Agreement in Bolivia pushes Constitutional Assembly forward, political crisis in Colombia, referendum in Ecuador, Argentina-Venezuela bilateral agreements, Bush’s visit to Latin America, the decriminalization of abortion in Portugal, Prodi, Electoral campaign in France and Middle East are some of the issues in “A look of the world”.


Agreement in Bolivia pushes Constitutional Assembly forward
Political crisis in Colombia
Referendum in Ecuador
In Mexico: “Sin maíz no hay país”
Argentina-Venezuela bilateral agreements
Bush’s visit to Latin America
U.S. –the early fight for the White House
The decriminalization of abortion in Portugal
Prodi
Electoral campaign in France
Serbia discharged of genocide charges
Russia raises the tone with the West
Middle East
Darfur and the first measures by the International Criminal Court
Elections in Senegal
Pilot tests for “One U.N.”
WHO’s stance on generic drugs disputed
WTO’s concern with the environment
Shanghai Stock Exchange plunges and scares the world

Agreement in Bolivia pushes Constitutional Assembly forward

Ater a long period in which debates concerning the new Constitution of Bolivia were brought to a near standstill owing to an impasse over the quorum for passing each individual item, whether with 2/3 of the votes or 50% + 1, a compromise was reached between the ruling party (MAS) and the opposition parties.

Passage of an item will require two thirds of the voting. If a quorum fails to be met, there will be an attempt to resolve the impasse through the writing committee, which is to seek a consensus draft that will be referred to the floor for a second voting. Should the deadlock persist, the item in question will be submitted to a popular referendum.

The deadline for the approval of the new Constitution is the month of August of 2007, a date many doubt will be kept since nothing has actually been approved so far.

Starting in December, the past months have been the toughest yet to the Evo Morales administration. In addition to having to stand up to the traditional center and right wing parties over the issues of regional autonomy and the quorum for the approval of the Constitution, the government also had to deal with some grassroots’ organizations to the left of the political spectrum, which have mobilized to criticize the government, namely the COMIBOL miners and the Civic Committee of Camiri.

COMIBOL miners staged riots and attempts to expel informal workers from those mining areas previously leased by the State, the police intervened and the clashes that ensued resulted in deaths and injured. The Civic Committee blockaded for a whole week a road that leads to Argentina in protest for the Evo administration’s “nationalization” policy, which they deemed ineffective for not having expropriated foreign companies.

The regions where the MAS has the most popular support, like El Alto and Cochabamba, have mobilized on several occasions in defense of the government and against the right wing autonomist movement’s attempts. This has helped the government to negotiate in a better situation, both on the left, with the “camireños” in order to lift the blockade, and on the right, to unblock discussions on the Constitution.

Political crisis in Colombia

The arrest on charges of involvement with “Paramilitary Groups”, on February 15, of Senator Álvaro Araújo of the parliamentarian delegation that supports the Uribe government reignited the political crisis initiated in 2006, immediately prompting the resignation of former Foreign Relations Minister Maria Consuelo Araújo, his party peer and sister.

Since last year Colombia’s Supreme Court of Justice has been conducting a series of investigations into the connections between, on the one hand, government officials and parliamentarians and, on the other, the “United Self-Defenses of Colombia” (AUC), the country’s ultra right wing paramilitary groups, with regard to, mainly, electoral campaign funding and other electoral forms of support.

Charges that the government had connections with the paramilitary had surfaced at the time Uribe was elected to his first term of office, yet now there are concrete investigations underway and a total of six senators and three deputies have been detained.

Two AUC main leaders, Salvatore Mancuso and Vicente Castaño, declared that they controlled 30% to 35% of the Colombian Congress, which, if true, is tantamount to some 30 senators and 60 deputies and, hence, the number of those arrested would still be small. For that reason, there is no mood for voting any matter, not even those matters of interest of the government as the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the USA (Read more).

Referendum in Ecuador

On February 13, the Ecuadorian Congress approved a call for a referendum due on April 15, whereby the population will decide on whether a National Constituent Assembly is to be convoked. The decision was sent to the country’s Supreme Court so that the Judiciary may take the measures required for the referendum to take place.

