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Leading News
Deadly road accident in Tangail
kills 20 people, injures 54
Staff Correspondent
A deadly road accident on the Dhaka-Tangail Highway at
Hatiya near Jamuna Bridge under Kalihati Upazila in
Tangail district left at least 20 people dead and 52 other
injured on Saturday morning.
According to police control room, Kalihati police station
and Tangail Sadr Hospital, the accident occurred when a
Dhaka bound over crowded passenger bus from Kurigram
turned turtle and skidded off the railway track at about
6am leaving 16 passengers dead on the spot and injuring 54
others while two other succumbed to their injuries on way
to Hospital. The injured passengers were rushed to the
Tangail General Hospital. Of the inured condition of five
were stated to be critical.
The accident occurred due to reckless driving the
officials said adding following the accident rail
communication on Dhaka-Dinajpur route had remained
suspended for three hours. Of the dead only seven could be
identified so far.
BNP loyalists would not sit with the govt
For formal dialogue if Khaleda not freed, says Delwar
M. Waliullah
With only 24 hours left for
the Election Commission's deadline for unity in BNP the
loyalists on Saturday asserted that they would join the
pre dialogue discussion but will not join formal dialogue
with government unless detained BNP chairperson is
released.
This was stated by the BNP Secretary General Khandaker
Delwar Hossain while 'Chhatra Dal leaders of the 80s'
marking their first anniversary called on him at his NAM
flat residence yesterday. "BNP would not take part in any
pre-designed elections. Simultaneously people would also
not accept any pre-designed election," Delwar told the
former student leaders.
However, the two factions of BNP are yet to reach any
consensus about taking part in the EC-sponsored dialogue
jointly as after two separate rounds of talks, CEC had
categorically said the Commission would have to take its
own decision should the factions not stand united within
72 hours deadline set by the EC.
"As the agents from north area (Uttar Para) are with us
and they are engaged in misguiding the leaders and
activities of BNP through various confusing, motivated and
fabricated statements, our main aim is to free our
chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia and other leaders," he
added.
As part of conspiracy, he said the party chairperson has
been sent to jail without any trail. "A conspiracy is now
being hatched against the BNP in a bid to break the party
into pieces. Earlier the conspirators tried but they had
failed. It would not be possible to rupture BNP into
pieces in future," BNP Secretary General said.
He said it is not possible to hold parliament election
keeping Begum Zia behind bar. "BNP is an election oriented
party. We would like to join the election under the
leadership of Khaleda Zia. Keeping two top ranked leaders
of the two major political parties BNP and Awami League
behind the bar, no election would be held," Delowar said.
Nazrul Islam Khan said without Begum Zia's decision BNP
would not sit with the government for dialogue or
participate in the general election.
"We will take part in pre-dialogue with the government and
also place our demand for immediate release of BNP
Chairperson. If the government does not respond to our
demand we would not sit with it for formal dialogue," he
said.
Hasina
readmitted to Sqaure Hospital
Five-member doctors examining her
Staff Correspondent
Detained Awami League President Sheikh Hasina - suffering
from multiple complications including acute ears' problem,
blood pressure and eyes problems - has been readmitted to
capital's Square Hospital on Saturday.
According to hospital sources, the former Prime Minister
was taken to hospital from the makeshift jail at
Parliament Complex at 8.40am yesterday as her health
condition got worse due to low blood pressure.
A 'five-member physicians' panel - out of the 12-member
team earlier formed led by Medicine Specialist Professor
Dr Sanwar Hossain examined her. Later she has been
admitted to the hospital at about noon.
Meanwhile, Hasina's personal assistant and also an AL
leader Dr Hasan Mahmud at a press briefing said, "I talked
to the doctors. Hasina has been admitted for treatment."
"We are not allowed to meet our parry chief, the
Government is playing hide-and-seek in the name of Sheikh
Hasina's treatment," he claimed. Dr Hasan demanded of the
Caretaker Government to ensure her proper treatment in the
United States after freeing her as early as possible.
On the other hand without release of detained Awami League
President Sheikh Hasina no election will be held in the
soil of Bangladesh, acting Awmi League President Zillur
Rahman said.
"Soon after arrest of Sheikh Hasina, Awami League leaders
and activists and people from all walks of life are
demanding her immediate release but the government is not
heading the issue. We want immediate release of Sheikh
Hasina her proper treatment. If the government does not
respond to our call, no election will be held in
Bangladesh," he said on the occasion of 37th anniversary
of Bangladesh Krishak League at his Gulshan residence.
Lack
of chain of command in govt administration
Staff Correspondent
The chain of command in administration has weakened due to
fight over promotion and posting of junior officers in key
positions of administration and the situation inherited by
the Emergency Government, still continues.
"The promotion of junior officers on political
consideration, lack of experience of official who are
holding important posts and frustration of a section of
senior officers who are deprived of promotion have
resulted in weakness in the administration, want of action
against offenders and lack of chain of command", said a
competent source at the Establishment Ministry.
Owing to irregularities in promotion at different times
during last BNP-Jamaat regime, around 1460 persons were
promoted to deputy secretaries against actual 830 posts.
As it becomes difficult to give posting to more than 600
deputy secretaries, the government created 230
supernumerary posts in 40 ministries. But as the
supernumerary posts are created for functioning as senior
assistant secretaries, the promoted deputy secretaries'
duties are only confined to sections of the ministries.
There is no rule and criteria to specifying who will be
given important duties of the ministry and who will be
assigned in the supernumerary posts. Maintaining lobbing
with superior officers, junior officers occupied important
duties of the ministries while senior officers are working
in supernumerary posts.
A high-up at the Establishment Ministry said, "As per
order of the Chief Adviser, the Establishment Ministry on
February 14 issued letter to different ministries asking
them to appoint senior officers in important duties and
junior officers in supernumerary posts. As the ministries
did not execute the order after one month, on March 17 the
Establishment Ministry again issued a letter and asked
them to ensure that the order is complied with by March
24. But most of the ministries have not executed the order
yet.
It is interesting to note that senior deputy secretaries
of the Establishment Ministry are not assigned to ministry
duty although that ministry issued the letter. Besides
ministries of communications, land, food, finance, cabinet
division, shipping and energy have not assigned senior
deputy secretaries to those ministry duties.
For distributing important duties on the basis of
seniority a vacuum in competency is being created as newly
assigned senior officers are too new to discharge their
duties efficiently.
The posts of secretary are suffering from a lack of
competency due to irregularities in giving promotion.
During the last government many officers of '81 BCS batch
were promoted to the post of secretary while many officers
of '79 batch are working in the lower posts of additional
secretaries. Meanwhile, although promotion has become due
much earlier and 50 posts are vacant, the officials of '82
batch have not been promoted to the post of joint
secretary.
No
political dialogue will be successful under emergency: BBC
Sanglap
Staff Correspondent
The much awaited dialogue between the political parties
and the government would not be able to end the current
political impasse if it is held under the state of
emergency, politicians observed at a BBC dialogue on
Saturday in the capital.
Speaking at the BBC dialogue organized by the BBC Bangla
Service in collaboration with BBC World service at the
Bangladesh China Friendship Conference Centre, BNP Joint
Secretary General and also former State Minister said, "
under the emergency, the dialogue with the political
parties would not be successful as some of the basic
political rights has been suspended, so it is not possible
for the political parties to share their thoughts under
this situation."
Replying to a query relating to the dialogue with the
government AL Organizing Secretary Mahmudur Rahman Manna
said, "the dialogue may be held but there would be no
positive out come from it. So the government should make a
congenial atmosphere by lifting the emergency. If the
government wants to hold a free and fair election to
establish a sustainable democracy, at first it must
withdraw the emergency to make for politics a favorable
environment in the country".
