS PROTEST U.S. INTERFERENCE (Thousands of Lebanese students marched toward the U.S. Embassy in Awkar, protesting American interference in Lebanon and rejecting "any attempts to place the country under American tutorship." Hundreds of riot police blocked the road leading to the embassy, north of Beirut, with barbed wire, and stopped the crowds from getting too close to the embassy's complex, which was several hundred meters ahead. “America keep your hands off Lebanon and stop promoting another civil war," demonstrators chanted as they held anti-American posters labeling U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman "a recipe for war" in Lebanon, and slamming the "blatant American interference" in the country's politics. The demonstration, organized by members of the "Lebanese student forces lobbying against American interference in Lebanon," mainly witnessed the participation of Hizbullah and Amal members, in addition to the Lebanese Democratic Party, former Minister Suleiman Franjieh's Marada party, the people's movement, Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, and the Popular Nasserites Organization.)

3//The Globe and Mail, Canada--ESCALATING VIOLENCE HAS ROOTS BEYOND TALIBAN (Almost immediately after Sunday's suicide attack, a man identifying himself as a Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the carnage that killed a Canadian diplomat and wounded three soldiers. But the explanation of who is fuelling the troubling escalation of violence in the southern region extends far beyond just the Taliban. … The Afghan police are supposed to patrol the highways and local roads to provide a reassuring presence to Afghans. But corruption is widespread. Poor pay and lack of equipment often mean officers easily fall prey to lucrative offers from drug traffickers to turn a blind eye. … The American military will not allow its soldiers to become involved in battling in the drug trade. The British, who will join the Canadian soldiers in the south later this summer, are also reluctant. The French, Spanish and Germans have refused to even take part in combat operations against the Taliban. "We have turned a failed state into a fragile state," one Canadian diplomat said. "But there is still no shared road map.")

4//The Moscow Times, Russia--PUTIN QUIETLY SIGNED NGO BILL LAST WEEK (President Vladimir Putin last week quietly signed into law the bill that will increase state control over nongovernmental organizations, but the news was not made public until Tuesday, when it was published in the official government newspaper. The seven-day delay appeared to be an attempt to avoid embarrassing questions from new German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who made her first visit to Moscow on Monday and met with NGO leaders after her talks with Putin. … The law establishes a new agency to oversee the registration, financing and activities of the more than 400,000 NGOs that operate in Russia. The agency -- not the court -- will determine if an NGO should be shuttered for offenses such as using foreign money for political activities and engaging in activities unrelated to its stated goals. … The Kremlin is worried about the key role that NGOs played in the peaceful election-time uprisings that ousted regimes in Ukraine in 2004 and in Georgia a year earlier. Duma elections will be held next year, and the presidential election will take place in 2008.)

5//Corriere della Sera, Italy--PENSIONER BRINGS PM BEFORE JUDGE (… Mrs Severini’s story is a very ordinary one and concerns an unkept promise. She heard on television that the government was going to raise the minimum pension to 500 euros a month. But she never got her rise. It was an injustice that Signora Ida had no intention of tolerating. … “In the end, I went to Codacons [a consumers’ association – Trans.] and at last they listened to me.” They listened to her so attentively that the justice of the peace in Rome has summoned Signora Ida and Silvio Berlusconi to appear on 28 February. Welfare Minister Roberto Maroni has been called as a witness, as has television presenter Bruno Vespa. It was on Mr Vespa’s talk show that the prime minister repeated his claim that he had granted an increase to all pensioners on the minimum rate who were entitled to it.)

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1//The Independent, UK Published: 18 January 2006
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article339280.ece

COMMENT: US SHOULD TALK TO IRAN, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE
Now is the time to send an ambassador - why not Bill Clinton?

Denis MacShane
(Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham and was a Foreign Office minister 2001-2005.)

There is something of 1914 in the air. The Greys and Poincarés fret as the wheels of conflict trundle inexorably forward. The Iran crisis brings together every world problem: nuclear weapons in the hands of theo-cons who want to exterminate Jews; the economic future of China; and, above all, the inability of a world system or its most powerful state to impose a solution.

Instead of plodding through the rituals of UN Security Council debates with a drift to war, can the United States offer a grand bargain that would transform Iranian politics?

