The war on intolerance

The war on intolerance

On the subject of Islam and religious extremism, Indonesia's President, Megawati Soekarnoputri, is impeccably qualified to speak. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has consistently rejected the idea of itself as a theocratic Islamic state. Ms Megawati is a devout Muslim who passionately defends religious tolerance.

Violence, she says, can never be justified on religious grounds and her Government's determined crackdown on Indonesian extremists has made her a valuable ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The question, then, may be whether the U.S. and its allies, such as Australia, are willing to listen when she speaks on Islam and the world.

This week Ms Megawati opened an international conference in Jakarta of Muslim leaders on the promotion of moderate, peaceful Islam. The delegates from Islamic universities and governments from more than 40 nations argued that Muslims themselves must present a peaceful face if negative stereotypes -- which link Islam to terrorism and violence -- are to be effectively confronted. Islam, they say, must embrace modernity and co-exist peacefully alongside other religions.

However, Ms Megawati also insists the war on terrorism cannot be won without addressing the counterproductive, and what she says are unjust, attitudes of the West towards majority Muslim nations. At a political level, these include the statelessness of the Palestinian people, the invasion of Iraq, and the scant influence the Muslim world wields on the world stage. She mentions especially the absence of a permanent Muslim representative on the United Nations Security Council. At a grassroots level, there is abject poverty, powerlessness and ignorance in some communities. Among others, there is the common perception that the West has stigmatised Muslims in general because of the brutality and violence of extremists.

Ms Megawati is not playing the victim card. She admonishes Islamic scholars, telling them they must formulate a more open, more diverse socio-religious concept and engage with Western ideas and technology. Otherwise, she warns, their societies will be left behind.

Any moves by Muslim leaders to promote moderation and to engage with the West can only benefit global efforts to combat extremism. The soul-searching this demands of Muslims includes the rejection of their negative stereotypes of the U.S. and its allies. There is clearly similar room for a more sophisticated and critical self-appraisal among Western leaders of the wider consequences of the war on terrorism. Listening to Muslim leaders such as Megawati Soekarnoputri is a good start.

-- The Sydney Morning Herald.

On efforts to arrest war criminals

They are wanted for war crimes (in Bosnia). These two, Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, have been on the run from the international community's justice system for eight years. All attempts to arrest them and bring them to trial have been fruitless, even though NATO has had tens of thousands of soldiers in Bosnia in recent years.

Have they looked hard enough? Has the effort been as it should be?

The contrast is striking when compared to the massive hunt American forces undertook for former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his closest associates. Saddam is now in jail after he was humiliatingly pulled from a hole in the ground in the middle of December.

Karadzic and Mladic managed to get away. If NATO has not taken seriously the task of finding war criminals in an area where they have large forces, it is a serious blot on the alliance's record. War criminals must be brought to justice as quickly as possible.

-- Aftenposten, Oslo, Norway

Iranian elections

These elections had very little to do with democracy. More than 2,000 candidates had been removed from the lists on the orders of the hard-line controlled Guardian Council. The most important reformist parties boycotted the elections. Even the official turnout was only 50.6 percent when previously it had been 67 percent. In the capital, Tehran, only about a third of eligible voters turned out.

Any immediate changes in Iranian policy will probably not be very radical because already during the previous Parliament's term Khamenei and the Guardian Council exercised almost dictatorial powers. The attempts by Parliament and President Mohammad Khatami to steer Iran in the direction of a genuine democracy were strangled time and time again. Now, Khatami is largely on his own. The great hopes held in him have almost completely faded.

As far as foreign policy is concerned, Iran is in a precarious position. It has tried to ease relations with the European Union and has inched open the door for the first time to inspections of its nuclear program. Relations with the U.S. remain extremely cold. The real reins of foreign relations most probably have been held by Khamenei the whole time, and not by the president or Parliament, so the likelihood of any striking changes is not very great.

