Some parents of students at junior high school (SLTP) Yayasan

Some parents of students at junior high school (SLTP) Yayasan Pendidikan Karya in Cipondoh, Tangerang, have complained about the fee of Rp 350,000 charged by the school for the students' study tour program.

Unfortunately, the Education Office has done nothing to deal with the complaints. The parents can do nothing but fulfill the school's request as the extracurricular activity is a condition for the students being allowed to sit the final exam.

A school spokesperson said those (parents) who were financially weak were exempted from the study tour fee. The policy was good, but, the point is that how can a study tour program be a prerequisite to sit the final exam?

Many schools in greater Jakarta conduct annual study tours for their students. Some of them say that a study tour is a must, while others say the tour is just an extracurricular activity.

Now it is time for the government, including the Education and Culture Office (in relevant provinces), to issue official rulings on study tours which could be used by elementary and high schools as legal grounds to hold a study tour.

-- Warta Kota, Jakarta

France and the UN

For the first time the French president said clearly and firmly that France would use its right to veto. "France will not accept it and therefore will refuse," he said, the resolution prepared by the United States and Britain that authorizes the use of force after March 17.

Jacques Chirac used his pedagogic talent not only to preach to the convinced, but also to address Americans. To them, the head of state was conciliatory. He congratulated American forces around Iraq, who have led Saddam Hussein to accept U.N. conditions. He gave American planes the right to overfly French territory if need be, which in the past was not always a given. He tried to downplay the use of a veto, recalling that France had used it only 18 times since 1945 compared to 76 times for the United States...

(France) affirmed a conception of world order where the use of force should only be the last resort, where multilateralism should be the rule and where democratic exchange at U.N. headquarters should always prevail.

Le Monde, Paris

UN has a future despite U.S. being adamant

The United Nations has a future even if the United States leads a war without its mandate.

The United States will find in the future that it will need the international community for support and as a partner. And the world will find that it will need a police officer to call upon when needed.

There is no other country than the United States which, in a crisis, can carry through the wishes of the United Nations.

The real American threat to the United Nations comes from the conservative, isolationists that want the United States to withdraw from the world and hide under its missile defense shield.

If such thoughts are to have an impact on practical politics, the U.N. building in New York will become a monument to the last century.

But thank God, we are not there today. And the feverish wait for this week's vote in the Security Council is proof that such a day will be long in coming.

-- Expressen, Stockholm, Sweden

The collapse of the talks

It is a huge responsibility that the Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash has taken upon himself by rejecting (UN Secretary- General) Kofi Annan's peace plan.

A rejection that led to the collapse of talks about a reunited Cyprus - and to the fact that only the Greek Cypriot part of the Mediterranean island now can look forward to becoming a member of the European Union.

The collapse of the talks may also mean that possible EU entrance talks for Turkey could be delayed.

Hopefully, the pressure on Rauf Denktash's Turkish Cypriots will increase so they will see the logic in softening up their position."

--Berlingske Tidende, Copenhagen, Denmark

War in Iraq and global peace

Why is the imminent war against Iraq so divisive if it has a moral justification? ....

If the war goes on as the U.S. wants, it will have confirmed America's disrespect for international opinion without giving a guarantee for global peace. America wants a war without the express say so of the UN. It wants to drag the U.N. into a war for which there is no moral justification.

The UN does not exist to do the U.S. bidding, least of all follow it to war.

-- East African Standard, Nairobi

The Albuquerque Tribune, Albuquerque, New Mexico, on whether the U.S. can afford going to war: In his last two budgets, President Bush made no provisions for funding a possible war with Iraq. Now the probable costs of that venture are becoming clearer. The administration is preparing to ask Congress for supplemental appropriations - unbudgeted additional spending - of at least $60 billion to fund fighting and reconstruction in Iraq during the next six months. However, that supplemental request may grow to $95 billion to include $15 billion in promised aid to Turkey and lesser amounts to Jordan, Israel and Egypt. The budget submitted Feb. 3 did contain $7 billion for peacekeeping and reconstruction in Afghanistan, a far from complete U.S. objective that should not be eclipsed or sidelined by Iraq. ... It would be nice to think that our reluctant allies might help in paying for postwar peacekeeping and reconstruction, but a more realistic expectation is that if they're willing to let the United States and Britain fight the war, they're probably also willing to let us pay to clean up its aftermath. The fiscal problem with these supplemental appropriations is they come when the Bush administration's official estimates put the deficits this year and next at more than $300 billion, and have the government running deep in the red through at least 2008. And the White House says that despite the cost of a war and an occupation, the president is determined to press ahead with his tax cut. The uncertainty of war leads to all sorts of unanswered questions, but here is one the White House and Congress need to address now: How are we going to pay for all this? [

