by Gloria R. Lalumia
World
Media Watch
by Gloria R. Lalumia
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//Arab News Online, Saudi Arabia--EDITORIAL: A WAKE-UP CALL (...the party owes it to the US electorate to make sure that the Bush administration is forced to account for itself, every step of the way along its belligerent path. What can no longer be allowed to happen is that the Bush White House should lead the country sleep-walking into a deadly and possibly catastrophic war. With their election defeat the Democrats have received a wake-up call. In their response to that electoral disaster, they in their turn can give a wake-up call to the American people.)
2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--AT THE UN, A BULLET IN THE "MATERIAL BREACH" (But throughout all the posturings, little attention has been paid to another important paragraph - one that could, if the US played its cards right, constitute a hidden and nearly unavoidable (for Saddam) "war trigger": Paragraph 5. This is the paragraph that lays out the UN's demand for "immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted, and private access to all officials and other persons" within Iraq.) Full text of U.S.-proposed U.N. resolution: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK08Ak02.html
3//The Daily Star, Lebanon--SAUDIS HAIL NEW TRADE WITH BAGHDAD (...Saudi-Iraqi ties have been improving gradually over the past years. Saudi businessmen have been flocking in and out of Baghdad since 1998, participating in Iraqi tenders under the UN "oil-for-food" program or dealing directly with traders, although the countries have not had official diplomatic ties. The Saudi private sector had long been pushing to regain a segment of a market that once fed on Saudi goods. The Saudi delegates were not disappointed in their visit. They were greeted by two Iraqi ministers and a river of rain mixed with the blood of several sheep that were slaughtered in their honor at the border.)
4//The Times of India, India--US URGES BENAZIR TO BACK MUSHARRAF (The incarcerated husband of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has re-emerged as a key player in the country even as the United States scrambles to get a grip on its most allied ally that is now being described here as a "Yugoslavia with nuclear weapons."...She is now twitting Washington for all the insults it heaped on her by threatening to let the Islamic parties come to power, including backing Taliban-sympathiser and Osama-friend Maulana Fazlur Rehman as prime minister.)
5//Moscow Times, Russia--LEAGUE OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CITIZENS CALLS FOR BURIAL OF LENIN'S BODY (Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church opposes making haste to bury Lenin's body, as Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II has repeatedly said. "This issue should be approached with caution so as not to aggravate the divide in society," he said.)
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1//Arab
News 8 November 2002
http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=20205
EDITORIAL: A WAKE-UP CALL
It was understandable that in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks, Democrat politicians stood side by side with President Bush's Republicans in a united front against international terrorism. Fourteen months on from that traumatic moment in US history, the Democrat position is no longer acceptable.
Beaten soundly at the midterm elections and now the minority party in both Houses of Congress, the Democrats are reviewing their political strategy. It must be hoped that with the announced departure of Richard Gephardt, as minority leader in the House of Representatives, the new leadership will look seriously at what may at first seem a controversial agenda - that of actively opposing a warmongering president who is pulling out every nationalistic stop to head his country, the Middle East and the wider world toward a disaster of unimaginable magnitude.
(SNIP)
The United States is already at war with international terrorism and is poised on the brink of war with Iraq. Republican hawks in Congress, as well as the Bush administration, need to be forced by a determined political opposition, to account for their policies and justify their intentions. The Republicans won the midterm elections on the back of war fever. The domestic agenda to cut taxes and rein in spending was always an irrelevance. In their heart of hearts, most voters must have realized that the immense sums necessary to prosecute a Middle East war, let alone a global campaign against terrorism, are going to require more, not less government spending. That expenditure will either have to be paid for by issuing new debt or by higher, not lower taxes. Neither solution is going to do much to ease the gathering US recession.
The Democrats therefore owe it to the American people to let go the coattails of the jingoistic White House and take an independent stand to challenge Bush's warmongering policies. Party bosses may calculate with standard political cynicism that they have little to lose between now and the presidential elections. If Bush comes unstuck, they will have put clear blue water between themselves and the administration. If he does not, they are unlikely to be in a worse position than they are now.