Asked about the pre-dialogue EC BNP meeting, Manna said, "
the main duty of the EC is to hold the general election,
not to work for unification of any party, why is the EC
imposing unity of a party."
Replying to a query regarding the meeting between Alem
Society and the government on the Women Development
Policy, Both BNP and AL leader criticized saying, " We are
surprised that the government did not take any action
against the people who brought out procession violating
the emergency , rather the government met with the leaders
of the Islamic parties and now it says that it would
suspend some provisions of the policy."
Diarrhoeal
situation is quite normal in city: ICDDR,B
UNB, Dhaka
Dismissing media reports
that the number of diarrhoeal patients is on the rise in
the city, authorities of the International Centre for
Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) on
Saturday said the situation is quite normal.
Dr Azharul Islam, the head of Short Stay Unit of ICDDR,B,
said 433 people visited ICDDR,B, with complaints of
stomach upset in the last 24 hours, which is a bit higher
than the usual number. "Usually, 350-420 people visit
ICDDR,B everyday in summer," he said. In winter, he said,
normally 200-250 people visit ICDDR,B, but the number goes
up in summer with the rise in temperature.
"But a section of media is giving a bad impression that
the diarroheal situation in the city is worsening fast,
but it's not true. Seeing our makeshift arrangements made
outside due to construction work inside our short stay
unit, they (Media) have started thinking that there is an
outbreak of diarrohea," Dr Azharul Islam, also a
diarrhoeal expert, told UNB.
Call
for government steps to prevent cardiac diseases
BSS, Dhaka
Speakers at a seminar on Saturday urged the government to
undertake a preventive cardiology programme and initiate a
coordination with the National Centre for Control of
Rheumatic Fever and Heart Diseases (NCCRF&HD) to help
prevent from cardio diseases in the country.
The preventive measure should be implemented by the NCCRF&HD
under the control of director general of health services
for coordinating the activity of collaborative hospital,
regional centre, medical colleges, district hospital and
upazila health complexes, they said.
They were speaking at a seminar on Preventive Cardiology
Programme: Bangladesh perspective organized jointly by the
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the NCCRF&HD in
Hotel Sheraton here.
Former adviser of the caretaker government Prof. Brig.
General (retd) Abdul Malik addressed the seminar as the
chief guest. Prof. Razia Sultana, Director of NCCRF&HD
chaired the seminar.
Prof. Abul Faiz, Director General of Health Services, Prof
KMHS Sirajul Islam spoke as special guests. Dr Md Mustafa
Zaman was the guest of honor.
Prof Brig (retd) Abdul Malik said the number of patients
suffering from heart diseases are gradually increasing in
the country, which is a great threat to the national
health.
The rate of heart diseases will increase to an alarming
level unless measures are not undertaken on time, he said
adding that the government has given priority to the
health sector and as part of it proper steps have also
been taken to prevent heart diseases.
As a national institution, the NCCRF&HD should play the
pioneering role in preventing cardiac diseases and it is
the demand of the time that the center would play its role
as the national center for preventing cardiac diseases, he
added.
Women
leaders, left parties denounce clerics' committee
bdnews24, Dhaka
Women leaders and leftist parties have come down hard
against recommendations by a committee of Islamic clerics
formed to review the proposed women's development policy.
Hamida Hossain, founder of Ain O Shalish Kendra, told
bdnews24.com on Saturday the recommendations of the Ulama
Review Committee were ridiculous. "Such recommendations
cannot be supported by any means."
The government last month formed an 18-member committee,
headed by the acting Khatib of Baitul Mukarram National
Mosque Maulana Nuruddin, to review the proposed policy.
Nuruddin submitted the committee's recommendations to the
government Thursday. Hamida Hossain questioned how a
committee like this could be formed.
"An evaluation committee needs representation of all
people concerned, which has not happened in this case."
The human rights lawyer said the government formulated the
policy in discussion with all and it should now think of
how the policy could be implemented.
"We don't support the so-called evaluation committee. It
is not a good effort by the government," said Ayesha
Khanam, president of Mahila Parishad. She said the quarter
opposing the policy has been against the development of
women for 50 years.
Ayesha Khanam called the proposed women's policy "a good
effort", saying it would go a long way to establish equal
rights in society.
She said the recommendations of the Ulama Review Committee
were politically motivated. "If the government accepts the
recommendations, the country will lag behind. Oppression
on women will rise."
Back Page
Vegetables and
fruits
exporters face difficulties
Staff Correspondent
Against the backdrop of
earning from horticulture export increased from US $ 17000
in 1973-1974 to US $ 40.53 million in 2006-2007, the
exporters are failing to compete with the global markets
due to various obstacles, said experts at a discussion on
'Export Programme of Fresh Food and Vegetables in
Bangladesh-Present Scenario, Problem and Prospects held at
BADC auditorium on Saturday.
Speakers said at present, total fruit growing area in the
country is about .186 million hectors. "Around 19.4
million homesteads cover about .45 million ha and grow
different types of fruits and vegetables. Bangladesh is
operating mostly in the overseas ethnic markets and its
customers are Bangladeshi origin. The major buyers of
these products are UK and Middle East. In the Middle East
the important outlets are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE,
Qatar, Bahrain and Oman," they added.
The experts said the production system of this fruits and
vegetables are not good. "Export of these items is facing
the absence of any direct linkage between the exporters
and the primary producers. So the produces are procured
through middleman," they said.
They said in general, orders from foreign buyers are
received before a few days of shipment and passed on to
the middlemen. They procure the produces from farmers and
arrange transportation of the same to Dhaka on the day of
shipment.
"Besides, air transportation is also the biggest obstacle
in fresh produce export because of acute shortage of air
cargo space. No regular cargo flight is operating from
Bangladesh," they said adding it is only the passenger
flights, which carry fresh produces and other perishable
cargo.
"Moreover, readymade garment appeared to be a serious
competitor of fresh produce in the matter of allotment of
air space in the passenger flights. As a result only 10
percent of total export of fresh produce is being exported
to upstream markets in EU, ME and South Asian countries,"
they added.
Foreign
companies destroy National Energy Resources
Staff Correspondent
Mineral resource experts have called upon the government
not to sign any agreement with the foreign companies about
gas, oil and coal in the greater interest of the country,
speakers said at a meeting on "Coal Policy, Oil-Gas
Exploration and National Interest" organized jointly by
the Citizens' Commission on Gas, Oil and Coal and
Bangladesh Economics Association at the National Press
Club in the city on Saturday.
Terming the country's growing dependence on the
international companies regarding gas and other mineral
resource development an anti-national step, they said, the
reliance on the foreigners will result in disastrous
consequences for Bangladesh in the long run. Bangladesh
will turn into a country without mineral resources soon if
her gas, oil and coal spheres are handed over to alien
companies, they warned adding that the country has already
witnessed controversial activities of different foreign
companies, like Cairn Energy, Oxidental and Niko.
Stressing the need for urgent coal extraction from
coalfield in order to solve the country's present and
future mineral fuel crisis, they said, a coal reservoir
was discovered in the country's north-western region
during the period from 1985 to 1997. But the government
did not formulate any policy to develop the resource.
Besides, the government is yet to take any planned
initiative to extract the huge amount of coal from the
mine, the experts said. In 1994, an agreement was signed
between the government and a foreign company about coal
extraction, ignoring the national interest and the trend
still continues, they observed. The foreign companies,
such as Niko, Oxidental and Coal Energy, caused huge
financial loss to Bangladesh through damaging the
country's Magurchhara Gast Field, Tengratila Gas Field and
Phulbari Coal Mine one after another, but no initiative
has so far been taken by any government of Bangladesh to
realize companisation from those multi-national companies,
the experts said.
