RI still needs

RI still needs Gen. Feisal

Armed Forces Commander Gen. Feisal Tanjung will remain in his post for another year.

In the middle of June, the number-one man in the Armed Forces will be 55 years of age, normal retirement age. But Law No.2/1988 states that the term of office of a high ranking officer can be extended until the age of 60.

President Soeharto clearly believes that Gen. Feisal could remain in the post for another year.

The extension of the service of the Commander of the Armed Forces is not a common case, as the two former Armed Forces Commanders, Gen. (ret.) Benny Murdani and Vice President Try Sutrisno had similar experiences.

It is important to know that this country still needs Gen. Feisal as a Commander of an Armed Forces which plays a crucial role in maintaining national stability.

--Media Indonesia, Jakarta

Clinton's diplomacy

U.S. President Bill Clinton's diplomatic policies now appear to be on the verge of straying off course. They have been badly shaken by much harsh criticism recently from the media and Congress over such issues as the United States's handling of the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict and the Haiti problem as well as policies toward Asian countries.

A recent opinion survey by The Washington Post shows that only 40 percent of those polled support Clinton's diplomacy. The support rate is far lower than the nonsupport rate of 53 percent, the survey showed.

It is undeniable that the Clinton administration since its inauguration one-and-a-half years ago has failed to come out with a clear focus in diplomatic policy compared with its significantly bolder stand in tackling domestic problems.

In the problem of the former Yugoslavia, President Clinton at first had expressed his intention to play a role in solving the Bosnia-Herzegovina disputes. He explicitly opposed the use of military power by Serb forces and sought U.N.-backed air raids on Serb-dominated areas and the lifting of a ban on weapons shipments to Moslem forces in Bosnia.

In fact, air raids on a limited scale were carried out and last week the Senate did approve a bill for lifting the U.S. ban on arms exports to Bosnian Moslems. But serious initiatives for solving the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict remain to be seen. On the contrary, other Western countries worry that the lifting of the arms export ban would serve to aggravate the situation.

--The Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo

Arafat's identity

Most Israelis understand the need for a political settlement with the Palestinians, but most doubt the trustworthiness of Yasser Arafat to make and keep an honorable and effective peace. Arafat has a genius for inflaming these doubts. Recently controversy over a recording of his call for a jihad, or Moslem holy war, to liberate Jerusalem had barely died down when another explosive excerpt was released from the same speech, secretly taped earlier this month in a Johannesburg mosque. The latest quote cuts directly to the issue of trust by suggesting that the Palestine Liberation Organization's peace agreement with Israel might soon be broken for a new round of fighting. Arafat's attempts to reinterpret his bellicose remarks convince nobody. Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin understandably challenges him to reaffirm his personal commitment to the peace agreement.

Correctly, the Rabin government perseveres in its engagement with Arafat, understanding that there is no realistic alternative. But right-wing Israelis have exploited the political gift handed them by the PLO leader, threatening the consensus needed to expand a fragile peace. Arafat's inflammatory rhetoric and conspicuous failures to condemn terrorist outrages endanger the peace process to which he and Rabin have linked their fates. So does early evidence of administrative disarray in areas newly transferred to Palestinian control.

Arafat has had a hard time selling compromise to a Palestinian community that both the PLO and more radical Islamic groups have encouraged for years to hope for much bigger gains. What a contrast today's heckling must seem with the adulatory applause he used to win from sympathetic Third World audiences with empty boasts of pushing Israel into the sea.

--The New York Times

Drop the MFN pretense

Withdrawing China's most-favored-nation trading status might mean something terrible for the geopolitics not just of Asia but of the whole world: It would risk starting Cold War II. Revoking MFN would create a hostile, suspicious and aggressive China.

The Clinton administration began to realize (too late) last autumn that the only sensible China policy would be to uncouple human rights from trade and deal with them as another element in the increasingly dense Chinese-American relationship. Human rights in China are a legitimate subject of American concern, as even the Chinese have begun to admit by agreeing to argue their case with the American and other governments. But there is, and will be, no magic way to turn China quickly into a tolerant democracy where civil liberties flourish. It does nobody, including the scores or hundreds of thousands who are persecuted in China, any good to pretend otherwise.

-- The Economist, London