The decision was regarded as a victory for the new president, Rafael Correa, who had proposed the referendum during his electoral campaign. However, only 58 out of a total 100 deputies voted the matter, a majority being in favor. In late January, a popular mobilization to pressure Congress members to support the referendum ended up with the expelling of parliamentarians who were in the premises of Congress.

In spite of Correa’s victory and popularity –still high, with 84% of respondents in favor of the President–, there is still a long road ahead since the low quorum during the session that approved the referendum confirms the incumbent congressional representatives’ systematic opposition against the government.

Moreover, Ecuador’s main political party –the PRIAN– filed a petition questioning the Supreme Court’s decision and exonerated four judges. The Court’s reaction was to annul the election of all PRIAN members and call their substitutes to replace them under the argument of justice obstruction.

Good for Correa. The point now is to see, once the Constituent Assembly is called, if the popular mobilization that has thus far backed the president, will also translate into a majority of parliamentarians attuned with the country’s much needed changes.

Another position adopted by Correa during the electoral campaign was that of not renewing a lease agreement that allows U.S. military to use the Manta Base facilities until 2009. In this regard, an initiative that materialized in the World Social Forum in Nairobi is the holding of the International Conference for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases, due March 5–9, in Quito, Ecuador. The organizers of the event –a network of nearly 300 civil society organizations– stated that there exist 737 foreign military bases worldwide, 95% of which believed to be American. The event has the support of the mayor of Quito, Paco Moncayo, of the Democratic Left party, who in the last presidential elections supported candidate Jaime Roldós in the first round and Rafael Correa in the second.

In Mexico: “Sin maíz no hay país”

Under the slogan above (There is no country without corn!) Mexicans protested against the Calderón government’s decision to raise corn prices and, therefore, the price of Mexico’s staple –the tortilla.

At the origin of the problem lies the NAFTA, which flooded the Mexican market with cheap (on account of subsidies) American corn, ultimately leading to the bankruptcy of the once strong Mexican agriculture, now ironically dependent upon grain imports from the United States.

Besides exporting corn to Mexico, the U.S., among other applications, also uses the grain to produce ethanol. With the recent announcement made by the Bush administration of the government’s intention to replace 20% of the gasoline consumed in the U.S. for ethanol, corn prices rose dramatically, which further injured its neighboring country.

The Calderón government has reacted with extreme violence to the protests, while caught in the dilemma of taking measures to appease the population’s demands and championing free trade, the NAFTA and other neoliberal tenets, embraced by its party, the PAN, and the incumbent president’s predecessor, Vicente Fox.

It seems that this new episode will further weaken a government whose legitimacy is already disputed given the way it was elected, and that insists on backing and implementing policies that no longer find support in a majority of countries in the continent.

Argentina-Venezuela bilateral agreements

The two countries’ presidents, Kirchner and Chávez met in the city of Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela, leaving the venue with a broad agenda of bilateral accords, in particular the signing of a memorandum of understanding toward the creation of the Bank of the South, a proposal that had been presented by President Hugo Chávez some time ago.

The argument for the Bank seems quite logical: “Why [should we] put the resources of our foreign exchange reserves in the banks of the developed countries instead of investing them here in our own development? […] Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil have reserves of US$ 150 billion so it is perfectly feasible that they should allocate several billion dollars to the new regional entity”.

The Bank arising from this bilateral initiative is open to new adhesions by other countries, and has a 120-day timeframe to establish itself and start capturing resources. One of the first projects to be funded is possibly the Bolivian-Argentinean leg of the Gas Pipeline of the South.

Kirchner’s vision is that the Bank of the South should back “all those investments targeting [the] productive reconversion, social inclusion, [and] physical integration” of South America and the “global development of strategic projects”. Moreover, he added that “the stronger and the smaller” should have access to the bank, which should not be selective but, rather, “solidarity-driven”, for if it is “just another financial entity, it will have failed”.

