JP/06/Other

JP/06/Other

Old-fashioned poisoning

The Iron Curtain is no more, or so we thought until the news that
Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-Western presidential candidate in the
former Soviet republic of Ukraine, was poisoned with dioxin,
possibly by Ukraine's own security services.

The good news for Yushchenko, despite his suddenly pockmarked
features and tales of excruciating pain, is that he survived the
attempt and now seems poised to win the Dec. 26 reprise of his
runoff against Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

Ukraine's saga, much like the fall of the Iron Curtain, which
once stood well to the west of Ukraine, is a reminder that a
society spontaneously demanding to decide its own future cannot
always be poisoned back into submission. The trick for Bush in
his second term will be to find a way to maintain constructive
ties with Russian President Putin but not at the price of
abandoning clamor for more democracy in the former Soviet Union.
-- LA Times, Los Angeles.

EU arms embargo

The European Union is considering lifting its arms embargo
against China, which has been in place since the Tiananmen Square
incident in 1989, next year. We are very concerned about this.

It would mean even more of a headache for Japan, as it would
present a serious security problem for the nation.

Over the past year, China has been making moves that pose a
threat to Japan's security.

The EU is considering lifting the ban because ties between it
and China have improved over recent years. Immediately after the
Tiananmen Square incident, the EU's relationship with China
cooled over the latter's infringements of human rights. However,
it has been improving gradually to a level where in 1998 they
began holding regular summit meetings.

Their relations have become closer, particularly in trading.
China is the second-largest trade partner for the EU, while the
EU is the biggest for China. Between last year and this year, the
leaders of Britain, Germany, France and Italy -- core members of
the EU -- visited China in succession because they all wanted a
slice of the Chinese market.

Given these circumstances, Beijing said the continued
improvement of these ties would be impaired if the arms embargo
was maintained, increasing pressure on the EU to lift it. On the
EU side, some countries, particularly Germany and France, were in
favor of lifting the embargo.

The EU is an important player in international politics. It
should refrain from pursuing its own economic interests at the
expense of causing instability in Asia.
-- The Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo.

Approach to North Korea

It is already mid-December and there is little likelihood the
next six-way talks to resolve the North Korean nuclear standoff
will be held before year's end. North Korea, which stalled the
multilateral process to await the result of the U.S. presidential
election, will now set another timeline to further delay the
talks in Beijing -- probably until after the second Bush
administration is inaugurated in late January.

The chief U.S. negotiator, James Kelly, is to be replaced and
so will most of his seniors at the State Department, hence
Pyongyang would like to make its case on its "nuclear deterrent"
scheme with the new U.S. lineup. Since the North Korean
procrastination has some justification at the moment, it is hoped
the United States and other participants use the time to tidy up
their own house.

The United States, China, Japan and Russia need to take a
common position on the issue of South Korea's past nuclear
experiments which were exposed earlier this year and closely
scrutinized by the International Atomic Energy Agency through
repeated inspections here.

Pyongyang could really be cheating about the uranium
enrichment program but experts find it highly improbable that
North Korea, with its limited technological capabilities and
resources, has developed any HEU program to a significant level.

It is recommended that the five parties in the six-way talks
shelve the uranium-enrichment suspicion for the time being and
make concerted efforts to dismantle the already confirmed
plutonium-based nuclear weapons project in North Korea.
-- The Korea Herald, Seoul.

Tanks for troops

After making excuses and pleading for patience, the Pentagon now
seems to realize its soldiers don't have enough armored vehicles
to carry out their dangerous missions in Iraq. That message was
driven home dramatically last week during Secretary of State
Donald Rumsfeld's fumbling performance in handling a question
about such matters.

Late last week, the Army said it was negotiating with a company
to accelerate production of armored versions of the Humvee to get
them to troops more quickly. And the commander of U.S. ground
forces in the Middle East has promised to provide armored
vehicles for every soldier in Iraq. It's about time.

Protecting the troops in Iraq is one of the military's primary
missions. Without those troops, Iraq stands little chance to hold
an election in January or avoid civil war. That's why it's hard
to fathom the Army's treatment of six reservists, including two
veteran officers who had been decorated for their heroic efforts
in maintaining the gasoline supply line to troops in the war's
first months. The Tribune's Aamer Madhani reported Sunday that
the six have been court-martialed for doing what soldiers always
do in war -- scrounging to get what their outfit needed to do its
job, as safely as possible.

In this case, the soldiers of the 656th Transportation Company,
based in Springfield, Ohio, grabbed two tractors and two trailers
left in Kuwait by other U.S. units that had already moved into
Iraq in the early weeks of the war. Several weeks later, they
"liberated" a third vehicle, an abandoned five-ton cargo truck,
and stripped it for parts they needed for repair of their trucks.