-- Helsingin Sanomat, Helsinki, Finland

Israeli barrier

Israel has of course the right to defend itself against suicide terror. No country can stand the recurrent human slaughter which Israel is exposed to by the Palestinian extremists. A security barrier should be a last resort when all other alternatives have been tested. This is not the case under (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon's leadership. There has been no Israeli interest in a negotiated solution with the Palestinians. But in the current situation, it is hard to deny Israel the right to have a temporary barrier to protect its people. But it must in this case run along the so called green line, that is the 1967 border. One could possibly imagine certain deviations when it comes to areas that Israel and the Palestinians already have agreed on should go to Israel in future "land tradings."

But as long as Israel chooses to draw the line at its own discretion, the rest of the world must continue to protest, also through the Hague court.

-- Expressen, Stockholm, Sweden

On repealing a right

President Bush made it official Tuesday: He wants to add an element of discrimination to the U.S. Constitution.

Bush announced his support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage because "a few judges and local authorities" are undermining a "fundamental institution of civilization."

Nonsense. The real reason behind this renewed pitch for the amendment is the prospect that laws that discriminate against same-sex marriage are not sustainable under the equal protection provisions of the 14th Amendment. At some point, perhaps soon, the issue will reach the U.S. Supreme Court -- and the reasoning it used to strike down a Texas sodomy law last year may similarly invalidate laws that deny gays and lesbians the full rights and responsibilities of marriage. This nation has just begun to confront the many enduring inequities faced by same-sex couples.

The president's announcement is likely to elevate gay marriage as an issue in the 2004 election. The purpose of constitutional amendments should be to address the oversights -- or, in some cases, hypocrisies and contradictions -- of our founding fathers. The threshold for a constitutional amendment is substantial, and properly so. It would require approval of two-thirds of the U.S. House and Senate, and ratification by 38 states.

Even Americans who are uneasy about the notion of same-sex marriage should object to this assault on the Constitution. -- San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco

Elections in Afghanistan

The possibility that Osama bin Laden may be caught during the ensuing military operations along the Afghan-Pakistan border has obscured the primary reason for all this activity: to allow Afghanistan to hold an election this summer. The overwhelming concern is that the rise of a Taliban insurgency in south and east Afghanistan will make a credible election more or less impossible. The Taliban has not hidden its determination to sabotage the democratic process. Its followers distribute leaflets in Afghanistan promising to kill anyone who even registers.

By most accounts, Islamabad agreed to mobilize its soldiers with some reluctance. But pressure from Washington and recent assassination attempts on Pervez Musharraf brought (Pakistan) on board. Pakistani troops are expected to gradually spread themselves throughout the border areas, flush out Taliban and al- Qaeda members and, in some cases, drive them across the border into the hands of waiting U.S.-Afghan troops. Even if the military cards all fall into place, other problems remain. For example, only 1 million of Afghanistan's estimated 10.5 million- strong electorate have so far been placed on the rolls. The delicate balance between the Kabul-based Hamid Karzai government and the various warlords may yet unravel.

Afghanistan's chances of putting together an elected legislature by June seem dim, but Mr. Karzai still hopes to pull off a presidential election. All nations, including India, who have a stake in the success of post-Taliban Afghanistan want to see some forward political movement in that country. Even an imperfect election should be seen as acceptable. But even a half- poll will require that the present military action succeed in putting the lid on the Taliban for a few months. Bin Laden's capture is more exciting, but of secondary importance. -- Hindustan Times, New Delhi, India

EU's relationship with Russia

Once upon a time, there was a clear line in Russian foreign policy.

The admission of former eastern bloc states to NATO was seen as a bad thing, but the expansion of the European Union was in principle a good thing.

The approach of what used to be the enemy alliance was seen as a danger in Moscow, but the European Union coming closer was seen as an opportunity.

Today, that seems to have been reversed.

Russia is relaxed about the NATO entry of more eastern Europeans, but the EU's eastward expansion on May 1 is causing worry in Moscow.