Argentina-Venezuela bilateral relations have converged both politically and by a scaling up of the trade between the two countries and other economic relations. In October 2006, the Venezuelan government purchased Argentinean foreign-debt bonds worth US$ 337 million, an operation recently followed by another US$ 649-million deal.

It was a good deal for both countries since Argentina has had limited access to international funds, and Venezuela has an excess of liquidity in the form of accrued reserves stemming from higher oil prices. The Kirchner government is proposing another 3-billion-dollar transaction to Venezuela, which would help Argentina settle a 5-billion-dollar debt with the IMF maturing this year. (Read more in Banco del Sur representa una alternativa para la economía de América Latina.)

Bush’s visit to Latin America

U.S. President George Bush visited, in March, five Latin-American countries: Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. The initiative drew significant international attention, as this continent had never been among the U.S. government’s foreign policy priorities ever since Bush’s first presidential inauguration in early 2001. The purpose of the visit, the itinerary chosen and the official agenda are justifiable, in spite of the few concrete proposals.

During Bush’s second term of office there was a restructuring in foreign policy steering, with the dismissals of the more moderate former secretary of State Colin Powell and Bush’s more radical aides as Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. These changes also reflected upon the structure of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, responsible for U.S.-Latin America relations, where a more pragmatic Assistant Secretary of State, Thomas Shannon, took office replacing a right wing extremist predecessor, Roger Noriega. Former national security advisor and incoming Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is halfway between Powell and the fundamentalist group that was guiding Bush’s foreign policy.

The visit had the main aims of improving Bush’s image abroad, seriously hampered by the invasion of Iraq and his refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol, and strengthening the president domestically by focusing on the discussion regarding scaling up ethanol production, which, the case of the U.S., is produced from corn. The prospect of replacing part of the consumption of gasoline for alcohol would also look good in face of the world’s concern with global warming, a phenomenon to which the U.S. is a chief contributor. One last purpose would be the strengthening of his foreign policy toward Latin America.

In this sense, the itinerary was consistent: personally dialoguing with the leftist administrations of Brazil and Uruguay to show his openness; signing a memorandum of understanding with Brazil to advance a partnership in the production of ethanol, though not attempting to facilitate Brazil’s alcohol exports to that country; and visiting Colombia, its main ally in the Andean America, whose government is facing a serious political crisis, Guatemala, where presidential elections are due this year and, finally, Mexico, a country which, in addition to being its main trade partner in the continent, has a government facing serious credibility issues at home and internationally.

In the case of Uruguay, where an investment accord with the U.S. may be implemented, the Brazilian government took the initiative of organizing a visit by President Lula, prior to Bush’s, to discuss with President Tabaré Vásquez measures to bolster that country’s position inside the Mercosul, given the current trade deficit Uruguay has with Brazil, in addition to pressure made by Argentina for Uruguay to suspend the construction of a pulp and paper mill, by Botnia, along the Uruguay River.

U.S. –the early fight for the White House

Presidential election –due in 2008– opinion polls released in the last days of February all had in common good news for Barack Obama, one of the Democrat candidates seeking the Party’s presidential nomination.

A recent article published in the Washington Post stated there was a 9-percentage-point growth in voting intentions for Obama among the black constituency in relation to the support given to Hillary Clinton, the other front-running Democratic Party pre-candidate. One month ago, it was Hillary who had 40 points ahead of Obama in the African-American community. (Read more)

These figures corroborate Obama’s efforts to conquer the black population’s votes at a juncture when the American black movement is discussing the extent to which he would represent African-Americans and his commitment to the Afro-descendant community, as he is the son of an African father and a white mother, and not descended from African slaves brought to the country.

The discussion has been widely covered by the American media with the aim of reducing Obama’s favoritism and weakening him in a contest that precedes in at least one year the Democratic Party’s choice for its representative in the struggle for the White House.

