World Media Watch for May 24, 2002

BUZZFLASH NOTE: Once again, these are the views and perspectives of the individual papers, not of BuzzFlash or Gloria. They offer BuzzFlash readers a way of reading what other nations are saying about the crisis, whether we like it or not. We repeat: This is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.

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1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--PRESSURE ON US TO BROKER PEACE (If the crisis in the Middle East has distracted Washington from focusing fully on its military operations against the Taliban and the al-Qaeda, the brewing showdown in South Asia could well unravel its entire war against terrorism. This is Washington's prime concern as it scrambles to prevent India and Pakistan from going to war.}

2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--'TOXIC TEXAN' TO FACE POISONOUIS RECEPTION IN EUROPE ("It's hard to see where the basis for a functioning alliance remains," Jeffrey Gedmin, head of the Berlin office of the Atlantic Council, wrote in the Washington Post this week after cataloguing the disputes that seem to have widened the trans-Atlantic gulf, particularly since last September's terrorist attacks in the United States.)

3//Pravda, Russia--GEORGE BUSH ARRIVES IN MOSCOW EMPTY-HANDED (US congressmen from the Democratic Party on Wednesday blocked the Republicans' attempt to withdraw Russia and some republics of Middle Asia and Transcaucasian Region from the Jackson-Vanik amendment…The Jackson-Vanik amendment is a serious obstacle for Russia's WTO membership. It was supposed that the amendment would be abolished already before the summit. However, now, George Bush has nothing to seduce Vladimir Putin with. One thing is clear: the democrats delivered a serious blow to Bush, so he must invent something within the several hours remaining before the visit.)

4//Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates-- AFGHANISTAN ON PATH OF PROGRESS: SPOKESMAN (The spokesman also shrugged off speculations on long-term US design in the area: "Why would they stay there forever?" Mr Omar, the young and bright face of resurgent Afghanistan quipped. "There is absolutely no reason and rhyme and no interest for them (the US) to stay in Afghanistan for long… I want to take this opportunity to tell the world that Taleban and Al Qaeda are history now and Afghanistan is returning back to its golden age of enlightenment and liberalism," said half-Pashtun, half-Persian Omar, who quit life in the US to be a part of Karzai administration.)

5//Scottish Daily Record, UK--LANDMINE TRAP THREAT TO TROOPS (The lethal devices have been found on roads and mountain paths where the troops have been searching for al-Qaeda fugitives…The areas concerned had been cleared of mines just a few weeks ago.)

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1//Asia Times Online May 24, 2002
http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/DE24Df04.html

PRESSURE ON US TO BROKER PEACE
By Sudha Ramachandran (Inter Press Service, May 23)

BANGALORE - If the crisis in the Middle East has distracted Washington from focusing fully on its military operations against the Taliban and the al-Qaeda, the brewing showdown in South Asia could well unravel its entire war against terrorism. This is Washington's prime concern as it scrambles to prevent India and Pakistan from going to war.

(SNIP)

Although the Bush administration has repeatedly and publicly praised Musharraf's action against terrorism, US officials admit in private that Delhi is right - Musharraf has failed to match his words with concrete action against terrorists, especially with regard to Kashmir.

In fact, there have been reports that the Pentagon is not happy with Pakistan's half-hearted support to American forces hunting down the al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives either, especially in its tribal region. South Asia watchers in the US concede that New Delhi's anger and impatience with Pakistan is understandable. Where the US differs with India is the way the latter should respond to Pakistan. Washington has been counseling restraint. It is firmly opposed to India launching military strikes on Pakistan, however limited.

(SNIP)

The possibility of war between India and Pakistan injects new uncertainties into American strategy in the war against terrorism. In fact, even the current high-level deployment of troops by both countries is perceived as hindering Washington's military operations against the al-Qaeda. The US has been pressuring Pakistan to commit more of its troops for deployment along the highly porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border to prevent Taliban and al- Qaeda fugitives from escaping into Pakistan. Musharraf has expressed his inability to do so, blaming the pressure of Indian deployment along the India-Pakistan border.

(SNIP)

Indeed, that India's patience has virtually run out not only with Pakistan but also with US hectoring has been evident for some weeks now. India responded coolly to Washington's dispatch of Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to the subcontinent - a mission that was aimed at nudging India and Pakistan to the negotiating table. The general feeling in India was that if the US wanted the tension defused it needed only to tighten the screws on Islamabad. "Its call on Delhi to exercise restraint is absurd," the MEA official said.