Nowhere in the absurd charges against these soldiers was any
suggestion that they had done so for their personal gain. Indeed,
no one had reported the equipment missing.

Now Maj. Cathy Kaus, the commanding officer, and Darrell Birt,
chief warrant officer of the unit, have been dishonorably
discharged and stripped of all military benefits. Kaus is still
in the brig; Birt was released in October.

That may not be the worst of it. Since they've got a felony
conviction on their military records, Birt has been fired from
his civilian job and Kaus faces likely termination. Both Birt and
Kaus are pleading for clemency, so their benefits can be
reinstated and they will have a chance to continue their military
careers or salvage their civilian jobs.

Birt, Kaus and their compatriots should never have been charged.
The punishment is far beyond anything that would be reasonable.
The Army must grant the clemency.

Between now and Election Day in Iraq, America's military forces
are going to need all the ingenuity and strength they can muster
to protect the troops on the ground and provide security for
Iraq's voters. The terrorist insurgents have been targeting, with
bloody precision, Iraqis who work for the military coalition or
the Iraq interim government. Insurgents have killed hundreds of
police officers and civilians who dared work to make their
country free and democratic.

More than a year ago, this page argued that the world should
flood Iraq with troops to secure the peace and help reconstruct
that country. That didn't happen.

Since the president's re-election, there have been some words of
reconciliation from some of America's European allies that
strongly opposed the war. But so far, that's all it is: talk.
These countries, to their everlasting disgrace, have been
unwilling to lift a finger to help Iraq.

The most recent example: While NATO has agreed to increase its
forces training soldiers in Baghdad, six member countries have
refused to take part. Those six include the familiar refuseniks
France and Germany, but also Belgium, Greece, Spain and
Luxembourg.

They're not being asked to send soldiers to fight, they're being
asked to train Iraqis as part of the crucial effort to ensure
safe and viable elections in January. All of the countries in
NATO should recognize their interest in a free and stable Iraq.
They should back that up with thousands of troops to ensure a
free and fair election there.

The Pentagon is increasing the number of American troops in Iraq
to 150,000 from 138,000 by early January, to help provide
security for the Iraqi election and keep pressure on insurgents.
It should, and could, provide substantially more troop strength
than that. The U.S. should have a much greater troop presence to
reduce the flow of insurgents into the country and secure polling
places. And it needs the help of NATO to do that.

A successful election in Iraq will not, on its own, quell the
insurrection there. But it will be a powerful statement of the
will of the Iraqi people to defeat those who sow chaos and get on
with building a free and prosperous nation.

-- Chicago Tribune, Chicago.

More gridlock in the Taiwan Strait

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian had a disappointing weekend. His
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was unable to win a majority
in parliamentary elections held Saturday. The result is likely to
be continuing gridlock in Taiwanese politics, as different
parties control the presidency and the legislature. More
troubling, the results will encourage more intransigence from
Beijing. The outcome will support those in China who argue that
their government's hard line against . Chen has checked his
political popularity and forced Taiwanese voters to opt for
moderation. Given . Chen's history of responding emotionally to
defeat, relations across the Strait could worsen.

. Chen's DPP has made steady gains over the last decade. He
used the party as a springboard for presidential election
victories in 2000 and 2004, and it has gradually increased its
seats in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan (LY). Although the DPP won 87
seats in the last ballot, making it the largest single party in
the LY, it was unable to claim a majority even in combination
with its ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), an unabashedly
proindependence party established by former President Lee Teng-
hui.

Instead, the opposition Nationalist Party, the KMT, and its
allies won 114 of 225 legislative seats -- an increase of three
-- to retain control of the LY. The DPP and its ally won 101
seats. The DPP and the KMT both increased their share of the
popular vote, with the KMT picking up 11 additional seats and the
DPP, two. The losers were the more radical parties: The TSU lost
one of its 13 seats, and the prounification People's First Party,
a KMT ally, lost 12 seats, tumbling from 46 to 34. That should
take some of the sharp edges off Taiwanese politics.

. Chen accepted the results with good grace, and he called for
"reconciliation and cooperation." He called on all parties to
"unite Taiwan, stabilize ties across the Taiwan Strait and work
together for economic prosperity." Taiwan needs that sort of
political maturity. Both major parties have put opposition above
national interest. The result has been political gridlock while
the economy deteriorated and tensions with China and the U.S.
increased. It will take cooperative effort by both major parties
to get Taiwan back on track, but the two parties have little
history of working together.