Nevertheless, however self-serving such a radical realignment of Democrat policy may be, the party owes it to the US electorate to make sure that the Bush administration is forced to account for itself, every step of the way along its belligerent path. What can no longer be allowed to happen is that the Bush White House should lead the country sleep-walking into a deadly and possibly catastrophic war. With their election defeat the Democrats have received a wake-up call. In their response to that electoral disaster, they in their turn can give a wake-up call to the American people.
2//Asia Times Online November 8, 2002
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK08Ak01.html
AT
THE UN, A BULLET IN THE "MATERIAL BREACH"
By Paul Belden
The battle over the precise wording of the new Iraq resolution is on in the UN, with some saying that France and Russia are on board and others that the two countries are still holding out. (China remains an unknown entity here; most likely because she's too busy trying to sort out her own power politics at the 16th Party Congress.)
(SNIP)
But throughout all the posturings, little attention has been paid to another important paragraph - one that could, if the US played its cards right, constitute a hidden and nearly unavoidable (for Saddam) "war trigger": Paragraph 5. This is the paragraph that lays out the UN's demand for "immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted, and private access to all officials and other persons" within Iraq.
This is a potentially explosive point. According to Paragraph 5, UN inspectors may "at their discretion conduct interviews inside or outside of Iraq, may facilitate the travel of those interviewed and family members outside of Iraq, and that, at the sole discretion of UNMOVIC [United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission] and the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], such interviews may occur without the presence of observers from the Iraqi government ..." (emphasis added).
Think about what this means. There's already been suggestions among Congressional staffers that the US might be willing to offer cooperating scientists instant "permanent resident" status in the country along with their families. So ... what's to stop the US from flying all of them out at once? Mass exodus.
Most of them would probably prefer a fast ticket out of the hot seat anyway. And for those that don't? It's not like the resolution gives them - or their families - any choice. Once they're all outside and talking (behind one another's back, with nobody knowing what the others are saying), Saddam's weapons development programs are basically done with.
One might think Bush's war rationale would be greatly weakened at that point, since if Saddam would have lost his entire scientific community in a single go. Well, not really. At that point, Saddam couldn't comply with the resolution even if he wanted to - even if he were desperate to. At that point, any inconsistency between or among any two scientists' accounts of their work inside Iraq - be it howsoever small - would mean that somewhere, somebody was lying.
It wouldn't matter who. The result would be "further material breach". The trigger would be pulled.
Full text of U.S.-proposed U.N. resolution: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK08Ak02.html
3//The Daily Star Beirut, Thursday November 07, 2002. Updated 08:30
AM +2GMT
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/07_11_02/art4.asp
SAUDIS
HAIL NEW TRADE WITH BAGHDAD
Delegation plays key role at international fair
Dania Saadi, Daily Star staff
BAGHDAD: Youssef Aziz al- Bassam, a Saudi national, puffs his nargileh in a bustling Baghdad coffee shop and takes a long breath to announce some important news. "We will soon be able to talk directly via telephone with Baghdad," said Bassam. A former pilot in the Saudi Air Force, Bassam cannot contain the excitement of communicating again with a neighboring country that was once at war with US-led troops stationed in Saudi Arabia. Bassam , along with 100 topranking Saudi businessmen, officially reopened the common border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia last week, putting an end to a 12-year shutdown. This was the highest-ranking Saudi delegation to come to Iraq since the Gulf War. The trip came with official Saudi blessing as it was led by the head of the Saudi Export Development Center, Abdulrahman al- Zamil, a Saudi minister.