Russia is concerned about its exports to the new EU countries and, apparently, also about the well-being of Russians in the Baltic states. ...

The (European) Union has a problem with its Russia policy. That is bad, but what is worse is that it has a problem with Russia.

-- Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, Germany

Israel's security barrier

It is often said that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. By extension, is not one man's "Berlin Wall" another man's "peace line?" Israel's controversial construction of a security fence between Jewish and Palestinian areas, which has landed the government of Ariel Sharon in the International Court of Justice in the Hague, is widely condemned in this country and elsewhere as a unilateral repartition of the Holy Land.

But few of those who have loudly denounced Israel, including Jack Straw and the Foreign Office, seem to remember that similar barriers exist in a part of the United Kingdom. We refer, of course, to the "peace lines" of Belfast, first erected in the early 1970s at the behest of the British Army. Israel's fence exists to prevent suicide bombings. The Belfast peace lines exist to prevent large-scale inter-communal disorders such as the burning of Catholic Bombay Street by loyalist mobs in 1969. But a barrier is a barrier, whatever its name. Good fences cannot quite be said to have made good neighbors, to use Robert Frost's famous phrase in his poem Mending Wall, but they have ensured that the very worst has not happened between two sets of people who can no longer live with each other. And they have served the additional purpose of releasing soldiers and policemen from guarding every sectarian interface.

But what of the effects of such barriers within these walled communities? To some degree, the existence of these barriers is also symptomatic of the decision by the British and Israeli states to relinquish a measure of their responsibilities in hostile areas. -- The Daily Telegraph, London

Post-Milosevic Serbia

Slobodan Milosevic was overthrown in 2000 but his legacy continues to poison Serb society. Under his regime organized crime flourished because it was run by top officials in the administration. After his fall these sinister networks survived. They have blighted Serbian society ever since.

Now we have two more murder trials. That of the men accused of assassinating reformist Serbian Premier Zoran Djindic a year ago has been going on two months. The prosecution of ten people accused of murdering Milosevic's rival Ivan Stambolic just before the 2000 presidential elections an act which led to the Serbian dictators fall began yesterday.

The overwhelming impression is that Serbia is still a country dominated by sinister forces where intimidation, bribery and hidden loyalties to the ruthless old guard play an important role. This is the way many ordinary decent Serbs see it. The euphoria that followed Milosevic's ouster has been succeeded by a quiet despair. The evidence for this is that three times now voter turnout at presidential elections has been so low that the polls are invalid. As long as Serbs do not believe that they are their own masters, and as long as Serb politicians allow their divisions to be exploited by shadowy elements of the former regime, they will continue in instability. That is why these two trials are so important. If the investigators have done their work properly and the prosecutions are successful, they can begin to squeeze out the poison in Serbia's system.

-- ArabNews, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

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Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, on the Iranian elections:

It cannot be said that the conservatives' overwhelming victory translates into huge voter support by the Iranian people. A low voter turnout speaks for itself. Perhaps the real problem that the election outcome raised is that a significant number of voters expressed their discontent and mistrust in the theocracy by abstaining from casting their ballots.

The Iranian people do not want the conservatives to delay economic reforms implemented by the Khatami administration. Nor do they want the judiciary to overtly crack down on anti-regime forces or to take a step backward by antagonizing the rest of the world on the problem of Iran's nuclear development. Unless the conservatives show a flexible and realistic attitude, they surely will lose the people's trust in them very soon.

Democratization of an Islamic country must be carried out by trial and error. The international community should be encouraging Iran to move forward and be carefully watching it each step it takes toward this goal.

---

The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Ralph Nader:

Give Ralph Nader high marks for fidelity to his political beliefs. On political strategy, however, he flunks.

Mr. Nader, 69, announced on Sunday that he will be a candidate for president, and will seek to get on the ballot in all 50 states as an independent. ...