Climate Change
Bangladesh needs long-term strategies
BSS, Dhaka
Experts and civil society leaders at a consultation
meeting in Dhaka on Saturday laid emphasised on
undertaking a long-term multi-sectoral adaptation
programme to face adverse impact of climate change
effectively as Bangladesh has become the worst vulnerable
country to climate change in the world.
They underscored the need for setting up a proficient
institutional body creating a block multi-donor climate
challenge grant fund to deal with the matter effectively.
The climate change issues should be incorporated in the
daily activities of all ministries and departments as well
as in all sphere of our national life as the issue has
emerged as one of the big challenges for Bangladesh, they
said. The consultation meeting with the civil society to
discuss two draft reports titled 'Bangladesh Climate
Change Strategy' and 'Financing Mechanism: Climate
Change', was jointly organised by Economic Relations
Division (ERD) and Ministry of Environment and Forest at
National Economic Council (NEC) conference room at
Sher-e-Bangla Nagar here.
Environment secretary AHM Reazul Kabir, ERD additional
secretary Mezba Uddin Ahmed, BIDS reseach director Dr M
Asaduzzaman, country director of IUCN Dr Ainun Nishat,
environment ministry joint secretaries Qamar Munir and
Rabindranath Roy Chowdhury spoke. Chief Editor of BSS,
Zaglul Ahmed Chowdhury, Forum of Environmental Journalists
of Bangladesh (FEJB) chairman Quamrul Islam Chowdury,
former UNESCAP environment division chief Dr Rezaul Karim,
BUET professor Rezaur Rahman, CFSD secretary Mahfuz Ullah,
academics, professionals, experts and members of civil
society members took part in the consultation. Dr Ainun
Nishat said, mainstreaming of climate change such as
community-based adaptation, sensitization, disaster
preparedness and mitigation needs to be intensified rather
than witnessing a tremendous loss of lives and property by
climate change.
Our common property resources including wetlands and
forests need to be preserved for safeguarding the
environment from unfavorable impact of climate change and
that is why an efficient institutional body must deal
climate change, Dr Nishat said.
Successful test of Pak long-range missile
AP/UNB, Islamabad
Pakistan successfully test-fired a long-range ballistic
missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead on Saturday,
the military said.
The Shaheen-2 missile was launched from an undisclosed
location and has a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,245
miles). The military said the missile has the capability
to carry conventional and non-conventional warheads.
Saturday's launch was witnessed by new Prime Minister Syed
Yousaf Raza Gilani, who congratulated the scientists and
engineers for "achieving an important milestone in
Pakistan's quest for sustaining strategic balance in South
Asia," the military said in a statement.
It quoted Gilani as saying that the defense needs of the
country would remain a "high priority" for his elected
government. Although Pakistan routinely tests various
versions of missiles in its arsenal, the latest one came
weeks after a new government, dominated by the party of
slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was installed
after winning elections in February. Pakistan became a
declared nuclear power in 1998 by conducting nuclear tests
in response to those carried out by neighboring India.
Crime
Man dies
in custody
UNB, Narayanganj
A man held suspecting his involvement in mugging died in
police custody allegedly of inhuman torture on Friday
night.
Refuting the allegation police said Fakir Chan, 28, in his
attempt to flee with hand-cuff was fatally wounded and
died on way to hospital.
A committee with additional police super Masud Karim was
formed to probe into the death of Fakir Chan.
He was arrested on April 12 in connection with mugging of
Tk 6 lakh in front of Godnyle branch of Sonali Bank on
April 6. Rahela Begum, wife of Fakir Chan, came to
Narayanganj Hospital with her three minor children on
hearing the news of death of her husband. She broke down
in tears and told newsmen that her husband was engaged as
transport worker in Moulvibazar. She could not meet him
since the arrest. Her repeated appeal to produce him to
court went in vain.
"I went to DB office with food for my husband on Friday
night but could neither meet him nor reach the food to
him. ASI Babul demanded Tk 50,000 as bribe that I could
not give. I waited till 9:00 pm and returned home in
frustration," said Rahela narrating her woes.
Alam Chan, a shop owner, squarely blamed the police for
torturing his brother to death and demanded a fair
inquiry. Locals said Fakir Chan was once believed involved
in inter-district ring of dacoits. Of late, he was known
dealing in phensidyl with Ali Naser, a resident of Mijmiji
under Siddirganj thana.n
Anti-crime talks
BSS, Rangpur
Speakers in an anti-crime meeting organised by Taraganj
upazila unit of Community Policing at Burirhat High School
ground on Friday asked for police-people mutual trusts and
cooperation in wiping out all sorts of social crimes.
They expressed the views in the meeting that was organised
as a part of the ongoing Community Policing programme
where government officials, members of the youth
community, teachers, professionals and public
representative and local elite were present.
With Chairman of Soyar UP Azizul Islam, the meeting was
addressed, among others, by Office-in-Charge of Taraganj
Thana Mokbul Hossain, member of the district unit of
Community Policing Alamgir Hossain, professor Mahbubar
Rahman, Upazila Muktijoddha Commander Ali Hossain and
Atiar Rahman.
They said community-policing system has been introduced at
each wards to resolve minor problems and disputes in the
villages and rooting out all sorts of social crimes
through police-people mutual cooperation and trusts.
They also urged all to cooperate police so that they can
provide better services to the people.
Father kills
2 daughters
UNB, Laxmipur
A cruel father slaughtered his two daughters at
Chargajaria in Ramgati upazila early Friday.
The victims were identified as Surma, 12, and Parvin, 7,
daughter of the Abul Kalam. Sources said Abul Kalam
slaughtered Sumar and Parvin and surrendered to police
soon after the murder. Police said the father might have
killed his two daughters due to abject poverty.
Two outlaws killed
in encounters
UNB, Dhaka
Two leaders of outlawed Purba Banglar Communist Party were
killed in separate encounters with RAB and police in
Kushtia and Naogaon districts on Friday night and
Saturday.
In Kushtia, regional leader of the outlawed party Abbas
Ali, 45, was killed in the shootout between police and his
cohorts at Kakiladaha village in Mirpur upazila Friday
night.
Acting on a tip-off that Abbas along with his cohorts were
holding a clandestine meeting in the area, police ghearoed
them at about 11:15 pm. Sensing danger the terrorists
opened fire on the law enforcers triggering the
gun-battle.
"Both sides exchanged around 30 rounds bullet and at one
stage Abbas was caught in the line of fire and died on the
spot," said a spot account of the incident.
Abbas was wanted in four murder and eight other criminal
cases. He was also sentenced to 20 years imprisonment by a
district court in 2003 in an arms case in absentia.
Police later recovered a homemade double-barreled gun and
five round bullets from the spot.
In Naogaon, regional commander of the same party and also
a local listed terrorist Sailal Hossain alias Hira, 42, of
Shafikpur village in Raninagar upazila, was killed in the
encounter with RAB at Bhatkoi village in the upazila on
Saturday.
RAB said being tipped off that Hira and other terrorists
gathered at a remote field in the area to hold a secret
meeting, a team of RAB-5 raided the area at about 4:30 am.
Soon after RAB reached Bashbari area in the village Hira
and his cohorts sprayed bullets on the elite force forcing
them to retaliate.
Hira was critically injured falling in the line of the
fire. He was taken to Raninagar Health Complex where the
duty doctors declared him dead. He was wanted in five
cases including two murders. Later, the elite force
recovered a shutter gun, two homemade guns, three bullets
and three sharp weapons from the scene.
Three get 10-yr jail
UNB, Magura
A court here on Thursday sentenced three people to 10
years imprisonment each for possessing contraband
phensidyl syrup.
The convicts were identified as Kamal Bhuiyan, 35, Sohrab
Ali, 34, and Sekandar Ali, 30. They were present in the
dock when the judgment was pronounced.
