March 1, 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 MARCH 1, 2006

1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--SYRIA IN US’S TOO-HARD BASKET (It's now clear that the administration of US President George W Bush just doesn't know what to do about Syria. It can't live with Syrian President Bashar Assad, the only significant Arab potentate indifferent to US interests, and it is bewildered at whether or how to bring him down. … It's not that the US could not attack Syria if it wanted to, according to John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org. He believes the recent talk of military overstretch in Iraq limiting US options elsewhere is vastly overstated. "If the president told the military to do it [occupy Syria] they will do it," he told Asia Times Online. "They've only got a very small fraction of their total force in Iraq. … Pike said there are also numerous effective military options short of occupation. Regime assets could be bombed to the degree that life would become extremely uncomfortable for the Syrian regime, he said. "There are a lot of things that we could do to cramp his style that we could do from 20,000 feet that don't require boots on the ground." US restraint, said Pike, reflects a political rather than military calculus. While he believes Iran's nuclear infrastructure will certainly be attacked next summer, he sees no enthusiasm for destabilizing or attacking Syria, save within a narrow circle inside the Bush administration. "There is a community of opinion [in Washington] that has always felt that Syria is low-hanging fruit ... that it doesn't look as if Bashar has a firm grip on things, and if we just hit him hard enough, he'll fall over.")

2//The Independent, UK--BROWN SEEKS WRITTEN CODE ON RELATIONSHIP OF MPS AND EXECUTIVE (Gordon Brown has concluded that in order to wield power he must give some of it away. He compares the decline in political trust with the collapse of economic credibility after Britain's withdrawal from the exchange rate mechanism in 1992. The Chancellor and likely next Prime Minister is speaking on the day the independent Power commission launched its report that calls for changes to the way Britain is governed. … Now he highlights several areas that require action to restore political trust. One is in relation to patronage. Prime Ministerial powers of patronage are immense and nearly always a source of seething controversy. Mr Brown says voters must be shown that power is not "exercised arbitrarily." He suggests that more appointments must be made "independent of the executive in a way that will help to restore trust." Secondly, he wants to formalise the right of Parliament to have a vote before the country is taken to war. He says the Government granted MPs a vote before the war against Iraq, but it was not compelled to do so. … He is also keen on the proposal from the commission that people can initiate legislative processes. … I am keen on the idea that if a sufficient number of people sign a petition it must be debated in Parliament.")

3//Gulf News Online, United Arab Emirates--INDIA ‘DOES NOT NEED’ NUKE DEAL (… For the first time, many scientists associated with nuclear research in the country have openly opposed the deal, and the American pressure to place the fast breeder reactor (FBR) to be made open to international inspections. It is not yet clear whether nuclear deal will be clinched, but the dissenting voices are clearer than ever before. In an exclusive interview with Gulf News, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board A. Gopalakrishnan, explained the loopholes in the deal. Excerpts from the interview: Does India need this civilian nuclear cooperation pact with US? India does not need it. The Indian argument that it is necessary to ensure our energy security is so much hogwash. If energy security is the prime concern, then we should be paying more attention to the coal reserves and to the hydro-electric potential. It is the Americans who have been pressurising India to sign the deal. The Americans have not built new reactors for more than 30 years now. India and China offer an attractive market for the US companies which sell civilian nuclear technology.)

4//The Manila Times, Philippines--NTC SAYS PRESIDENT CAN CLOSE BROADCAST STATIONS (President Arroyo can order the closure of broadcast facilities even without the recommendation of the National Telecommunications Commission, the NTC chief, Roland Olivar Solis, said Tuesday. Solis said Proclamation 1017 authorizes the President to shut down radio and television stations. The proclamation invokes Section 17, Article 12 of the Constitution, which empowers the President to “temporarily take over or direct the operation of any privately owned public utility or business affected with public interest” in a national emergency. … Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza said on Tuesday that the guidelines need to be clarified, citing erroneous media reports of the standoff in Fort Bonifacio on Sunday. He said some broadcast stations, which he did not name, reported unverified information during their live coverage of the standoff despite the “clear and present” danger it presented to national security. ... He denied that the government is trying to suppress press freedom. “These are not normal times. There are really efforts to overthrow the government as the past few days have shown,” Mendoza said. …  “The Media really play a very important role here. They disseminate information and we just want accurate, fair and balanced reporting,” Mendoza said.)