The KMT continues to protest the results of the March
presidential race -- which may have turned on a mysterious
assassination attempt on . Chen during the final days of the
campaign. For his part, the president has a history of reacting
emotionally to defeat: When he was outmaneuvered in the LY last
year on legislation permitting referendums, he hastily exploited
a loophole in the bill -- permitting so-called defensive
referendums, even though the move infuriated China and the United
States. What surprises does . Chen have up his sleeve after these
disappointing election results?

Taiwanese voters appear uncomfortable with . Chen's policies and
statements, and would like him to move back toward the center.
Most opinion surveys show that an overwhelming majority of
Taiwanese favor the status quo rather than proindependence
policies. They want recognition of their island's status and
their many impressive economic and political accomplishments, but
they are not willing to risk conflict with the mainland.

The Chinese government is ready to exploit that fear. Beijing is
convinced that . Chen aims to declare independence before his
term expires in 2008. It has said that there will be no cross-
Strait political discussions until . Chen acknowledges the "one
China" principle, a step that the president will not take. He
demands talks without preconditions. Neither side is willing to
budge and options are shrinking as each sees compromise as a
victory for the other.

Beijing will use the election results to validate its hard line.
China has stepped up its anti-Chen rhetoric since he won re-
election in March, and the KMT win will be interpreted as a sign
that Taiwanese voters are worried that the president is pushing
too far, too fast. Given the ill will between Taipei and Beijing,
neither side of the Strait is likely to compromise on its core
concerns. The outcome of the vote then is likely to be gridlock
-- within Taiwanese politics and in cross-Strait relations.

. Chen should now focus on his legacy. He has two choices. He
can pursue the consolidation of Taiwanese democracy or he can
push the independence agenda. The former requires compromising
with the KMT, working on modernizing Taiwan's political
institutions and putting independence aspirations on hold. The
latter may be the president's longtime dream -- and that of other
Taiwanese -- but it risks conflict and the destruction of much of
what Taiwan has built in recent years. The choice appears easy.

-- The Japan Times, Tokyo.

Beware of U.S. donations

Some recent international media reports awaken us to the power of
America as the world's only superpower, lavishly exercised with
money and influence bought with it. The recent case in Ukraine
offers a significant message to whoever is engaged in activities
either in accord with or against American interests here or
elsewhere.

The Associated Press reported that at least $65 million from the
Bush administration and public and private U.S. sources has been
spent over the past two years to aid political organizations in
Ukraine with a view to helping the pro-West opposition leader,
Viktor Yushchenko, gain power. The American money is via
organizations like the Carnegie Foundation, the National
Endowment for Democracy that is directly funded by Congress, the
Eurasia Foundation financed by the State Department, and the
Renaissance Foundation connected to George Soros.

No U.S. money is sent directly to the pro-American candidate or
any Ukrainian political parties. It is used in diverse ways such
as arranging Yushchenko's meetings with U.S. leaders,
underwriting exit polls during last month's presidential runoff
election and educating Ukrainian citizens about reforming their
nation's government and economy, methods that can reject Russian
President Vladimir Putin's claim of U.S. interference in the
election in the former Soviet republic.

Korea's civil society, replete with numerous civic groups and
individual activists, is showing a growing trend of anti-Ame-
ricanism these years that may attract concerns of those who hold
the purse strings in the U.S. State Department and some
"foundations" with goals to disseminate the "American values"
worldwide.

In spite of their increasingly active role on political, economic
and environmental issues, Korea's civic organizations generally
have weak finance with low membership contributions. They should
be too cautious about financial offerings from obscure foreign
sources, because they could become unwitting beneficiaries of
part of the $1 billion U.S. taxpayers' money the State Department
spends each year to "build democracy" overseas or the "charity"
operations of the Soros Fund. Inflow of such American money into
Korean civil society movements will do harm to their credibility.

-- The Korea Herald, Seoul.

Terrorism's Trojan horse

A terrorist attack involving a dirty bomb hidden in a cargo
container wouldn't have to match the human toll of Sept. 11,
2001, to be effective. Shutting down even a few of the largest
ports would have a devastating economic effect, so it's puzzling
that so little is being spent to avoid such a catastrophe.

Oceangoing freighters will offload more than 9 million cargo
containers at U.S. ports this year. Until we can know with
certainty what's inside them, the boxes will remain, as U.S.
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner has
said, "the potential Trojan horse of the 21st century."

Some progress is being made. The major foreign ports have agreed
to give U.S. customs agents 24 hours' notice before U.S.-bound
containers are loaded, and the port of Dubai on Monday became the
first port in the Middle East to join the program. The United
States also is dispatching customs agents to the world's busiest
ports to establish offices. Shipping companies and cargo handlers
around the world are completing self-evaluations to help identify
weaknesses that terrorists might try to exploit.