...Saudi-Iraqi ties have been improving gradually over the past years. Saudi businessmen have been flocking in and out of Baghdad since 1998, participating in Iraqi tenders under the UN "oil-for-food" program or dealing directly with traders, although the countries have not had official diplomatic ties. The Saudi private sector had long been pushing to regain a segment of a market that once fed on Saudi goods. The Saudi delegates were not disappointed in their visit. They were greeted by two Iraqi ministers and a river of rain mixed with the blood of several sheep that were slaughtered in their honor at the border.
...The Iraqi officials were first reluctant to have the UN inspectors at the border point, but doing business with Saudi Arabia appeared too enticing. The Jordanian border, a number of Saudi and Iraqi officials said, has been semi-closed in recent weeks after tough UN inspections at the Jordanian side has reduced traffic. "I do not know how this will affect Jordan," said Zamil. "The important thing is to be reconnected again. Before the closing of the borders, Saudi trucks would stand in line for 4 kilometers just to get in." Iraqis do not seem to mind dealing with Saudis despite the checkered past. "Bygones are bygones," said Ali, an Iraqi taxi driver. "The important thing is to be able to go in and out and visit the holy sites."
4//The Times of India Friday November 8, 2002
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=27586085
US
URGES BENAZIR TO BACK MUSHARRAF
Chidanand Rajghatta
Times News Network
WASHINGTON: To the three "A's" -- America, Allah and Army -- that are said to determine the fate of Pakistan, add a fourth for now. Asif Zardari.
The incarcerated husband of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has re-emerged as a key player in the country even as the United States scrambles to get a grip on its most allied ally that is now being described here as a "Yugoslavia with nuclear weapons."
After almost total silence for the six years he has been clapped in prison on charges of corruption, Zardari has been holding forth every day with reporters in Pakistan during court appearances about the future governing dispensation in the turbulent country.
Reports from Pakistan say emissaries General Musharraf have been reduced to grovelling before him, pleading with him not to let his wife go with the six party Islamic alliance called the MMA in forming a government -- a development that could undermine General Musharraf and his patron, the United States.
And in Washington, Benazir Bhutto, who for the last two years was humiliated by the state department and denied appointments at higher levels and asked to meet underlings below the assistant secretary level, is now running rings around the Bush administration.
She is now twitting Washington for all the insults it heaped on her by threatening to let the Islamic parties come to power, including backing Taliban-sympathiser and Osama-friend Maulana Fazlur Rehman as prime minister.
In meetings last week, the US State Department is said to have cautioned her against this, pointing out that it would go against everything she has said before (opposing Pakistan's Islamisation) and setting back the US war on terrorism.
(SNIP)
Washington is now trying to broker a deal that will keep its uniformed clients in power, the Islamic clerics under control, and the Bhuttos in good humor.
Officials concede that it is a herculean task. There is even some debate in the administration over whether it is wiser "to have the crazies in the government rather than out of it."
So the US now faces the stark choice of having hostile Islamist parties call the shots or baling out the woman it had scorned till last month at the expense of its favoured dictator.
(MORE)
5//Moscow Times Friday, November 08, 2002 / Updated 08 November
2002 3:45 AM MST
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/doc/HotNews.html#29218
LEAGUE
OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CITIZENS CALLS FOR BURIAL OF LENIN'S BODY
Interfax. Thursday, Nov. 7, 2002, 4:54 PM Moscow Time
MOSCOW. Nov 7 (Interfax) - The League of Orthodox Christian Citizens has once again called for burying the body of Vladimir Lenin and replacing the Kremlin stars with two-headed eagles.
The mausoleum of the Soviet state's founder "distorts the historic image of Moscow's center," not to mention the moral issues involved, the league said on the 85th anniversary of the Russian socialist revolution in a statement sent to Interfax.
(SNIP)
Meanwhile,
the Russian Orthodox Church opposes making haste to bury Lenin's body,
as Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II has repeatedly said. "This
issue should be approached with caution so as not to aggravate the divide
in society," he said.
(MORE)
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©
2002, Gloria R. Lalumia
insight@zianet.com
Updated listings of Radio for Progressives on the internet at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
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