Democratic leaders and the leadership of the Green Party, whose banner he carried in 2000, urged him not to run. Many in the consumer organizations he founded 50 years ago likewise don't want him to run. Even the progressive magazine The Nation, which first published a car-safety article by him in 1959, urged him not to run in a long editorial headed "Dear Ralph."

... Without party backing, his blip on the political radar screen will be dim and fleeting. The likelihood of him affecting the November outcome is smaller than four years ago.

So, this is more like good, clean fun than a crisis for the republic. Damage done will be mostly to Mr. Nader's own reputation and message.

... For now, he fosters the belief that he will risk seeing President Bush be re-elected for the sake of his own campaign. That tells Democrats that the process he prescribes is more important than the result or product -- exactly the charge he laid at the feet of the unscrupulous in business and government all those years ago.

---

The Miami Herald, Miami, on identifying legitimate asylum claims from Haiti:

Once again, a calamity is brewing in Haiti. Once again, we fear that the U.S. government will slam the door on Haitians with valid asylum claims, without even the pretense of a screening, and return them to face persecution, if not death, in their homeland. ...

The climate is ripe for an exodus of desperate people taking to the seas seeking the safety of distant shores. We hope that diplomatic efforts and international intervention prevents such a crisis. But should it come to pass, the Bush administration shouldn't repeat the mistakes of the past or continue current policies that deny refugees the chance to earn asylum protection on the merit of their cases.

Our government has an obligation to protect U.S. shores from an uncontrolled human tide. And not all of those who flee would have a legitimate claim to asylum. People who aren't specific targets because of their activism or other cause may not qualify for asylum. Nevertheless, international refugee law dictates that governments, including ours, give persons with legitimate claims a fair shot at proving their case. ...

The political violence raging in Haiti suggests that more, not fewer, people may be forced to flee. Those with valid claims deserve a genuine opportunity to prove their case.

---

The Cincinnati Post, Cincinnati, Ohio, on holding suspected enemy combatants:

The U.S. Supreme Court came to the right decision Friday when it agreed to decide whether the Bush administration can hold U.S. citizens indefinitely, without access to lawyers or courts, when they are suspected of being enemy combatants.

This administration has made a sweeping and highly questionable assertion of government power. It has established an extralegal maximum-security prison at Guantanamo that now holds 650 prisoners, mostly captured in Afghanistan and alleged to be hard-core Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.

The screening of the prisoners, some of them there two years, has gone slowly; only about 80 have been returned to their home countries. ...

The administration has a still-evolving plan for military tribunals to try some of the prisoners, but none have been yet. And officials told the New York Times that if a prisoner was convicted by a tribunal and served a sentence, they might still hold the prisoner indefinitely. This would reduce the tribunal to a charade.

The Supreme Court, it appears, will eventually address all the major legal issues involving the Guantanamo detainees. In the meantime, Congress ought to provide stronger oversight of the Bush administration's legal improvisations involving those prisoners.

----

The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, on the legacy of Flight 800:

Fuel tank explosions on airliners have killed 346 people, including everyone aboard TWA Flight 800. That plane blew up just after it took off from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in 1996.

But the Federal Aviation Administration says that such accidents need never happen again, thanks to a technological breakthrough. FAA researchers have developed a system that replaces oxygen in center fuel tanks with nitrogen or another inert gas that does not produce flammable vapors.

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey called the innovation a major moment in the safety of aviation. ...

The FAA wants all new planes to be equipped with the system and is proposing a safety requirement that would compel airlines to retrofit existing Boeing and Airbus jets, beginning in 2006. ...

The FAA's decision to go forward with the new technology is reasonable, given the risk posed by oxygen in fuel tanks. ... The cost per plane is $140,000 to $220,000, and with 3,800 commercial jets involved, the total cost could be as high as $700 million.

Not surprisingly, the airline industry isn't rushing to embrace the idea. ...