It happened three decades ago when America also faced an ideological opponent whose leaders preached hate of the West and threatened a key US ally across the Taiwan Strait. Yet in one of the boldest strokes of 20th-century diplomacy, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, neither of whom could be accused of liberal soft power modishness, transformed America's and the world's relationship with China.

Diplomatic recognition may seem a fuddy-duddy response to a world problem but a decision by President Bush and his imaginative Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to re-establish diplomatic relations with Tehran or seriously to make the offer would have a transformative impact on the Middle East.

America broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 overthrow of the Shah and the hostage-taking in the US embassy in Tehran. Now is the time to send an ambassador to Iran - why not Bill Clinton for the first 12 months? - and initiate a new policy of trade, travel, tourism and mass contact between the people of Iran and the West.

Iran has vibrant politics, a growth rate which matches that of China, and seven out of 10 Iranians are under the age of 30. This generation wants an end to the whippings, executions and endless fear of arrest. Finding a way of engaging with this Iran with its huge pride in Persian history and culture is a priority.

Iran sponsors terrorism but has maintained peaceful relations with Turkey for over five centuries. Were it not for endless meddling by Britain and then America in the quest for oil, Iran could now be en route to being a normal Muslim state like Malaysia or Turkey.

It is not just the West's fault. Iran has created its own status as the diplomatic pariah of the region. Tehran does not recognise Egypt, and of course shuns diplomatic relations with Israel.
The failure of Arab and Muslim states to have diplomatic relations with Israel is a further example of making diplomacy the enemy of progress rather than using state-to-state relations to tackle intractable problems.

(SNIP)

Opening embassies in Tel Aviv would still allow Arab League states to sustain their demands on Israel - evacuation of the occupied territories, a shared capital in Jerusalem, as well as Israel working with Palestinians for the creation of a viable state of Palestine.

The old mantra that diplomatic recognition follows after everything else has been settled reverses priorities. In the 1950s, West Germany's Hallstein doctrine held that Bonn would refuse relations with any country that recognised the Communist German Democratic Republic. Willy Brandt became Germany's Foreign Minister in 1966, recognised the German Democratic Republic, and started the process of hollowing out Communism from within.

Can the United States drop its politics of non-recognition of Iran? Have Bush and Rice the same vision as Nixon and Kissinger? The Iranians need America as a partner, not an enemy. Washington should play this card before tragedy takes over.

2//The Daily Star, Lebanon Wednesday, January 18, 2006
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ...

THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS PROTEST U.S. INTERFERENCE
Youths waving Lebanese flags march on embassy demanding America 'stop promoting another civil war'
By Majdoline Hatoum, Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Thousands of Lebanese students marched toward the U.S. Embassy in Awkar, protesting American interference in Lebanon and rejecting "any attempts to place the country under American tutorship." Hundreds of riot police blocked the road leading to the embassy, north of Beirut, with barbed wire, and stopped the crowds from getting too close to the embassy's complex, which was several hundred meters ahead.

"America keep your hands off Lebanon and stop promoting another civil war," demonstrators chanted as they held anti-American posters labeling U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman "a recipe for war" in Lebanon, and slamming the "blatant American interference" in the country's politics.

The demonstration, organized by members of the "Lebanese student forces lobbying against American interference in Lebanon", mainly witnessed the participation of Hizbullah and Amal members, in addition to the Lebanese Democratic Party, former Minister Suleiman Franjieh's Marada party, the people's movement, Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, and the Popular Nasserites Organization.

Tuesday's demonstration remained peaceful, unlike an anti-American protest in downtown Beirut last Saturday, which turned violent after riot police used tear-gas and water against demonstrators led by students from Hizbullah.

Students, who held Lebanese flags under the pouring rain Tuesday, were urged by organizers of the protest to respect security forces members, and to only repeat slogans targeting the American intervention in Lebanon.

"These houses surrounding us here - in Awkar - are like our own. Security forces members standing before us are our brothers, so don't allow yourself to be drawn into any sort of violence with them," a statement urged the students.

In reference to the current political rift with the country's anti-Syrian majority over a number of issues, the statement added: "No matter how much we disagree, we are all Lebanese. Our destiny is one and our country is one."