In fact, signaling Delhi's irritation with Washington's appeasement of Musharraf even as he continued to push terrorists into India, Rocca was politely refused meetings with Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes and National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra. Rocca's visit to India was therefore a non-starter even before she set foot on Indian soil. The terrorist attack at Jammu, which took place while she was in New Delhi, simply dealt the final blow to a mission.

(SNIP)

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is scheduled to travel to South Asia in the first week of June. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will follow him. In a Washington-datelined report, the Times of India's Chidanand Rajghatta writes, "By spacing out the visits citing scheduling difficulties, the Bush administration appears to be buying time to work on Pakistan while letting Islamabad stew in the pressure New Delhi is exerting. It would also suggest Washington does not believe a war is imminent despite the build-up of both arms and rhetoric."

A report in the weekly newsmagazine India Today says that the US is likely to get tough with the Pakistanis. It quotes a senior American official as saying that the US will tell Musharraf "to shape up of we will pull the plug". The article says that the US "is planning to deliver the same kind of ultimatum it gave him after September 11".

With war clouds looming over the subcontinent, the US has been generous with its assurances to India that it will get Musharraf to crack down on terrorism. But as in the case of Musharraf's verbal pledges with regard to terrorism, the final test of Washington's credibility in India's eyes will be whether it matches its words with concrete action on the ground.

2//Asia Times Online May 24, 2002
http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/DE24Ag03.html

'TOXIC TEXAN' TO FACE POISONOUIS RECEPTION IN EUROPE
By Jim Lobe (Inter Press Service, May 23)

WASHINGTON - On his first visit to Europe as president a year ago, George W Bush was called the "Toxic Texan" after taking the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming. His second visit, on which he embarked Wednesday afternoon, takes place after a year in which Washington has been criticized for unilateral steps that have widened the gulf between the United States and Europe.

Europeans have been irked by the Bush administration's actions on a raft of issues. These include the refusal to grant detainees captured in Afghanistan prisoner-of-war status; the sabotaging of arms-control talks; the "unsigning" of the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty; and protectionist measures for agriculture and steel.

Administration officials are framing the trip as simply the latest visit with "some of our oldest friends and most important allies", as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice put it this week, as well as an opportunity to celebrate a much closer relationship with Russia that will be formalized by the signing in Moscow of an arms-control treaty. At the same time, however, officials here say that much of Bush's efforts will be directed at mending fences with European leaders that have been badly battered by a series of disputes, centered primarily on the US leader's conduct of his war against terrorism.

Some analysts see the US-European alliance at a critical crossroads.

"It's hard to see where the basis for a functioning alliance remains," Jeffrey Gedmin, head of the Berlin office of the Atlantic Council, wrote in the Washington Post this week after cataloguing the disputes that seem to have widened the trans-Atlantic gulf, particularly since last September's terrorist attacks in the United States. For Europe, commitment to multilateralism has become key as its Union moves closer to a geo-strategic as well as an economic reality. Under the Bush administration, Washington has become more unilateralist in its instincts and actions.

(SNIP)

Other analysts say Bush made considerable progress in dispelling his cowboy image when he went to Europe last year, and even in the first months after the September 11 attacks, when he waited to strike back against al-Qaeda and the Taliban while consulting widely with allies and South Asian and Middle Eastern leaders. This began to change, however, once the military campaign in Afghanistan got under way in October and after Washington spurned the offer of its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies (with the exception of Britain) of virtually unqualified support.

(SNIP)

The tit-for-tat worsened as the two sides found themselves at odds on key trade issues and over Israel's invasion of the West Bank last month, a dispute that was further inflamed by charges from staunch administration supporters like Krauthammer that Europe's position was based on a history of anti-Semitism.

The gratuitous exaggeration of policy disagreements, and their elevation to a moral plane, has badly corroded the relationship, says Gordon. "We seem for some reason not to be able to resist taking [policy disagreement] to the next step, to suggest that anybody who dares disagree with us is an immoral appeaser who loves bad countries and supports terrorism and is racist and anti-Semitic," he says. "And then [we] turn around and say, 'By the way, we want you to spend more for NATO, which we're going to lead because we're right, and we're not only right on the pragmatics, but we're right in some sort of cosmic sense. Now help us out,'" he adds. "I just don't see how you can expect Europeans, or anyone around the world, to respond to that sort of treatment."