Mr. Blakey said it would be irresponsible not to go forward with what he described as a practical solution. ... ---

GetAP 1.00 -- FEB 27, 2004 09:59:13 ;AP; ANPA ..r.. Editorial Roundup By The Associated Press= JP/

By The Associated Press= Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers around the world: --- This Day, Johannesburg, South Africa:

President Robert Mugabe's announcement on Monday night that he was not prepared to hold talks with the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, will have come as no surprise to most Zimbabweans. After all, putting MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai on trial for treason seems a strange way of negotiating. ... However, the news may come as more of a surprise to South Africans, who have been assured by President Thabo Mbeki that he is mediating between the ruling ZANU-PF and MDC to ensure they negotiate an end to the country's political deadlock. ...

By ruling out talks with the MDC leader, Mugabe raises some awkward questions for South Africa an its policy of "quiet diplomacy." Mbeki has lobbied the leaders of the Commonwealth and the European Union not to renew sanctions or the suspension of Zimbabwe on the grounds that these talks would soon happen.

If this is not the case, there are only two possible explanations.

One, South Africa has been duped all along by a recalcitrant dictator whose methods are increasingly at odds with Mbeki's vision of an African renaissance.

Two, the pretense of talks was a fig leaf disguising a policy by Pretoria to block a union-based opposition party and back Mugabe in his struggle to hold on to power despite increasingly undemocratic methods.

If the first is true, it makes South African diplomacy look naive.

If the second is true, Pretoria will need to find another fig leaf.

---

--- Daily Gleaner, Kingston, Jamaica, on coping with Haitian refugees:

Under its international treaty obligations and on a 'good neighborly' basis, Jamaica will have to take in Haitian refugees fleeing the political chaos in their country, but such an influx of asylum seekers could hardly come at a worse time. Jamaica is facing its own economic crisis and funds for taking care of refugees will be hard to come by without international contributions from large countries like the U.S., Canada and, especially, France which, as an ex-colonial power in Haiti's history, has a strong moral obligation to help find solutions for the present state of affairs.

If large numbers of Haitians do arrive in Jamaica, the cost of dealing with them could be enormous. There is not only the problem of shelter and food but the logistics of health care. Haiti is a country with a high incidence of diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis and we would need to be especially careful in how the refugees are screened and, if found to be unhealthy, how to keep the sick safely isolated. ...

In an election year, America will not welcome another flood of Haitian refugees into Florida where President Bush's brother is the Governor. Perhaps Jamaica could use diplomatic back channels to get the U.S. to cover the costs of any refugees we are forced to accept perhaps in some kind of secured encampment until normality is restored in their homeland.

There are some who feel that Jamaica, given its present state of crime and corruption, could well become another Haiti. Perhaps what is happening there is a providential warning of what we must avoid at all costs even as we extend a hand of friendship to those who have no choice but to flee their country. ---

Corriere della Sera, Milan, Italy, on debate over postwar Iraq:

Effective multilateralism, as rightly desired by the Europeans, will never be achieved if it is conceived as against the U.S.; nor will it be achieved without the U.S..

If Kofi Annan was asked whether he wanted the withdrawal of the coalition troops before taking action, he would reply ... that he needs security, that is, armed forces that the UN does not have.

In "robust" military missions, even those with a UN mandate, the UN cannot command.

It would be a waste of time to think about retracting forces today just to send them back tomorrow under a UN-NATO framework, which is what is hopefully being prepared.

Taking this reality into account and confronting it responsibly does not take anything away from legitimate opposition to the war -- perhaps it adds to it.

One of the important lessons of the war in Iraq could be to put an end to the era of ambiguity: the UN, the U.S. and Europe, are not in different worlds, they need each other.

But in order that this necessary relationship also produces results substantial reforms are necessary -- among which the definition of new criteria for the legitimate use of force. ---

--- MORE[

GetAP 1.00 -- FEB 27, 2004 09:59:00