According to the prosecution, police arrested the convicts
along with 240 bottles of phensidyl syrup on January 12,
2005. After examining the records and witnesses, Joint
Sessions Judge Rahibul Islam pronounced the verdict.
Contractor
found dead
UNB, Satkhira
A first class construction contractor was found dead at
his office at Katia Amtala in the district town on
Thursday.
Police said on information they recovered the hanging body
of the contractor Abdul Majid, 50, from his office 'Majid
and Sons' in the morning. The body was sent to hospital
morgue for autopsy. Police said miscreants might have
hanged the body of Majid after strangulating him to death.
A case was filed.
Slaughtered
bodies recovered
UNB, Comilla
Slaughtered bodies of two youths were found at Nabiabad in
Debidwar upazila on the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway Saturday
morning.
On information by local people, police recovered the
bodies Faruqur Rahman, 30, son of Roushan Ali of Nabiabad
and Selim Hossain, 30, son of Nurul Islam of nearby
village and sent those to hospital morgue for autopsy.
Police said unidentified assailants slaughtered the two
youths when Faruqur along with his friend Roushan went to
the shallow machine room to pass the night on Friday.
Reason behind the killing could not be known immediately.
Another report from Laxmipur adds: Slaughtered body of a
young woman was found at Kazirchar village in Raipur
upazila Friday morning.
Police said local people found the slaughtered body of the
unidentified woman, aged around 25, lying on the bank of a
canal in the morning and informed them.
Later, police recovered the body and sent it to Sadar
hospital morgue for autopsy. Police suspected that
miscreants killed her after gang rape. A case was filed.
Artefact recovered
UNB, Dhaka
Two touchstone-made statues were recovered from Comilla
and Khulna on Friday.
In Comilla, a 64-kg idol of Hindu goddess Haraparvati was
recovered at Barera village in Chandina upazila Friday
afternoon.
Police said, farmer Ali Ashraf of the village found the
artefact while digging his cropland in the afternoon.
Later, police on information recovered the precious
artefact and took it to the their custody. The
archeologists estimated the value of the idol at around Tk
1 crore.
In Khulna, a 42-kg touchstone-made 'Shivalinga' of Hindu
god Shiva was recovered from the embankment of Bhairab
River in Rupsa upazila early Friday.
Police said a group of fishermen found the idol after it
was netted in their fishing net while catching fish in the
river at about 4:00 am.
Rupsa police on information recovered the precious idol
and kept it in their custody.
Later, the artefact was sent to the Khulna Divisional
Museum under the supervision of Deputy Commissioner Firoz
Alam.
Editorial
The ACC’s
Anti-corruption Drive
The
more the ACC investigates cases of corruption in depth, the
more is one astounded by the extent of moral degradation of
the Nation. Just the other day a member of the PSC,
responsible for selecting personnel for public service, was
found responsible for corruption and sentenced to 13 years of
imprisonment and a few days before that a High Court Judge and
a former adviser of a past Caretaker government was similarly
charged and sentenced to more than a decade of imprisonment.
Besides this the ACC is investigating allegations of
corruption in the only medical university of the Country, in
the department of Roads and Highways and in the Energy and
Power sector. Earlier the ACC had got after the politicians
and some of them have been charged and sentenced to terms of
imprisonment ranging upto 30 years! All this points to the
fact that every core institution of our State which include
the political Leadership, the Judiciary and the system of law,
the Bureaucracy and the system of Administration, the system
of Education and Learning and the Police and the system of
law-enforcement, have all been corrupted to an extent that
they have more or less been reduced to ineffectiveness at best
and disintegration at the worst. We had contended, in many of
our Editorials and in our columns that it is these Core State
Institutions which ought to have been reformed and if
necessary reconstituted in order to bring about qualitative
changes in the society, in the economy and in politics.
All through the year 2007, we have seen a strong
anti-corruption drive which appears to be petering out as the
Emergency Government approaches the end of its tenure. The ACC
had taken anti-corruption to public domain, to mass
mobilization against corruption that convey the voice of
people; tell their story of fighting corruption, their agony
for the effect of corruption and their laughter in integrity.
Fighting corruption has been a big challenge for our Country.
We have seen it, experienced it and sadly many have been
unfortunate victims of it, but in one small corner of our
heart we had always hoped for an honest society where everyone
weak or powerful, rich or poor, would have an equal chance of
living a happy life. The anti-corruption drives of the past
year had given us the confidence that no one is above the law.
With the spirit of Liberation within us, we had hoped to
re-build a Nation free of corruption and give our children a
much brighter future. Unfortunately this Emergency Government
paid little head to this and only managed to carryout some
cosmetic changes which are non-sustainable even in the short
term. This is quite evident from the directions the political
party-Government dialogue is taking; clearly the political
parties want a return to their laissez-faire way of running
Bangladesh, back to the era of loot and exploitation which has
all but destroyed our Polity and from which we had narrowly
escaped by taking refuge on the bridge of an Emergency backed
by the Army. Soon, by the end of this year, we will have to
step out of the bridge of Emergency and then we will be
face-to-face again with the demons of corruption and it is
doubtful whether we will ever again be in the same position of
curbing corruption or of handling it with the same
perspicacity as we had done during the last year and a
quarter.
Power Crisis and Bureaucratic Denial
Time
passes off, government changes, various developments take
place, but the tradition of bureaucratic denial game to
downplay or conceal truth relating to crises persists. This
was evident once again when Power secretary Dr. M. Faizul
Kabir Khan claimed on Wednesday that there was no crisis in
the power sector. This ridiculous claim came at a time when
the country is running huge short of power and many areas in
the capital itself are going without electricity and water for
hours every day. An online poll conducted by a national daily
on the following day revealed that 82.49 per cent people do
not agree with him. Moreover, newspaper reports say that
people in some areas of the capital, specially in the old city
get electricity for only two hours daily.
This shows how some bureaucrats try to conceal the grim facts.
What had prompted the power secretary to come out with such a
statement is best known to him. But that it was baseless
became clear from the remarks made by the Special Assistant to
the Chief Adviser for power Dr. Tamim Ahmed on Friday. At a
meeting in Khulna he said, presently the demand for
electricity in the country is 5000 mw daily while the average
production stands at 3900 mw. This clearly shows that even if
production at this rate is not hampered and supply is not
disrupted at all, the country faces a power shortfall of 1100
mw daily. Moreover, there are system loss and pilferages at
the transmission level which intensify the shortage of power
and force frequent load shedding much to the sufferings of the
people. If this is not considered as crisis, then what the
definition of crisis is, the power secretary should explain.
In fact, the last BNP- Jamaat government and the present
caretaker government have miserably failed to make any headway
in power generation while the demand for electricity has
increased largely over the last few years. Moreover, some of
the old power plants are unable to generate electricity in
full capacity or have gone totally out of operation. As a
result, a serious crisis has gripped the power sector and the
situation is deteriorating with the demand for electricity for
both domestic and industrial purposes mounting fast. Against
this backdrop, instead of trying to hide the unpleasant facts,
the administration should try to resolve the crisis by
ensuring proper utilization of the available electricity and
make all out efforts to attract investors for setting up new
power plants to enhance electricity generation.
Analysis
Behind Indian Olympic Glamour
The most astounding phenomenon about Indian
capacity to hide hard facts with publicity gimmicks is really
tremendous.
Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal
India,
a nation of contradictions not only in words and deeds, but in
reality and propaganda, could be proud of the fact,
notwithstanding its tall claims of economic recovery and
nuclear missile capability that it accounts for about 40 per
cent of the world's poor. That is, this democratic and secular
nation has kept the wedge not only between Hindus and Muslims
for Mosque and vote reasons, but also maintained clear
distance between the rich and the poor.
The most astounding phenomenon about Indian capacity to hide
hard facts with publicity gimmicks is really tremendous.