But talking to the crowd, former MP Zaher Khatib said Lebanon refused interference by U.S. and Israeli intelligence agents in its internal affairs.

Instead he said: "Lebanon is strong with Syria, it is strong with Iran, with Hamas, Jihad and the Iraqi resistance."

"We refuse their security interferences ... we refuse FBI members walking among us and [Israeli] Mossad trying to shake our national accord and pulling us back to a long departed civil war where sects fight against each other," Khatib said.

(SNIP)

In an allusion to the pro-Syrian color of the demonstrators, Khatib said: "Lebanon will stay ... strong with its youth, strong with its people, strong with Syria and strong with Iran."

Despite assertions by organizers that the demonstration was only targeted against U.S. intervention, it came out as a strong message of support from the country's pro-Syrian forces for Syria and Iran.

(MORE)

3//The Globe and Mail, Canada Tuesday, January 17, 2006 Page A1
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/2006...

ESCALATING VIOLENCE HAS ROOTS BEYOND TALIBAN
By Hamida Ghafour
(Hamida Ghafour is a London-based correspondent for The Globe and Mail. She previously reported from Afghanistan and is currently writing a book, The Sleeping Buddha: In Search of Afghanistan.)

Almost immediately after Sunday's suicide attack, a man identifying himself as a Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the carnage that killed a Canadian diplomat and wounded three soldiers.

But the explanation of who is fuelling the troubling escalation of violence in the southern region extends far beyond just the Taliban.

The Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team that was the target of the lethal attack is operating in a region where a combination of Islamist terrorists, organized criminals and drug traffickers have created an environment which makes it increasingly difficult to carry out combat operations or humanitarian work.

The extent to which these groups work together is not clear, but it is in their collective interest to keep Kandahar, and the entire southern Pashtun belt, unstable. A security vacuum allows them to shift around money for al-Qaeda as well as arms, drugs and insurgents without fear. There are strong indications the insurgency, which has operated at a low-level intensity, is growing bolder.

Last year, 30 aid workers were killed and in the four years since the American coalition toppled the Taliban, more than 3,000 civilians have been killed.

But in the past four months alone, there have been 20 suicide attacks. Last Saturday, an ex-member of the Taliban, Mullah Khaskar, was shot dead in Kandahar for renouncing the former regime. Last summer, a suicide bomb during the funeral of another moderate mullah who spoke out against the Taliban in Kandahar was little noticed outside the country, but noted by the international community in Kabul as a worrying new development.

If high-ranking former members of the Taliban are not immune to paying the price for defecting, ordinary Afghans may be hesitant to show their support for the international community's nation-building efforts. That support from a local population -- which can provide intelligence about the activities of terrorists -- is critical in Kandahar if the Canadian PRT and soldiers are to successfully bring stability and build infrastructure.

The drug trade is contributing to Hizb-e-Islami and al-Qaeda's coffers, American diplomats and counternarcotics experts in Kabul agree. The drug industry makes up 40 to 50 per cent of the national GDP and there are few signs that poor farmers are willing to stop growing opium poppies, which produce the main ingredient in heroin, despite a government eradication program. Neighbouring Helmand province is the centre of the drug trade.

The Afghan police are supposed to patrol the highways and local roads to provide a reassuring presence to Afghans. But corruption is widespread. Poor pay and lack of equipment often mean officers easily fall prey to lucrative offers from drug traffickers to turn a blind eye.

(SNIP)

The American military will not allow its soldiers to become involved in battling in the drug trade. The British, who will join the Canadian soldiers in the south later this summer, are also reluctant. The French, Spanish and Germans have refused to even take part in combat operations against the Taliban.

"We have turned a failed state into a fragile state," one Canadian diplomat said. "But there is still no shared road map."

4//The Moscow Times, Russia Wednesday, January 18, 2006. Issue 3333. Page 1.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/01/18/002.html

PUTIN QUIETLY SIGNED NGO BILL LAST WEEK
By Francesca Mereu, Staff Writer

President Vladimir Putin last week quietly signed into law the bill that will increase state control over nongovernmental organizations, but the news was not made public until Tuesday, when it was published in the official government newspaper.

The seven-day delay appeared to be an attempt to avoid embarrassing questions from new German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who made her first visit to Moscow on Monday and met with NGO leaders after her talks with Putin.