5//The Hindustan Times, India--CHINA TO BAN TORTURE TO EXTRACT CONFESSIONS (China is introducing a new policy starting March 1 which prohibits the use of torture to extract confessions. The Law on Penalties for Offences against Public Order would also bar evidence obtained with threats from being used to pursue prosecutions. Ke Liangdong, Director of the Legal Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, was quoted as saying that the law stipulated an "illegal evidence exclusion principle", which said that "evidence obtained by torture, threatening or cheating could not be used as the basis for penalties". Police brutality is common in China despite clear regulations and guidelines on detention and interrogation procedures.)

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1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Mar 1, 2006

SYRIA IN US’S TOO-HARD BASKET
By Ashraf Fahim
(Ashraf Fahim is a freelance writer on Middle Eastern affairs based in New York and London. His writing can be found at www.storminateacup.org.uk.)

CAIRO - It's now clear that the administration of US President George W Bush just doesn't know what to do about Syria. It can't live with Syrian President Bashar Assad, the only significant Arab potentate indifferent to US interests, and it is bewildered at whether or how to bring him down.

The potential implication by United Nations investigators (and even by former Syrian vice president Abd al-Halim Khaddam) of high Syrian officials in the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri seems the ideal pretext for the United States to pursue regime change aggressively, a la Iraq.

Yet the Bush administration has balked, restrained by the international community's unwillingness to sanction Syria, the political cost of unleashing military power, and its own fears of what might replace Assad. The US State Department's announcement on February 18 that it intends to fund the fractious Syrian opposition to the tune of US$5 million hardly justifies five years of saber-rattling and suggests a poverty of options rather than the emergence of a plausible strategy for toppling Assad.

In a bygone era, successive US administrations treated Syria with a deference that now seems unthinkable. Though a paradigmatic dictatorship, Syria was considered a key player in the "peace process" and a pillar of regional stability. That all changed when George W Bush came to power, adorning his staff with neo-conservatives for whom Syria was a roadblock to newly imagined US interests and an unreconstructed enemy of Israel.

The rhetoric descended from respect to contempt, and many analysts, this one included, speculated that after Iraq, the Syrian regime could be the next victim of US power.

But despite a war of words and several mini-crises, no coherent anti-Syria policy emerged. The US Congress passed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SALSA), and Syrian officials such as Asef Shawkat (Assad's brother-in-law and the head of military intelligence) have been personally targeted by financial sanctions.

But these limited measures have hardly been sufficient to force Damascus to bow to Washington's demands - chiefly, ending support for so-called "terrorist" organizations and making an all-out effort to stop insurgents entering Iraq via Syria. Even the Syrian army's withdrawal from Lebanon likely had more to do with internal Lebanese pressure than US (or French) fiat.

Dr Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria from the University of Oklahoma (and author of the blog syriacomment.com), says the US has gone out on a rhetorical limb without the wherewithal to back up its bravado. "The US is in a bad policy position because it has pursued a very aggressive anti-Syrian policy yet it doesn't have the power to follow through with it, to change the regime, which I believe will take military force," he told Asia Times Online. "It's unwilling, on the other hand, to come to some understanding with Assad, which could also produce benefits for the US, whether in Iraq or in Lebanon and Palestine."

Washington is also paralyzed by the fear of what might come after Assad. The majority Sunni population could be even less amenable to US interests than the ruling minority Alawite clique, and Islamist gains in elections in Palestine, Iraq and Egypt hint at similar rumblings beneath the opaque shell of Syria's body politic.

The initiative to fund the Syrian opposition and recent State Department efforts to gather it under one banner cannot be effective in the short term, said Landis. "The problem is the Syrian opposition in exile are extremely weak and none of them have many followers in Syria."

Longtime secular opponents of the Syrian regime living inside Syria issued a statement on February 21 rejecting US funding. And Landis believes that the effort is further weakened because the exiled opposition does not reflect the Islamist trend. "There is every indication ... that if you were to have elections you would have something along the order of what you've had in every other [Arab] country, which is 65% of people voting for some kind of Islamist tendency."

(SNIP)

Without an international consensus, the United States has forsaken the unilateral route it chose in Iraq, even though by hair-trigger Bush administration standards it has a more plausible casus belli. It's not that the US could not attack Syria if it wanted to, according to John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org. He believes the recent talk of military overstretch in Iraq limiting US options elsewhere is vastly overstated.