Indian media should take the prime claps for helping the state
and government to advance the "legitimate" national interests
of telling lies and hiding truth fairly ably.
As a result of this composite cooperation between legislature,
executive, judiciary and media, India is on the threshold of
starvation due to a lack of vision in the developmental
policy. Instead of focusing on basic needs, almost all nations
opt to invest interest in specific elements of society and
India is competing with the rest. Indians and the media worry
only about who would be the next beauty queen or who bought
which cricket team and what Pakistan and Bangladesh do or do
not do. They are happy to discuss the Indo-US nuclearism as a
matter of enormous pride.
Seldom, does one hear Indian government and people talk about
the plight of hapless Muslims in the country, about fulfilling
pledge given to the nation on Babri Mosque and about
reconstruction efforts of Babri Mosque, about policies of
helping the poor, about farmers or decreasing farmlands.
People also fail to realize that the food they consume is
sourced from them and government does not think that they have
a duty to address the legitimate concerns of Muslims in the
country and take them together.
Issues like Babri Mosque, Fundamentalism, Islamic Terrorism,
Pakistan, Kashmiri terrorism, cross-border-terrorism, etc., to
mention a few, have kept the Indian boat swimming with some
traditional music and goody folk tales to let the Indian boast
themselves of their great identity. But such fabricated
stories don't stay for ever, as facts have revealed now.
Sport is one major thrust that helps Indians forget abut the
real sickness of reality of inequality, horror and starvation.
Now the Olympics have provided another opportunity to hide the
crude Indian reality. The media are filled with emotional
stories about how New Delhi, the capital, is being fenced to
promote Olympics. The national capital was turned virtually
into a security fortress on April 17 for the Olympic torch
relay with thousands of policemen keeping a hawk-eye vigil to
prevent any attempts by Tibetans to disrupt the event. A large
number of security personnel, including Rapid Action Force men
armed with assault rifles, were deployed near Le Meridian
hotel, where the torch is reportedly kept, even as Tibetans
held a protest during the wee hours.
The security arrangements have been enhanced for Chinese
embassy, which has witnessed a number of protests in the last
few days, and hundreds of policemen were also keeping a tight
vigil at many other areas in the city. The relay will witness
70 celebrities including 47 sportspersons, who will run along
the Rajpath amid Republic Day-type multi-layered security. A
total of about 15,000 paramilitary along with police personnel
have been deployed across the city. Apart from that, India
also needs Chinese guards/commandos to protect the Olympic
torch.
Even before the start India has been kicked out of race in
hockey. Two goals within the first 10 minutes put them firmly
in front while pushing India on the back-foot and the current
scenario in the capital looks ridiculous. Scoring twice in the
first-half, Britain ended India's Olympic dreams with a 2-0
win in the final of the World Hockey qualifying tournament at
the Prince of Wales Country Club.
Eight-time gold medalists India thus have failed to make it to
the Olympics for the first time since their debut in 1928.
While the British players celebrated to the accompaniment of
the song "We are the Champions", the Indian, heads bowed,
shoulders slumped, could only watch the jubilant scenes of a
team that played smarter if not better hockey. This is not
only hockey, but this story could even be a prelude to many
backlashes in the ensuing Olympics.
Politics of Sports
It is a known fact that India over the years has taken cricket
and other sports more as trade products, rather than sources
of entertainment and skills. One fails to understand why so
much ado about nothing in the name of Olympics and causing
problems and concerns to citizens not only of New Delhi but
the entire nation. And many ask why India deliberately has
used Chinese security services also when it claims to have one
of the best security networks. Is it only to threaten the
Tibetans who are accommodated in India? Perhaps India tries to
gain access to some more international positions with Chinese
help.
Entire New Delhi drama looks like a desperate attempt to boost
the "morale" not of Indian players, but the people who are
sick of government's resistance for change; to change the
policies to redeem the poor from the lower deck of the
society. The whole burden of all this funfair and confusion
falls on the common people in the capital. Billions of dollars
are being pumped into sports in the name of excellence, but
number of poor people keeps rising incredibly. And yet, Indian
government is bent on doing what it has been doing for
decades. NO, India should change its attitudes. Earlier the
better!
(Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal is a Research Scholar at the
School of International studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University;
New Delhi)
Why the Russian bear has reasons to be
worried about NATO
Ever since the dismemberment of the Soviet
Union in 1991, the enlargement of Nato has also seen the EU
expanding on the economic front towards Russia's western and
southern borders in what may well seem like a two-pronged
operation to confront Russia.
M N Hebbar
A
LOT of the time in politics you have people look you in the
eye and tell you what's not on their mind. He looks you in the
eye and tells you what's on his mind", said US President Bush
at the just concluded Nato summit in Bucharest.
The allusion - a left-handed compliment - was to Russian
president Vladimir Putin, and what was on his mind were
several bones to pick with Nato , the most recent one being
its planned expansion to Georgia and Ukraine. The alliance's
obsession with pulling as many as it can into the club of the
West has hit a roadblock even if Russia's creeping influence
on its former satellites shaped the menacing subtext of this
summit.
The summit was almost a battle of legacies. Outgoing
presidents Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin stood up to each other
without producing an outright collision but the worrying theme
of the summit was not that the alliance was pointless but that
the old tune of countering Russia was still relevant. Worse,
Western Europe seems loath to do much about it.
In the event, Mr. Bush lost out on his blunt call for Nato
expansion to Georgia and Ukraine. Although America's Nato
allies have generally supported Mr. Bush, the sole display of
resistance came from German chancellor Angela Merkel who
successfully sought a delay in the induction of the two
republics into the alliance. Mr. Putin, on the other hand,
lost out when Nato committed itself to hosting the US defence
missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The choice of the monstrous Ceausescu palace, a symbol of the
notorious regime of the erstwhile communists, was a telling
commentary on the ongoing mission of Nato to defend European
democracy against the threat from the east. Its leaders
continued on their roll despite Russia's strong hints that a
decision by the West to entertain the membership applications
of Ukraine and Georgia to the Nato council would be tantamount
to a declaration of cold war.
Juxtapose this with what President Putin said at the Munich
security conference last year: " Nato expansion does not have
any relation with ensuring security in Europe. On the
contrary, it represents a serious provocation… and we have the
right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?"
The answer is blowing in the wind. Against the backdrop of
Russia being the only country in Europe (or in Central Asia)
that has been explicitly barred from Nato , the only possible
target implied by the alliance's "defensive" posture has to be
Russia itself. Every defence policy statement from Central
Europe makes clear that defence against Russia is the only
raison d'etre of Nato .
But if a spirit of peaceful co-operation between the West and
Russia is ever to be created, the leaders will have to think
much more deeply about the legitimate grievances that Nato 's
enlargement arouses in Russia.
Ever since the dismemberment of the Soviet Union in 1991, the
enlargement of Nato has also seen the EU expanding on the
economic front towards Russia's western and southern borders
in what may well seem like a two-pronged operation to confront
Russia.
While EU enlargement on its own could be seen as an economic
enterprise designed towards raising living standards in
Central and Eastern Europe, the spectre of Nato going about
its business of expansion in tandem, as it were, could not but
be a recipe for distrust and deep concern to the Russians.
So here we have a EU- Nato combine operating under the Bush
doctrine of continuous eastward expansion, advancing
relentlessly towards Russia's borders and swallowing up all
intervening countries, first into EU's economic and political
set-up and then into the Nato military structure. Russia would
hence be justified in perceiving this Nato 's explicit new
vocation to keep expanding until it embraces every
"democratic" country in Europe and Central Asia as a serious
threat at its doorsteps.
Western politicians are usually prone to dismiss such talk as
Russian national paranoia. But isn't it logical that the
Russians should worry about Western armies and missiles moving
ever closer to their borders? History books will show that
this territorial encirclement bears close similarity to what
Hitler and Napoleon attempted but failed to achieve.