The media is allowing plenty of space to arguments advocating that Obama is not an Afro-descendant, by the standards of the black movement, while Fox News TV network, owned by Rupert Murdoch, aired that he had studied at an Islamic school during his childhood spent in Indonesia. The fact was denied with great uproar a few days later by CNN, with pictures of his secular school without any sort of reference to Islam.

The religious element has been very much present in the campaign of one of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, a practicing Mormon, whose great-grandparents were polygamous even after the practice was denounced by the Mormon Church and banned by the U.S. Constitution.

The same FOX News has declared in its programs that the release of such information is part of a conspiracy led by the liberal media to undermine a candidacy with good prospects of success. Romney’s staffers, however, have been working hard to create the image of a respectable citizen, a family father who has been married to the same woman for over 40 years, in an attempt not to spur more resistance against the candidate inside the evangelical movement, the Republican Party’s main power base.

Yet, Janet Parshall’s web site, one of the evangelical movement’s most popular radio hosts, conducted a survey in which 48% of respondents stated that Romney’s religious option would seriously affect his candidacy.

Some other Republicans standing good chances in the party’s primaries are former mayor of New York City Rudolph Giuliani and Senator John McCain of Arizona, defeated in the 2004 party’s primaries by Bush, who announced at the February 27 David Letterman Show that his campaign is set to start in the month of April. The announcement had been expected since last year because McCain declared on several occasions that he saw no reason not to run for the Republican nomination for the presidential race.

On the Democrats’ side, besides Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, also running is former Senator John Edwards, who was the vice-presidential candidate in the Kerry-Edwards ticket in 2004. Al Gore, in the meantime, only follows from a distance, enjoying the success of his documentary on global warming.

It is worth stressing, however, that the primaries that will choose each party’s presidential candidates will only take place in the second term of 2008, with still plenty of time ahead for new contestants to join in the race and, for those presently running, to quit or be forced to leave the contest.

Yet what is really at stake now is campaign fundraising, which is the only importance opinion polls have now. Obama has managed to gain the support of former Clinton endorsers like movie industry entrepreneur David Geffen, who, together with his partners at Hollywood’s DreamWorks, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, organized a fund-raising cocktail with admission at US$ 2,300 per head. (Read more on the 2008 Democratic Party Convention web page and on the 2008 Republican Party Convention official site. For updates on the U.S. 2008 electoral campaigns, see also the Nation’s Blog Campaign Matters and the New York Times’ blog the Caucus.)

The decriminalization of abortion in Portugal

On February 11 2007, Portugal took a historical step by deciding in a referendum for the decriminalization of abortion medical procedures in this overwhelmingly Catholic country.

In 1998 a consultation had been held, with the “no” winning by 50.91%, with a non-turnout of 68.06% of the 8.7 million voters, prompting the formal annulment of the process in accordance with the Portuguese law. According to that country’s legislation, for a referendum to be valid it must have the participation of more than 50% of all eligible voters.

This year’s question on the voting ballot was, “Do you agree with the decriminalization of the voluntary interruption of pregnancy if the same is performed by option of the woman, within the first 10 weeks and in a legally authorized health establishment?”

Though lower than in the previous referendum, again there was a higher-than-fifty-percent voters’ abstention rate: in this case, 56.3%. Yet, and despite the lower-than-required quorum to render the referendum formally valid, this time around the “Yes” victory with 59.2 % of the votes was encouraging enough for a group of political parties to propose amending the legislation.

The 1984 Portuguese code imposes sentences of up to 3 years’ confinement to a woman who accepts to undergo illegal abortion and from 2 to 8 years to the doctor who performs it, but allows abortion within the first 12 weeks of gestation in case of rape or risk to the mother’s life or health.

After the referendum, the Socialist Party, the Portuguese Communist Party, the Greens and the Leftist Block came together to propose to the Portuguese Parliament a new law to replace the old one. The submission of the new text was done in late February, and the government has 60 days to decree Portugal’s abortion bill.

According to the proposal subscribed by the four Portuguese parties, the Penal Code shall include another situation wherein abortion will not punishable: “by option of the woman, in the first ten weeks of pregnancy”. (For more, log on to the government of Portugal’s web site and the Portuguese Parliament web site.)