The bill flew through both houses of parliament amid mounting public criticism late last year, and Putin approved it on Jan. 10 -- exactly 14 days after it reached his desk. By law, Putin has only 14 days to decide whether to sign a bill.

The law will come into force April 10.

The notice about Putin's signing was published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Tuesday.

A similar notice could not be found in the section of the Kremlin web site devoted to new laws on Tuesday night. The presidential press service explained that the web site was reserved for laws that the public needs to know about, Gazeta.ru reported.

Asked why Rossiiskaya Gazeta had waited a week to publish the announcement, the newspaper's deputy editor, Timofei Kuznetsov, said, "This is not a pressing law. It does not come into force from the moment it is published, but within 90 days [of being signed]," Gazeta.ru reported.

In actuality, Kremlin watchers said, the presidential administration has developed a practice of being secretive about controversial legislation.

"In this case, the reason was simple: It was clear that Merkel was going to raise the NGO issue, and the Kremlin tried to avoid giving her the occasion to do so," said Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst with the Indem think tank.

Lev Ponomaryov, head of For Human Rights, a leading NGO, said the Kremlin had succeeded in avoiding a possible confrontation. "The bill got only mild criticism from Merkel," he said.

(SNIP)

Putin stressed at Monday's news conference that "no harm will be done to NGOs that operate in accordance with their stated goals."

The law establishes a new agency to oversee the registration, financing and activities of the more than 400,000 NGOs that operate in Russia. The agency -- not the court -- will determine if an NGO should be shuttered for offenses such as using foreign money for political activities and engaging in activities unrelated to its stated goals.

After vocal protests from Russian and foreign NGOs while the bill was still in the Duma, Putin ordered deputies to remove a requirement that foreign NGOs reregister as Russian entities and become subject to stricter rules -- a rule that would have closed all foreign NGOs.

The legislation followed a warning by Putin last summer that Russia would not tolerate NGOs that used foreign money to finance political activities. The Kremlin is worried about the key role that NGOs played in the peaceful election-time uprisings that ousted regimes in Ukraine in 2004 and in Georgia a year earlier. Duma elections will be held next year, and the presidential election will take place in 2008.

(MORE)

5//Corriere della Sera, Italy January 2006
http://www.corriere.it/english/articoli/2006/01_Gennaio/06/ida.shtml

PENSIONER BRINGS PM BEFORE JUDGE

SAN CESAREO (Roma) – “Berlusconi told me he would give me 500 but look here. It’s still 371.” Ida puts on her glasses then sorts through the folders neatly arranged on her kitchen table. “I was counting on the money. My husband and I were thinking about taking out a loan and buying our council house, but the rise never came through.”

In February, Ida Severini will be 78. She has a husband who used to be a labourer and three children. One son, a policeman, died in 1995 at the age of 39. Her two daughters are still alive. Mrs Severini’s story is a very ordinary one and concerns an unkept promise. She heard on television that the government was going to raise the minimum pension to 500 euros a month. But she never got her rise.

It was an injustice that Signora Ida had no intention of tolerating. “I wrote to Mi manda Raitre [a consumer television programme – Trans.] and they said they would consider it, but then nothing happened. After that, I went to Federconsumatori [a consumers’ association – Trans.], where they made me pay 35 euros for the subscription, but nothing came of that either. Next I went back to Rome to the national consumers’ union, where they told me to call a certain telephone number but when I did there was only recorded music. I also went to the justice of the peace at Palestrina,but he didn’t even let me speak. He said there had to be a defendant.But who is the defendant? Who could I turn to? Who do I know? In the end, I went to Codacons [a consumers’ association – Trans.] and at last they listened to me.”

They listened to her so attentively that the justice of the peace in Rome has summoned Signora Ida and Silvio Berlusconi to appear on 28 February. Welfare Minister Roberto Maroni has been called as a witness, as has television presenter Bruno Vespa. It was on Mr Vespa’s talk show that the prime minister repeated his claim that he had granted an increase to all pensioners on the minimum rate who were entitled to it. The Italy of Values party, which will campaign in tandem with [Codacons president – Trans.] Carlo Rienzi’s Lista Consumatori at the next general election, has decided to use Signora Ida as a symbol in the battle against unkept promises.

(MORE)