And there is the West's feigned innocence in replying that no
Nato country would even dream of claiming an inch of Russian
soil. To which Russia would look in bafflement at the naivety
of its interlocutors and begin to articulate its own concerns.
Nato 's "defensive" posture, they assert, is a myth.
Russia has been provoked because there is an anti-Russian
motivation for joining Nato in the cases of Ukraine and
Georgia. It may be argued that Ukraine and Georgia are
justified in being hostile because Russia has been meddling in
their politics ever since they became independent in 1992. And
the main reason why both these countries are so eager to join
Nato is that they both contain regions that wish to secede.
Should these countries become members of Nato , it would
create a scenario where any perceived interference by Russia
in their internal affairs would have to be regarded by other
Nato members, including the US and Britain, as a declaration
of war! Go figure.
What is more, Russia can see no grounds for the US to turn
states on its borders into engines of American regional power.
By placing advanced military technology on Polish soil, Mr.
Bush expects Russians to take his word that he has only Iran
in his sights. Given the not-so-distant memories of Poland
when the Germans were in occupation of Warsaw, the image
conjured up in the Russian mind is a picture of Hitler
reassuring Stalin in 1940-41 that Luftwaffe reconnaissance
aircraft were only overflying Soviet territory by accident.
In the meanwhile, President Putin is being hailed in Moscow as
a diplomatic mastermind for dashing Washington's dream for
Ukraine and Georgia. Even if Ukrainian and Georgian admission
to Nato were morally justifiable on the basis of Western
democratic values, Russians would still see it as a blatantly
hostile act.
Nato may well have committed a geopolitical blunder by
choosing the wrong ground to confront Russia's anti-democratic
leadership. By agreeing to place US missiles in Poland and the
Czech Republic, Nato has given the Kremlin the perfect excuse
to further cement its autocratic rule.
But has the summit done anything at all to address genuine
Russian concerns? Nyet!
M N Hebbar is a Berlin based writer
Source: www.khaleejtimes.com
Comment
Something happening in Damascus
There's something
happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man
with a gun over there, Telling me I got to beware....
Those are the opening lines to a popular Vietnam era hit by
Buffalo Springfield, though they could just as well be
describing the political situation in Syria today.
Indeed, there seems to be some confusion as to what exactly
has been happening in Damascus these past few days. Some
observers say that Assef Shawkat, the head of Syrian military
intelligence, who is also the brother-in-law of President
Bashar Assad, and quite possibly the second-most powerful man
in Syria, has been placed under house arrest. At least this is
what former Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam, now out of
favor with the Damascus regime, told al-Mustakbal TV.
Khaddam, who has been living in exile in Paris ever since he
discovered democracy shortly after the assassination of former
Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, told the Beirut-based
television channel that Shawkat has been under house arrest
for his participation in the killing of Imad Mughnieh, the
Hezbollah commander, who was considered by numerous
intelligence agencies as one of the world's most dangerous
terrorists.
Khaddam, according to the same report, said that the fate of
Assad's brother-in-law would be similar to that of another
former inner circle high ranking official, Ghazi Kanaan, who
according to Syrian authorities, committed suicide in October
2005. Or as one observer put it, "he was suicided."
Meanwhile, Syrian opposition sources report a variety of
rumors regarding both Shawkat and his wife Bushra, the
president's sister. She has been reported as having been seen
in the French capital where she asked for, and was refused,
political asylum. Other reports have sighted her in Dubai.
The pan-Arab newspaper As-Sharq al-Awsat quotes official
authorities as saying Bushra and her husband have not
requested asylum in France. This of course contradicts reports
from Kuwaiti newspaper Assiyaseh; and Khaddam who remains
adamant that serious strife persists within the presidential
palace in Damascus.
Professor Joshua Landis' respected and usually well informed
blog site, Syria Comment, has published the following, part of
what he calls an "intelligence circular that companies pay
lots of money for."
The report states that Syria initiated secret contacts with
the U.S. administration of George W. Bush last month under the
auspices of Turkey. The Syrian side that met with U.S. envoys
in Ankara was headed by Shawkat. It would appear that Shawkat
proposed to withdraw Syrian support from Hezbollah in Lebanon
for two years in return for a freeze on preparatory work for
the future International Penal Tribunal on the assassination
of Hariri.
Shawkat was accused of overstepping his powers and placing
Syria's strategic alliance with Iran at risk. The report goes
on to say that Shawkat is being gradually eclipsed by the
chief of the Presidential Guard and brother of the president,
Maher Assad.
As the song says, there's something happening here. But it
ain't exactly clear.
Source: www.middleeasttimes. com
Viewpoints
The
Case Against the West
The West is understandably reluctant to accept
that the era of its domination is ending and that the Asian
century has come.
Kishore Mahbubani
There
is a fundamental flaw in the West's strategic thinking. In all
its analyses of global challenges, the West assumes that it is
the source of the solutions to the world's key problems. In
fact, however, the West is also a major source of these
problems. Unless key Western policymakers learn to understand
and deal with this reality, the world is headed for an even
more troubled phase.
The West is understandably reluctant to accept that the era of
its domination is ending and that the Asian century has come.
No civilization cedes power easily, and the West's resistance
to giving up control of key global institutions and processes
is natural. Yet the West is engaging in an extraordinary act
of self-deception by believing that it is open to change. In
fact, the West has become the most powerful force preventing
the emergence of a new wave of history, clinging to its
privileged position in key global forums, such as the UN
Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank, and the G-8 (the group of highly industrialized states),
and refusing to contemplate how the West will have to adjust
to the Asian century.
Partly as a result of its growing insecurity, the West has
also become increasingly incompetent in its handling of key
global problems. Many Western commentators can readily
identify specific failures, such as the Bush administration's
botched invasion and occupation of Iraq. But few can see that
this reflects a deeper structural problem: the West's
inability to see that the world has entered a new era.
Apart from representing a specific failure of policy
execution, the war in Iraq has also highlighted the gap
between the reality and what the West had expected would
happen after the invasion. Arguably, the United States and the
United Kingdom intended only to free the Iraqi people from a
despotic ruler and to rid the world of a dangerous man, Saddam
Hussein. Even if George W. Bush and Tony Blair had no
malevolent intentions, however, their approaches were trapped
in the Western mindset of believing that their interventions
could lead only to good, not harm or disaster. This led them
to believe that the invading U.S. troops would be welcomed
with roses thrown at their feet by happy Iraqis. But the
twentieth century showed that no country welcomes foreign
invaders. The notion that any Islamic nation would approve of
Western military boots on its soil was ridiculous. Even in the
early twentieth century, the British invasion and occupation
of Iraq was met with armed resistance. In 1920, Winston
Churchill, then British secretary for war and air, quelled the
rebellion of Kurds and Arabs in British-occupied Iraq by
authorizing his troops to use chemical weapons. "I am strongly
in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes,"
Churchill said. The world has moved on from this era, but many
Western officials have not abandoned the old assumption that
an army of Christian soldiers can successfully invade, occupy,
and transform an Islamic society.
Many Western leaders often begin their speeches by remarking
on how perilous the world is becoming. Speaking after the
August 2006 discovery of a plot to blow up transatlantic
flights originating from London, President Bush said, "The
American people need to know we live in a dangerous world."
But even as Western leaders speak of such threats, they seem
incapable of conceding that the West itself could be the
fundamental source of these dangers. After all, the West
includes the best-managed states in the world, the most
economically developed, those with the strongest democratic
institutions. But one cannot assume that a government that
rules competently at home will be equally good at addressing
challenges abroad. In fact, the converse is more likely to be
true. Although the Western mind is obsessed with the Islamist
terrorist threat, the West is mishandling the two immediate
and pressing challenges of Afghanistan and Iraq. And despite
the grave threat of nuclear terrorism, the Western custodians
of the nonproliferation regime have allowed that regime to
weaken significantly. The challenge posed by Iran's efforts to
enrich uranium has been aggravated by the incompetence of the
United States and the European Union. On the economic front,
for the first time since World War II, the demise of a round
of global trade negotiations, the Doha Round, seems imminent.