Prodi

Italy’s Prime Minister Prodi attended Senate and Chamber of Deputies sessions a few weeks before carnival to submit his government plan to vote, being defeated in the Senate by one vote, despite is one-vote majority over the right wing coalition. The Unione coalition “nay” votes that were added to those of the right came, for different reasons, from a senator from the Communist Refoundation (PRC) and from a Green Party senator.

The right voted against the program for an obvious reason: upholding its systematic opposition against the new government. The votes of the dissident senators were attributed to two items included in Prodi’s foreign policy program: the maintenance of the Italian troops in Afghanistan and the broadening of the American base located in Vicenzo.

The PRC is a dissidence of the Italian Communist Party from the time the latter party was renamed the Democrats of the Left (PDS), now simply the DS. It supported the first Prodi administration in 1996, when his Olivo coalition won, but in 1998 the PRC voted against Prodi’s budget proposal, prompting the prime minister’s resignation and replacement by DS’s Massimo D’Alema. Later on, D’Alema would also lose his majority in Congress and new elections were called, and won by Berlusconi, who retook the office he was to lose once again last year.

The PRC participation in the present government coalition was the fruit of much internal debating and viewed as the only alternative to defeat the more radical right represented by Berlusconi. Although the party was not entirely in agreement with the government’s plan submitted to the Parliament’s approval, it had decided to express its disagreements but vote favorably to avert a crisis that could lead to Berlusconi’s return should new elections be called. Dissident Senator Franco Turigliatto had his party affiliation suspended in compliance with the PRC statutes that establish that parliamentarians may express their disagreement but must uphold party decisions taken.

The Foreign Affairs Minister is Massimo D’Alema, one of the leaders of the Democrats of the Left (DS), is in favor of withdrawing the Italian troops stationed in Iraq, yet advocates maintaining those in Afghanistan. He argues that in the latter country the coalition is under the command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), composed mostly of European countries and a withdrawal would mean abandoning Europeans and not the U.S., as in the case of Iraq.

Modernizing the Vicenzo base would look as a positive gesture toward the United States; yet the base will eventually be returned.

At any rate, Prodi’s reaction was to resign the post, transferring the decision of reconducting him to the post or calling new elections to the President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano. His position was to propose that Prodi should continue at the head of the government provided he won a vote of confidence in the senate and the chamber.

Prodi discussed a 12-point list with members of his coalition to be carried forward as the government’s priorities. It was also defined that should future divisions arise that are not decided within the party, that the final decision would be his. Thus the necessary number of votes was reached in both houses.

Prodi’s problem is not with the coalition’s left but with its right wing sectors, especially those coming from the old Christian Democracy, paradoxically his own party of origin. In this case, divergence regards those economic and social aspects of the government’s plan, the distribution of posts and the scope of a new political party being gestated with DS members and other sectors situated at the center of the coalition’s political spectrum.

Prodi managed, however, to strengthen his position, and the crisis that was looming as well as Berlusconi’s return was averted. For now. (Read more in Italy’s Prodi gets key support for a return and in Berlusconi says his opposition bloc will back Prodi to ensure Italy stays in Afghan mission).

Electoral campaign in France

France’s first-round presidential election due on April 22 is set to go, with the second round taking place on May 6. Candidacies registered in February were those of Dominique Voynet of the leftist Green Party, Jean – Marie Le Pen of the ultra right wing National Party and François Bayrou of the center Union for French Democracy.

To enter the contest candidates need a minimum of 500 signatures by elected political representatives in not fewer than 30 of the country’s departments (mayors and parliamentarians), which usually is not difficult to attain for parties with some structure. With this criterion, 14 candidates became eligible in comparison to the 40 that manifested their intention to take part in the last election in 2001. Therefore, only if a candidate decides to quit or fails to obtain the required support, will there be any changes in the present scenario.