But big problems remain, and most are tied to who's going to foot
the bill for added security. Private industry, including
manufacturers, parts suppliers and retailers whose goods flow
through publicly financed ports, should shoulder a fair share of
the financial burden, which means consumers ultimately will pay
more for their goods. Government also must play a role. The Coast
Guard estimates the cost of security improvements needed at U.S.
ports at more than $5 billion over the coming decade. Others,
though, set the final cost at closer to $15 billion. Yet Congress
this month approved just a third of the $400 million that port
operators most of them public agencies with already tight
operating budgets had set as the bare minimum of federal money
needed to help cover security costs during the 2005 fiscal year.

Congress' miserly approach is at odds with the importance of
ocean shipping in global trade. More than 90% of non-North
American foreign trade arrives on ships. It would be relatively
easy to disrupt that trade, to devastating effect. As part of a
2002 war game, a consulting firm estimated that the U.S. economy
would suffer a $58-billion hit if a terrorist threat not even an
actual attack forced all oceangoing ports to close for two
weeks. Yet all but 10% of the Transportation Security
Administration's funding goes toward making airports safe.

Waiting for containers to arrive and then inspecting them isn't
the answer. Keeping U.S. ports safe will require accurately
tracking millions of containers from the moment they're filled. A
notice of 24 hours won't mean much if what's in the container
doesn't match what's printed on the shipping bill.

A truly effective system is going to be expensive. Failing to
build it could be many times more costly.

-- LA Times, Los Angeles.

Failure in Congo

ONE OF THE MOST costly wars of the past half-century is on the
brink of resuming: There are reports of heavy fighting around
eastern towns in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some say the
army of neighboring Rwanda has again invaded, as its government
threatened it would do last month. Congo's government is sending
its own troops to the area; refugees are once again on the move.
Last week the U.N. Security Council issued a stern warning to
Rwanda and threatened unspecified "further actions" if it did not
withdraw. Yet if Congo once again becomes a regional
battleground, the United Nations will have mainly itself to
blame.

Rwanda has sent its army into Congo twice before, in 1996 and
1998. In both cases, as now, the announced aim was to attack
Rwandan Hutu militias based there, including fighters responsible
for the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The last incursion led to a five-
year war involving at least seven African countries; by common
estimates more than 3 million people died, mostly from disease or
starvation. A peace agreement 18 months ago was to end the war,
and Rwanda and other nations withdrew their troops. But the keys
to the accord were that U.N. peacekeeping troops fill the vacuum
in eastern Congo, a vast area where the central government and
its forces have little presence, and that the militias whose
presence ignited the conflict be disarmed.

In both these tasks the U.N. peacekeeping mission, known by the
acronym MONUC, has failed miserably. Though it is the largest
such mission in the world, with more than 10,000 troops, it has
failed to keep order or even to prevent massacres in some of the
principal towns of the region. In Bukavu and Bunia, it has stood
by while local militias have raped and murdered civilians within
sight of its bases. Worse, its own troops have raped or sexually
exploited women and girls; the practice "appears to be
significant, widespread and ongoing," according to a confidential
U.N. report described by The Post's Colum Lynch last month. With
Rwandan troops massing, the U.N. force finally raided a couple of
militia camps in the past few days. But its policy of relying on
persuasion rather than force to disarm hard-core Hutu militants
has, not surprisingly, achieved next to nothing.

Rwanda is wrong to respond to this situation with a new invasion,
which may be aimed at Congo's lucrative resources as much as at
the Hutu militias. If its troops have crossed the line and are
not withdrawn, the Security Council should consider sanctions.
But it should also, at the same time, take an honest look at the
wreck of its mission in this strategic African country. Perhaps
there are mitigating circumstances; it's probably true, for
example, that the force has always been too small to do its job.
Still, the disastrous performance of U.N. peacekeeping in Congo
ought to lead to a broad reconsideration of such missions.
Neither Africa nor the rest of the world can afford such
failures.

-- The Washington Post, Washington DC

Coral peril

TWENTY PERCENT of the world's coral reefs "have been effectively
destroyed and show no immediate prospect of recovery." An
additional 24 percent "are under imminent risk of collapse
through human pressures," and an additional 26 percent "are under
a longer term threat of collapse." These are only some of the
conclusions of an exhaustive new report by 240 scientists in 98
countries, working under the auspices of the Global Coral Reef
Monitoring Network. Coral reefs, in addition to being
breathtakingly beautiful, are among the cradles of life on Earth
-- hotbeds of biodiversity critical to sustaining oceanic health.
But a combination of global warming, pollution, overfishing,
diseases and other factors is ravaging reefs worldwide. While
Australian and Pacific reefs remain relatively healthy, the
report documents devastating declines elsewhere, including the
Caribbean region, where coral cover on many reefs has declined by
up to 80 percent. If something isn't done soon, it will be too
late for many reefs to recover.