Finally, the danger of global warming, too, is being
mismanaged.
Yet Westerners seldom look inward to understand the deeper
reasons these global problems are being mismanaged. Are there
domestic structural reasons that explain this? Have Western
democracies been hijacked by competitive populism and
structural short-termism, preventing them from addressing
long-term challenges from a broader global perspective?
Fortunately, some Asian states may now be capable of taking on
more responsibilities, as they have been strengthened by
implementing Western principles. In September 2005, Robert
Zoellick, then U.S. deputy secretary of state, called on China
to become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international
system. China has responded positively, as have other Asian
states. In recent decades, Asians have been among the greatest
beneficiaries of the open multilateral order created by the
United States and the other victors of World War II, and few
today want to destabilize it. The number of Asians seeking a
comfortable middle-class existence has never been higher. For
centuries, the Chinese and the Indians could only dream of
such an accomplishment; now it is within the reach of around
half a billion people in China and India. Their ideal is to
achieve what the United States and Europe did. They want to
replicate, not dominate, the West. The universalization of the
Western dream represents a moment of triumph for the West. And
so the West should welcome the fact that the Asian states are
becoming competent at handling regional and global challenges.
THE MIDDLE EAST MESS
Western policies have been most harmful in the Middle East.
The Middle East is also the most dangerous region in the
world. Trouble there affects not just seven million Israelis,
around four million Palestinians, and 200 million Arabs; it
also affects more than a billion Muslims worldwide. Every time
there is a major flare-up in the Middle East, such as the U.S.
invasion of Iraq or the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, Islamic
communities around the world become concerned, distressed, and
angered. And few of them doubt the problem's origin: the West.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq, for example, was a
multidimensional error. The theory and practice of
international law legitimizes the use of force only when it is
an act of self-defense or is authorized by the UN Security
Council. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq could not be justified
on either count. The United States and the United Kingdom
sought the Security Council's authorization to invade Iraq,
but the council denied it. It was therefore clear to the
international community that the subsequent war was illegal
and that it would do huge damage to international law.
This has created an enormous problem, partly because until
this point both the United States and the United Kingdom had
been among the primary custodians of international law.
American and British minds, such as James Brierly, Philip
Jessup, Hersch Lauterpacht, and Hans Morgenthau, developed the
conceptual infrastructure underlying international law, and
American and British leaders provided the political will to
have it accepted in practice. But neither the United States
nor the United Kingdom will admit that the invasion and the
occupation of Iraq were illegal or give up their historical
roles as the chief caretakers of international law. Since
2003, both nations have frequently called for Iran and North
Korea to implement UN Security Council resolutions. But how
can the violators of UN principles also be their enforcers?
One rare benefit of the Iraq war may be that it has awakened a
new fear of Iran among the Sunni Arab states. Egypt, Jordan,
and Saudi Arabia, among others, do not want to deal with two
adversaries and so are inclined to make peace with Israel.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah used the opportunity of the
special Arab League summit meeting in March 2007 to relaunch
his long-standing proposal for a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, the Bush
administration did not seize the opportunity -- or revive the
Taba accords that President Bill Clinton had worked out in
January 2001, even though they could provide a basis for a
lasting settlement and the Saudis were prepared to back them.
In its early days, the Bush administration appeared ready to
support a two-state solution. It was the first U.S.
administration to vote in favor of a UN Security Council
resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian state,
and it announced in March 2002 that it would try to achieve
such a result by 2005. But here it is 2008, and little
progress has been made.
The United States has made the already complicated
Israeli-Palestinian conflict even more of a mess. Many
extremist voices in Tel Aviv and Washington believe that time
will always be on Israel's side. The pro-Israel lobby's
stranglehold on the U.S. Congress, the political cowardice of
U.S. politicians when it comes to creating a Palestinian
state, and the sustained track record of U.S. aid to Israel
support this view. But no great power forever sacrifices its
larger national interests in favor of the interests of a small
state. If Israel fails to accept the Taba accords, it will
inevitably come to grief. If and when it does, Western
incompetence will be seen as a major cause.
NEVER SAY NEVER
Nuclear nonproliferation is another area in which the West,
especially the United States, has made matters worse. The West
has long been obsessed with the danger of the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. It
pushed successfully for the near-universal ratification of the
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons
Convention, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
But the West has squandered many of those gains. Today, the
NPT is legally alive but spiritually dead. The NPT was
inherently problematic since it divided the world into nuclear
haves (the states that had tested a nuclear device by 1967)
and nuclear have-nots (those that had not). But for two
decades it was reasonably effective in preventing horizontal
proliferation (the spread of nuclear weapons to other states).
Unfortunately, the NPT has done nothing to prevent vertical
proliferation, namely, the increase in the numbers and
sophistication of nuclear weapons among the existing nuclear
weapons states. During the Cold War, the United States and the
Soviet Union agreed to work together to limit proliferation.
The governments of several countries that could have developed
nuclear weapons, such as Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Japan,
and South Korea, restrained themselves because they believed
the NPT reflected a fair bargain between China, France, the
Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States (the
five official nuclear weapons states and five permanent
members of the UN Security Council) and the rest of the world.
Both sides agreed that the world would be safer if the five
nuclear states took steps to reduce their arsenals and worked
toward the eventual goal of universal disarmament and the
other states refrained from acquiring nuclear weapons at all.
So what went wrong? The first problem was that the NPT's
principal progenitor, the United States, decided to walk away
from the postwar rule-based order it had created, thus eroding
the infrastructure on which the NPT's enforcement depends.
During the time I was Singapore's ambassador to the UN,
between 1984 and 1989, Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador
to the UN, treated the organization with contempt. She
infamously said, "What takes place in the Security Council
more closely resembles a mugging than either a political
debate or an effort at problem-solving." She saw the postwar
order as a set of constraints, not as a set of rules that the
world should follow and the United States should help
preserve. This undermined the NPT, because with no teeth of
its own, no self-regulating or sanctioning mechanisms, and a
clause allowing signatories to ignore obligations in the name
of "supreme national interest," the treaty could only really
be enforced by the UN Security Council. And once the United
States began tearing holes in the fabric of the overall
system, it created openings for violations of the NPT and its
principles. Finally, by going to war with Iraq without UN
authorization, the United States lost its moral authority to
ask, for example, Iran to abide by Security Council
resolutions.
Another problem has been the United States' -- and other
nuclear weapons states' -- direct assault on the treaty. The
NPT is fundamentally a social contract between the five
nuclear weapons states and the rest of the world, based partly
on the understanding that the nuclear powers will eventually
give up their weapons. Instead, during the Cold War, the
United States and the Soviet Union increased both the quantity
and the sophistication of their nuclear weapons: the United
States' nuclear stockpile peaked in 1966 at 31,700 warheads,
and the Soviet Union's peaked in 1986 at 40,723. In fact, the
United States and the Soviet Union developed their nuclear
stockpiles so much that they actually ran out of militarily or
economically significant targets. The numbers have declined
dramatically since then, but even the current number of
nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia can wreak
enormous damage on human civilization.
The nuclear states' decision to ignore Israel's nuclear
weapons program was especially damaging to their authority. No
nuclear weapons state has ever publicly acknowledged Israel's
possession of nuclear weapons. Their silence has created a
loophole in the NPT and delegitimized it in the eyes of Muslim
nations. The consequences have been profound. When the West
sermonizes that the world will become a more dangerous place
when Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the Muslim world now
shrugs.