"If the president told the military to do it [occupy Syria] they will do it," he told Asia Times Online. "They've only got a very small fraction of their total force in Iraq ... Presumably with the Iraqi security forces starting to have the potential to take up some of the slack, if we thought that the initial buildup in Syria was going to be a relatively short-term proposition, I think that either General [Peter] Shoomaker [the US Army chief of staff] would make it happen - or [Vice President] Mr [Dick] Cheney would find somebody who would."

Pike said there are also numerous effective military options short of occupation. Regime assets could be bombed to the degree that life would become extremely uncomfortable for the Syrian regime, he said. "There are a lot of things that we could do to cramp his style that we could do from 20,000 feet that don't require boots on the ground."

US restraint, said Pike, reflects a political rather than military calculus. While he believes Iran's nuclear infrastructure will certainly be attacked next summer, he sees no enthusiasm for destabilizing or attacking Syria, save within a narrow circle inside the Bush administration. "There is a community of opinion [in Washington] that has always felt that Syria is low-hanging fruit ... that it doesn't look as if Bashar has a firm grip on things, and if we just hit him hard enough, he'll fall over."

But the US administration is too preoccupied with Iraq and Iran to worry about conjuring uncertainty in Syria, he said. "At this point they just have to say to themselves that if it ain't broke don't fix it. Whatever level of aid and comfort Syria is providing to the enemy [in Iraq], it just doesn't seem to be that big of a factor overall."

And despite the Hariri affair, he credited the Syrian regime with playing its hand with notable guile. "Whatever level of aid and comfort they are providing to various other regional troublemakers, at this point they seem to have gauged successfully how annoying they can be without provoking a significant response," said Pike.

(MORE)

2//The Independent, UK Published: 28 February 2006

BROWN SEEKS WRITTEN CODE ON RELATIONSHIP OF MPS AND EXECUTIVE
By Steve Richards

Gordon Brown has concluded that in order to wield power he must give some of it away. He compares the decline in political trust with the collapse of economic credibility after Britain's withdrawal from the exchange rate mechanism in 1992.

The Chancellor and likely next Prime Minister is speaking on the day the independent Power commission launched its report that calls for changes to the way Britain is governed.

(SNIP)

Mr Brown wants a national debate on the "changes we need to the political system," citing low turn out at elections, declining membership of political parties and what he calls "the long term decline in trust" as reasons for urgent reform.

Evidently he is contemplating some big changes in the way we are ruled as he deploys a vivid parallel to make his point.

(SNIP)

Now he highlights several areas that require action to restore political trust. One is in relation to patronage. Prime Ministerial powers of patronage are immense and nearly always a source of seething controversy. Mr Brown says voters must be shown that power is not "exercised arbitrarily". He suggests that more appointments must be made "independent of the executive in a way that will help to restore trust."

Secondly, he wants to formalise the right of Parliament to have a vote before the country is taken to war. He says the Government granted MPs a vote before the war against Iraq, but it was not compelled to do so.

More widely he enthuses about a recommendation from the Power commission in which a written "concordat" between Parliament and the executive is established. Such a concordat would allow MPs to hold ministers more rigorously to account and in a context in which the powers of both were more clearly defined.

"The relationship between the executive and Parliament should be clearly defined and written down."

I suggest this would be, in effect, a written constitution. He does not accept the definition, although the practical distinction is not clear. "The relationship would be written down, but that is not the same as a written constitution. I am very interested in the idea of concordats between the legislature and the executive and between central and local government."

He is also keen on the proposal from the commission that people can initiate legislative processes. "We need a whole new series of trigger points for people to express their dissatisfaction. At the moment - to take one example - people can petition their MP and that petition is merely noted. I am keen on the idea that if a sufficient number of people sign a petition it must be debated in Parliament."

(MORE)

3//Gulf News Online, United Arab Emirates Published: 03/01/2006 12:00 AM (UAE)

INDIA ‘DOES NOT NEED’ NUKE DEAL
By Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr

US President George W. Bush's visit to India from today is causing much excitement in the official and media circles.

There is intense speculation about the India-US civilian nuclear cooperation deal being clinched during the visit.

Also, there is much uncertainty because of the acute differences about the separation of the civil and military nuclear facilities.