The dire threat to the world's -- and America's -- oceans is
hardly a surprise, and it isn't limited to coral reefs either.
Two major task forces have recently documented the grave
ecological conditions of America's coastal waters. The studies
basically show the same thing: People are using the oceans in a
fashion that can't be sustained, and, absent serious change
across a range of human behaviors, the oceans will die off. Yet
despite the widespread agreement on the nature and severity of
the problem, action has been slow.

Along with the related issue of climate change, this is the
preeminent environmental issue of our time. President Bush should
make it a priority of his second term. An opportunity to begin
doing so is coming; the administration by law has to respond by
Dec. 20 to the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Ocean
Policy, which Congress created in 2000 to examine America's
policy toward its coastal waters. So far, there is no indication
the administration is contemplating the needed dramatic shifts in
policy. But the oceans -- and their precious corals -- cannot
afford delay.

-- The Washington Post, Washington DC.

Vulnerable Russian nukes

President Bush said during his campaign for re-election that
allowing weapons of mass destruction to fall into the hands of
terrorists is the "biggest threat facing this country." In fact,
that's one of the few things he and his opponent, John Kerry,
agreed on.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia apparently agrees, too. Since
the latest series of Chechen terrorist attacks in Russia this
fall, Putin has dispatched more troops to guard Russia's far-
flung nuclear-weapons facilities.

But politics, bureaucracy and suspicion in both countries are
sabotaging the program aimed at helping Russia secure and destroy
its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

As USA TODAY reported Monday:

A half-billion dollars set aside by Congress in the past two
years to protect or scrap Russian weapons sits unspent.

Hundreds of millions of dollars more have gone to ineffective
projects, according to federal auditors.

Disputes between U.S. officials demanding more access to Russian
weapons sites and Russians jealously guarding what were longtime
state secrets are stalling progress at several key locations.

Russians also are increasingly reluctant to accept U.S.
direction of U.S.-funded storage and disposal facilities or to
absolve the United States of responsibility if a ghastly accident
should occur.

Scariest of all: The program expires in 18 months, and there's
little sign of any serious initiative on either side to renew it.

The threat is vivid. In September, undercover agents arrested a
man in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan who was trying to
sell plutonium-239, a substance used to make atomic weapons.
Earlier this year, another suspect was picked up trying to sell
cesium-137, which could contaminate large areas if used in a
crude nuclear bomb.

The program Congress created in 1991 to help secure the
stockpiles of dangerous materials throughout the former Soviet
empire was a rare display of foresight. But the effort has been
hampered by resistance in Russia and restrictions engineered by
members of Congress. Some object to assisting Putin even if it
might make the world safer; others want to score points on
unrelated issues such as human rights.

The burden of preventing the program's collapse falls on Bush and
Putin. Both need to tell those obstructing progress that the
threat posed by inaction is too great. And both sides must
demonstrate flexibility in getting the job done, not stonewalling
in the name of national self-righteousness.

-- USAToday

The nation's fabric

"Heritage Counts" is the title of English Heritages annual audit,
to be published today. The reader would be forgiven, though, for
coming to the conclusion that in the new Labour philosophy,
heritage counts for far too little.
Although Britains stunning array of townscapes, landscapes,
churches, cathedrals and stately homes form a significant part of
the countrys character, they do not fit into the shiny, modern
image that Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, wants to project.
Even worse, they can be caricatured as part of middle and upper-
class culture, lacking relevance for Labour voters.

This is nonsense. The poor are not incapable of appreciating the
countryside or the nations history. Churches and cathedrals
welcome visitors and worshippers from all backgrounds. Restoring
neglected parks and town centres benefits everyone.

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has done much that fits with
Labours political agenda: targeting grants to areas of social and
economic deprivation and insisting that the institutions it funds
attract new audiences.

But still there is the sense that Labour does not value the
effort. In its new Lottery Bill, there are provisions to cream
off HLF money to give to other distributors. And the latest
government grant to English Heritage represents a 4.6 per cent
decrease over four years. Its budget has been cut every year
since 1997.

Todays report suggests that #3.4 billion is needed to save
heritage that is still at risk, despite the efforts of lottery
entrants. The nations character is in serious danger of neglect.
Ministers must not be willing participants in character
assassination.

-- The Times, London.