3//Pravda 15:09 2002-05-23
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/05/23/29174.html

GEORGE BUSH ARRIVES IN MOSCOW EMPTY-HANDED
Dmitry Chirkin
Translated by Vera Solovieva

US congressmen from the Democratic Party on Wednesday blocked the Republicans' attempt to withdraw Russia and some republics of Middle Asia and Transcaucasian Region from the Jackson-Vanik amendment.

During the discussion, some influential Democratic senators belonging to the Committee on International Relations connected linked the Jackson-Vanik amendment with the issue of US poultry exports to Russia. According to them, the issue has not been completely settled.

Therefore, the Democrats celebrate a victory: they have finally found weak spots in the Bush administration and will now press upon them. As is well known, all previous attempts to organize a new "Iran-gate" failed: the scandal around the one-sided withdrawal of the US from ABM treaty failed, and the case of Enron also ended without having started.

The only hope is for an investigation of the September 11 events, of which the Bush administration turned out to have been aware. However, the results of the investigation cannot be predicted, and Bush could escape from the situation again, while the amendment is more reliable. Here, nothing can be changed, because the visit has already started.

(SNIP)

The Jackson-Vanik amendment is a serious obstacle for Russia's WTO membership. It was supposed that the amendment would be abolished already before the summit. However, now, George Bush has nothing to seduce Vladimir Putin with. One thing is clear: the democrats delivered a serious blow to Bush, so he must invent something within the several hours remaining before the visit.

It should be reminded that the Jackson-Vanik amendment was passed by the US Congress in reply to the ban on the free emigration of Jews from the USSR in the 1970s.

4//Khaleej Times 23 May 2002. 11 Rabi Al Awwal, 1423.
http://www.khaleejtimes.co.ae/uae.htm#story13

Afghans thankful for UAE support in reconstruction
AFGHANISTAN ON PATH OF PROGRESS: SPOKESMAN
By Mohammed Rizwan

HINTING at a strong possibility of Hamid Karzai's election by a grand Loya Jirga as head of Afghan administration on June 10, the official spokesman of Afghan Foreign Ministry, Mr Omar Samad said that the US-led coalition operation against Taleban and Al Qaeda pockets was far from over.

"Though the country is in far better shape than it used to be under Taleban, there is still lot of mess to be cleared," the US-educated spokesman who is on his way to Kabul after attending a Afghanistan reconstruction conference in Geneva, told Khaleej Times yesterday.

(SNIP)

"There are hundreds of extremist fighters who have fled into Pakistan and Iran but the operation will continue," said Mr Omar.

The spokesman also shrugged off speculations on long-term US design in the area: "Why would they stay there forever?" Mr Omar, the young and bright face of resurgent Afghanistan quipped. "There is absolutely no reason and rhyme and no interest for them (the US) to stay in Afghanistan for long. Besides, no one could do that. Not the imperial British, not even the Soviets," said Mr Omar who fled the country when he was 18 and spent most of his time studying and working as a journalist in United States.

Mr Omar's stopover in the UAE came on the eve of grand Loya Jirga (national council of elders) in which the prime respected body is expected to choose a new leader under the watchful eyes of former Afghan king Zahir Shah. "There is almost a consensus at the moment on Mr Karzai's leadership and people across the ethnic board in the country see him as a visionary, capable of leading the country to new horizons."

(SNIP)

Mr Omar also tried to put to rest the rumours about any executive role for former king Zahir Shah in future Afghan administration: "He is well-respected and father figure to the nation but he himself is not interested to play that active role because of his age."

"Most of the time I find myself responding to negative Press. I want to take this opportunity to tell the world that Taleban and Al Qaeda are history now and Afghanistan is returning back to its golden age of enlightenment and liberalism," said half-Pashtun, half-Persian Omar, who quit life in the US to be a part of Karzai administration.

5//Scottish Daily Record May 23 2002
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/news/page.cfm?objectid=11893618&method=full

LANDMINE TRAP THREAT TO TROOPS

Booby traps have been set for British Marines in Afghanistan.

The lethal devices have been found on roads and mountain paths where the troops have been searching for al-Qaeda fugitives.

It is believed terrorists are slipping across the border from their hideouts in Pakistan to lay the traps, which include anti-personnel and anti-tank mines.

The areas concerned had been cleared of mines just a few weeks ago.

Warrant Officer Second Class Iain Murison, 34, said: "They are classic guerrilla tactics. The mines are relaid indiscriminately, which makes them very hard for us to track down.

(MORE)

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© 2002, Gloria R. Lalumia
insight@zianet.com

More Stuff at: http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical

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