St. Paul Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, on a pre-emptive strike: How should free people feel - in our hearts, brains and guts - about launching a pre-emptive strike? Note that we are not "starting a war" with Iraq. That was begun by Saddam more than a decade ago. We won the first battle, but he has since been secretly violating the terms of surrender. Either we will allow him to become capable of inflicting horrendous casualties in our cities tomorrow - or we must inflict and accept far fewer casualties in his cities today. That's a Hobson's choice, which is no choice at all. We will now get on with it. We will not whip ourselves into jingoism, or become fascinated by our exercise of ultra-tech superpower or suppress our sadness at the pictures of Iraqi civilians Saddam will thrust into the line of fire as human shields. But we should by no means feel guilty about doing our duty. War cannot be waged apologetically. ... We have ample reason to believe that Saddam's gangster government is an evil to be destroyed before it gains the power to destroy us. It is futile to try to reason with passionate marchers ... Nor should we waste more precious time trying to beg or buy moral approval from France or Russia, their U.N. veto threats largely driven by economic interests in Saddam's continuance in power. [ St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, Florida, on war with Iraq: The Bush administration appears determined to go to war in Iraq later this month under circumstances that could leave the United States and much of the rest of the world less secure, not more so. Artificial deadlines should not limit our government's efforts to build a genuine consensus for dealing with Iraq's illegal weapons programs. If war comes, it is in the United States' interests to go into battle, as it did 12 years ago, with the full support of a broad international coalition. Yet the White House has made little effort to win support through logic or reason. Instead, it has attempted to bully traditional friends such as Germany and France - and to bribe important Islamic allies such as Turkey. Either through inept diplomacy or contempt for the very concept of collective security, the administration risks shattering the alliances that bolstered us through the Cold War and during the first Persian Gulf War. To this point, U.S. and British representatives have found scarce Security Council support for an amended resolution that would give Iraq a March 17 deadline to comply fully with U.N. resolutions or face war. ... Given the context, March 17 sounds less like a deadline than a launch date. Iraq does not pose an imminent threat to the United States or its allies. ... A pre-emptive attack could set a dangerous precedent. ...

GetAP 1.00 -- MAR 14, 2003 01:28:57 ;AP; ANPA ..r.. NA-GEN--Editorial Roundup By The Associated Press= JP/