For the first time, many scientists associated with nuclear research in the country have openly opposed the deal, and the American pressure to place the fast breeder reactor (FBR) to be made open to international inspections.

It is not yet clear whether nuclear deal will be clinched, but the dissenting voices are clearer than ever before. In an exclusive interview with Gulf News, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board A. Gopalakrishnan, explained the loopholes in the deal.

Excerpts from the interview:
Gulf News: Is this the first time that there is a clear division between the nuclear establishment and the political establishment over the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal?
Gopalakrishnan: Yes, it is. The July 16, 2005 agreement signed by Manmohan Singh and George W. Bush is not the problem. The problems arose when the US began to demand more than what is in the agreement.

According to the July agreement, it was left to India to separate the civilian and nuclear facilities, and to place the civilian facilities under international safeguards over a phased period. Due to pressure from the US Congressmen, officials of the Bush Administration asked for a list of the facilities to be separated, and they began to make the demand to include what has been left out.

Does India need this civilian nuclear cooperation pact with US?
India does not need it. The Indian argument that it is necessary to ensure our energy security is so much hogwash. If energy security is the prime concern, then we should be paying more attention to the coal reserves and to the hydro-electric potential.
It is the Americans who have been pressurising India to sign the deal. The Americans have not built new reactors for more than 30 years now. India and China offer an attractive market for the US companies which sell civilian nuclear technology.

Why is Indian political establishment so enamoured of this deal?
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is an economist, and he looks at issues from the point of view of trade. And then the Americans are offering the political carrot of supporting India's bid to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council if it were to sign the nuclear deal.

(MORE)

4//The Manila Times, Philippines Wednesday, March 01, 2006

NTC SAYS PRESIDENT CAN CLOSE BROADCAST STATIONS
By Darwin G. Amojelar, Reporter

President Arroyo can order the closure of broadcast facilities even without the recommendation of the National Telecommunications Commission, the NTC chief, Roland Olivar Solis, said Tuesday.

Solis said Proclamation 1017 authorizes the President to shut down radio and television stations.

The proclamation invokes Section 17, Article 12 of the Constitution, which empowers the President to “temporarily take over or direct the operation of any privately owned public utility or business affected with public interest” in a national emergency.

“That power is vested in the President. She can will it even without the NTC.

“It can be coursed through us but she may decide not to,” Solis told reporters.

He said the President can decide whether broadcast stations are reporting events that are within the standards set forth in an emergency.

“Part of the NTC’s role is to recommend these guidelines to the President. However, you have to balance the right of the State to prevent people from inciting rebellion and the right of the people to be informed,” Solis said.

Under Executive Order 546, the NTC can suspend or cancel the provisional authority given a broadcast company found violating the rules.

(SNIP)

Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza said on Tuesday that the guidelines need to be clarified, citing erroneous media reports of the standoff in Fort Bonifacio on Sunday.

He said some broadcast stations, which he did not name, reported unverified information during their live coverage of the standoff despite the “clear and present” danger it presented to national security.

(SNIP)

The media’s responsibility
Mendoza said meetings are being conducted between transportation, NTC and KBP officials as well as radio and television networks to discuss the media’s responsibility during critical situations.

He denied that the government is trying to suppress press freedom.

“These are not normal times. There are really efforts to overthrow the government as the past few days have shown,” Mendoza said.

What the government is trying to prevent, he said, is the situation from worsening.

“The Media really play a very important role here. They disseminate information and we just want accurate, fair and balanced reporting,” Mendoza said.

After meetings with the representatives of broadcast stations, the NTC will reissue its guidelines, which radio and television are enjoined to observe in a national emergency.

5//The Hindustan Times, India February 28, 2006

CHINA TO BAN TORTURE TO EXTRACT CONFESSIONS
Agence France-Presse

China is introducing a new policy starting March 1 which prohibits the use of torture to extract confessions.

The Law on Penalties for Offences against Public Order would also bar evidence obtained with threats from being used to pursue prosecutions.

Ke Liangdong, Director of the Legal Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, was quoted as saying that the law stipulated an "illegal evidence exclusion principle", which said that "evidence obtained by torture, threatening or cheating could not be used as the basis for penalties".

Police brutality is common in China despite clear regulations and guidelines on detention and interrogation procedures.

(SNIP)

In one case reported recently, a newspaper editor who was severely beaten by police, died from multiple injuries.