India and Pakistan were already shrugging by 1998, when they
tested their first nuclear weapons. When the international
community responded by condemning the tests and applying
sanctions on India, virtually all Indians saw through the
hypocrisy and double standards of their critics. By not
respecting their own obligations under the NPT, the five
nuclear states had robbed their condemnations of any moral
legitimacy; criticisms from Australia and Canada, which have
also remained silent about Israel's bomb, similarly had no
moral authority. The near-unanimous rejection of the NPT by
the Indian establishment, which is otherwise very conscious of
international opinion, showed how dead the treaty already was.
From time to time, common sense has entered discussions on
nuclear weapons. President Ronald Reagan said more
categorically than any U.S. president that the world would be
better off without nuclear weapons. Last year, with the NPT in
its death throes and the growing threat of loose nuclear
weapons falling into the hands of terrorists forefront in
everyone's mind, former Secretary of State George Shultz,
former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, and former Senator Sam Nunn warned in
The Wall Street Journal that the world was "now on the
precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era." They argued,"
Unless urgent new actions are taken, the U.S. soon will be
compelled to enter a new nuclear era that will be more
precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically
even more costly than was Cold War deterrence." But these
calls may have come too late. The world has lost its trust in
the five nuclear weapons states and now sees them as the NPT's
primary violators rather than its custodians. Those states'
private cynicism about their obligations to the NPT has become
public knowledge.
Contrary to what the West wants the rest of the world to
believe, the nuclear weapons states, especially the United
States and Russia, which continue to maintain thousands of
nuclear weapons, are the biggest source of nuclear
proliferation. Mohamed El Baradei, the director general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, warned in The Economist in
2003, "The very existence of nuclear weapons gives rise to the
pursuit of them. They are seen as a source of global
influence, and are valued for their perceived deterrent
effect. And as long as some countries possess them (or are
protected by them in alliances) and others do not, this
asymmetry breeds chronic global insecurity." Despite the Cold
War, the second half of the twentieth century seemed to be
moving the world toward a more civilized order. As the
twenty-first century unfurls, the world seems to be sliding
backward.
IRRESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDERS
After leading the world toward a period of spectacular
economic growth in the second half of the twentieth century by
promoting global free trade, the West has recently been
faltering in its global economic leadership. Believing that
low trade barriers and increasing trade interdependence would
result in higher standards of living for all, European and
U.S. economists and policymakers pushed for global economic
liberalization. As a result, global trade grew from seven
percent of the world's GDP in 1940 to 30 percent in 2005.
But a seismic shift has taken place in Western attitudes since
the end of the Cold War. Suddenly, the United States and
Europe no longer have a vested interest in the success of the
East Asian economies, which they see less as allies and more
as competitors. That change in Western interests was reflected
in the fact that the West provided little real help to East
Asia during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. The entry
of China into the global marketplace, especially after its
admission to the World Trade Organization, has made a huge
difference in both economic and psychological terms. Many
Europeans have lost confidence in their ability to compete
with the Asians. And many Americans have lost confidence in
the virtues of competition.
There are some knotty issues that need to be resolved in the
current global trade talks, but fundamentally the negotiations
are stalled because the conviction of the Western "champions"
of free trade that free trade is good has begun to waver. When
Americans and Europeans start to perceive themselves as losers
in international trade, they also lose their drive to push for
further trade liberalization. Unfortunately, on this front at
least, neither China nor India (nor Brazil nor South Africa
nor any other major developing country) is ready to take over
the West's mantle. China, for example, is afraid that any
effort to seek leadership in this area will stoke U.S. fears
that it is striving for global hegemony. Hence, China is lying
low. So, too, are the United States and Europe. Hence, the
trade talks are stalled. The end of the West's promotion of
global trade liberalization could well mean the end of the
most spectacular economic growth the world has ever seen. Few
in the West seem to be reflecting on the consequences of
walking away from one of the West's most successful policies,
which is what it will be doing if it allows the Doha Round to
fail.
At the same time that the Western governments are
relinquishing their stewardship of the global economy, they
are also failing to take the lead on battling global warming.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to former U.S. Vice
President Al Gore, a longtime environmentalist, and the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms there is
international consensus that global warning is a real threat.
The most assertive advocates for tackling this problem come
from the U.S. and European scientific communities, but the
greatest resistance to any effective action is coming from the
U.S. government. This has left the rest of the world confused
and puzzled. Most people believe that the greenhouse effect is
caused mostly by the flow of current emissions. Current
emissions do aggravate the problem, but the fundamental cause
is the stock of emissions that has accumulated since the
Industrial Revolution. Finding a just and equitable solution
to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions must begin with
assigning responsibility both for the current flow and for the
stock of greenhouse gases already accumulated. And on both
counts the Western nations should bear a greater burden.
When it comes to addressing any problem pertaining to the
global commons, such as the environment, it seems only fair
that the wealthier members of the international community
should shoulder more responsibility. This is a natural
principle of justice. It is also fair in this particular case
given the developed countries' primary role in releasing
harmful gases into the atmosphere. R. K. Pachauri, chair of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argued last
year, "China and India are certainly increasing their share,
but they are not increasing their per capita emissions
anywhere close to the levels that you have in the developed
world." Since 1850, China has contributed less than 8 percent
of the world's total emissions of carbon dioxide, whereas the
United States is responsible for 29 percent and Western Europe
is responsible for 27 percent. Today, India's per capita
greenhouse gas emissions are equivalent to only 4 percent of
those of the United States and 12 percent of those of the
European Union. Still, the Western governments are not clearly
acknowledging their responsibilities and are allowing many of
their citizens to believe that China and India are the
fundamental obstacles to any solution to global warming.
Washington might become more responsible on this front if a
Democratic president replaces Bush in 2009. But people in the
West will have to make some real concessions if they are to
reduce significantly their per capita share of global
emissions. A cap-and-trade program may do the trick. Western
countries will probably have to make economic sacrifices. One
option might be, as the journalist Thomas Friedman has
suggested, to impose a dollar-per-gallon tax on Americans'
gasoline consumption. Gore has proposed a carbon tax. So far,
however, few U.S. politicians have dared to make such
suggestions publicly.
TEMPTATIONS OF THE EAST
The Middle East, nuclear proliferation, stalled trade
liberalization, and global warming are all challenges that the
West is essentially failing to address. And this failure
suggests that a systemic problem is emerging in the West's
stewardship of the international order -- one that Western
minds are reluctant to analyze or confront openly. After
having enjoyed centuries of global domination, the West has to
learn to share power and responsibility for the management of
global issues with the rest of the world. It has to forgo
outdated organizations, such as the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, and outdated processes, such as
the G-8, and deal with organizations and processes with a
broader scope and broader representation. It was always
unnatural for the 12 percent of the world population that
lived in the West to enjoy so much global power.
Understandably, the other 88 percent of the world population
increasingly wants also to drive the bus of world history.
First and foremost, the West needs to acknowledge that sharing
the power it has accumulated in global forums would serve its
interests. Restructuring international institutions to reflect
the current world order will be complicated by the absence of
natural leaders to do the job. The West has become part of the
problem, and the Asian countries are not yet ready to step in.
On the other hand, the world does not need to invent any new
principles to improve global governance; the concepts of
domestic good governance can and should be applied to the
international community. The Western principles of democracy,
the rule of law, and social justice are among the world's best
bets. The ancient virtues of partnership and pragmatism can
complement them.
Democracy, the foundation of government in the West, is based
on the premise that each human being in a society is an equal
stakeholder in the domestic order. Thus, governments are
selected on the basis of "one person, one vote." This has
produced long-term stability and order in Western societies.
In order to produce long-term stability and order worldwide,
democracy should be the cor |