By The Associated Press= Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad: The Observer, London, on the divisions at the United Nations: The world stands, starkly divided, on the brink of war. Yet even now, rather more unites the two rival factions at the United Nations than meets the eye. That the Paris-Moscow-Berlin coalition can argue for more time for Hans Blix's weapons inspectors depends on the threat of military action. Without the threat of force, there would have been no inspectors and no cooperation from Iraq, however grudging. That the unanimity which saw Resolution 1441 passed has been lost amid increasingly angry exchanges is only to the benefit of Saddam Hussein. He may be a past master at the tactics of 'divide and survive,' but even he can hardly have expected to see the West, and the international community, split so comprehensively. The immediate crisis could have two undesirable outcomes. One would be for the pressure on Saddam to evaporate, enabling the Iraqi dictator to cooperate less and less, flouting the will of the United Nations. The more likely is that Washington will lose patience, leading a coalition of the willing into war without explicit U.N. authorization. That might deal with the threat posed by Saddam; however, a post-Saddam Iraq will require sustained U.N. engagement. That will be less effective if the U.N. is seen as a broken institution, equally incapable of dealing with other crises, from Kashmir to Palestine. Britain's approach to the proposed second resolution seeks rightly to bridge these divisions. Its amendment would create a much clearer process by which 'full and immediate' compliance could be tested. This will be credible only if there are weekly deadlines and 'tripwires' on identifiable issues, so it can be transparently demonstrated that Iraq is complying. ... [ Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem, on the new prime minister of the Palestinian Authority: As it turned out, there is even less than meets the eye to the appointment of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. The whole American-European-Israeli idea was to transform Yasser Arafat into a figurehead and transfer power to a more palatable replacement. That, so far, is clearly not what is happening. At its meeting Monday in Arafat's rubble-encircled Ramallah headquarters, the Palestinian Legislative Council decided that the new post of prime minister would not include the two most important items: authority over the security forces and negotiations. Skeptics of this maneuver claimed that these functions would have remained in Arafat's hands in any case, but the PLC did not bother creating even the appearance of handing them over to Abbas. ... The significance of Abbas' appointment is not that he represents the "new leadership" that U.S. President George W. Bush called for in June as the basis of a democratic Palestinian state capable of making peace with Israel. The appointment matters only if it is a stepping stone to the complete unraveling of the Arafat-led Palestinian Authority and its replacement through real democratic processes. [ Helsingin Sanomat, Helsinki, Finland, on Cyprus: Greek and Turkish government representatives are still trying to maintain hope for a last-minute reconciliation in the Cyprus dispute, but U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's comment at the end of the Hague marathon meetings was severe: We have "reached the end of the road." The Greek Cypriot leader Tassos Papadopoulos wanted to have another go, but the old Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash's decision was blunt. "We could not put this plan to a referendum," he declared. Now, only the Greek Cypriot side is likely to be accepted as a member of the European Union. That is a blow to the Turkish Cypriot minority whose feeble economy will be left without the benefits of membership. At the same time, it is a blow for Turkey's hopes to get its own EU negotiations on track. But, Turkey is not innocent in the impasse. If it wished to it could force Denktash to change his mind whenever it wanted. [ The Australian, Sydney, Australia, on the expulsion of Helal Ibrahim Aaref: There have been widespread reports that Saddam Hussein has ordered his diplomats to support terrorists in attacks against the West during a war, which would simply extend Iraq's long tradition of supporting terrorism. And there is evidence that Helal Ibrahim Aaref's activities were well outside "any diplomatic norm." The government has not released details of the activities that led to Mr. Aaref's expulsion. Nor does it need to. He is simply being asked to leave and has had ample opportunity to put his case before the local media. The fact that it follows a general U.S. alert about the activities of Iraqi diplomats is anything but sinister. It is an example of the value of information-sharing among allies. Once his spying was uncovered, Mr. Aaref should not have been given five days to leave the country. He should have been put on the first plane to Baghdad. [ Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, on war in Iraq: If the United States now pursues the use of military force, no nation or international organization can stop it. That is the unvarnished reality. If there is a way to avoid a war, it is by the combination of Saddam Hussein destroying all Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and stepping down. If there is an attack without a U.N. Security Council resolution, prestige of the United Nations would be shaken. The effect of that on the world would be vastly greater than during the air strikes on former Yugoslavia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which were also carried out without a Security Council authorization. If Saddam Hussein's resignation averts war, the people of Iraq have hope for peace. In addition, there may be a way to establish a new government in Iraq with the cooperation of Iraqi people and the United Nations. During a recent Arab League meeting, Persian Gulf nations recommended Saddam Hussein resign and go into exile under a grant of immunity from criminal prosecution. U.S. President George W. Bush has also encouraged exile. War must be avoided to prevent a wider rift between the Muslim world and the United States. We hope Saddam Hussein will decide to follow the advice. [ Corriere della Sera, Milan, Italy, on Italy's predicament in the United Nations: In the next few days, the Security Council will vote on the second Iraq resolution. If the United States is defeated by not receiving the necessary nine votes, it will attack Iraq anyway and the authority of the U.N. will receive a devastating blow. If, instead, the United States obtains the nine necessary votes, France will veto the resolution, but the war will break out anyway and the trans-Atlantic community will break down. In a worst-case scenario, what should Italy do? Italy cannot allow itself to break with the French and Germans, cracking the European Union in order to save its friendship with the United States. But it also cannot take the opposite choice, favoring France in its delusions of omnipotence and an independent Europe, since Europe has no military resources nor a general political strategy. It's clear what Italy's national interests are and it's equally clear that Italy will have trouble consistently pursuing them. Italy is caught between a public that favors peace, a Catholic world that interferes with politics from a religious point of view, a government majority with anti-European components and post-Communist opposition that is strongly in favor of Europe. In this predicament Italy's political leadership may not be able to live up to the country's international role. [ The Straits Times, Singapore, on North Korea: North Korea has fired two missiles in two weeks. It has also sent one of its military jets screaming into South Korean airspace, a well-timed act of psy-warfare. That was followed by the buzzing of an American spy plane. All these acts are for the United States' benefit. Certainly, they appear to have been synchronized with the Americans' timetable for a strike on Iraq. On this reckoning, there is a good chance North Korea would proceed to fire a longer-range missile, probably within hitting distance of Japan and Guam, just as American forces in the Gulf are poised to attack. Pyongyang is signaling to the U.S.: 'Engage us, face to face, and let us see if we cannot come to some sort of agreement.' But the day before the latest missile shot, Washington's senior-most foreign policy officials - Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice - had repeated for the umpteenth time that the bilateral talks Pyongyang craved were not on, not just now. But North Korea just has to take its chances with the calculated assessment that the US would not, cannot, bomb its military and nuclear facilities. The U.S. ought to ponder that its failure to live up to two provisions of the 1994 Agreed Framework - ending trade sanctions and opening diplomatic normalization talks within months - is seen by Pyongyang as the original sin. If the Bushies would look beyond their near-religious belief that Mr. Kim is 'evil' personified, they just might achieve salvation for everybody." [ MORE[

GetAP 1.00 -- MAR 14, 2003 01:28:38