In addition to the candidates aforementioned are also competing Nicolas Sarkozy of the Unity for a Popular Movement, Ségolène Royal of the Socialist Party, Olivier Besancenot of the Revolutionary Communist League, Arlette Laguiller of the Workers’ Struggle, Gerard Schivardi of the Workers’ Party, Marie-George Buffet of the French Communist Party and José Bove of the Anti-Liberal Alliance.

Candidates also unveiled their programs, with those better ranked in the opinion polls –in decreasing order, Sarkozy, Ségolène, Bayrou and Le Pen– getting the most media attention.

Ségolène Royal, the candidate running for the Socialist Party, undertook a comprehensive consultation on the Internet over those points that should be included in her government’s program, which were later further refined in a series of discussion.

Everything seems to indicate that she has already managed to unite those candidates that ran in the primaries against her, including former Prime Minister Leonel Jospin, who did not take part in the primaries, but came to be considered as a potential candidate.

Ségolène is in second in the polls, trailing a few points behind Sarkozy, who is trying to come to grips with an unanticipated problem.

Nicolas Sarkozy, apart from being a minister, is the mayor of Neuilly’s district in Paris, where he purchased a € 876,000 upmarket apartment at a 35-percent discount. Besides the discount, the former owner allegedly offered to renovate the apartment at no cost, which all together represented an economy of some € 300,000. Last year the apartment was sold for € 2 million, earning him a high profit. Despite his vehement denials, the transaction suggests he might have been favored by the property’s contractor.

For this reason and on account of the candidate’s arrogance, which is also potentially dangerous, it seems the right is devising a plan B in support of the candidacy of Bayrou, who is viewed as an alternative with a non ideological rhetoric, hovering above the right and the left. There are polls showing that he could be an alternative for the right in the second-round run-off election since his candidacy has been growing over the past weeks, placing him now together with Ségolène Royal’s Socialist Party and Sarkozy’s Union for French Democracy.

Apparently, the rhetoric of the alternative to the traditional left-right contest, dubbed “Ségo/Sarko”, has been advantageous to him. We will have to wait for the confirmation of all candidacies on April 1 and the French electorate’s willingness to turn out at the polls to be able to venture a prognosis.

Serbia discharged of genocide charges

By a 13-2 decision, the UN International Court of Justice exempted Serbia from the charge of having promoted genocide and acts of ethnic cleansing during the war in Bosnia, between 1992 and 1995, based on grievances brought to that court by the Bosnian government. Had Serbia been found guilty, this would have opened up the possibility of thousands of reparations.

The Court’s ruling, however, does not deny the genocide or cleansing but rather reaffirms both processes, in particular with regard to the execution of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, but charges Serbian military and not the government, since it considered there was no evidence that the government was aware or had ordered the crimes.

Nevertheless, the International Criminal Tribunal has ordered the Serbian government to detain some of those responsible for the wrongdoings such as leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander Ratko Mladic, who are still at large.

Russia raises the tone with the West

On February 10, in a speech delivered at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Russia’s President Putin heavily attacked the U.S. foreign policy.

The tone of the speech came as a surprise, yet Russian complaints seem easy to understand. In the first place, the U.S. is considered responsible for the changes that took place in the early 1990s, in the aftermath of the demise of “real socialism” in Eastern European countries, changes that catapulted several countries out of the orbit of Soviet/Russian influence. Compounding that, eight countries have already joined the European Union and some of them the Western security system, NATO, under the leadership of the United States.

Today, the EU borders Russia and several of its allied countries in many areas, as in the Baltic, Central Europe and the Balkans, which has increased its political influence on countries like Ukraine, Georgia and others which demonstrated an interest in becoming less Eastern and more European.

Though Russia sees this as a threat to its security, the EU itself does not wield so much power because to date it has failed to establish an effective and consistent security policy. Its decision to join a NATO force, rather than a United Nations force that would have been vetoed by China and Russia, to attack Serbia in connection with the Kosovo conflict ruled out any possibility of a common security policy.

On the other hand, by not establishing its own security policy, the EU will always be dependent on the United States security policy.

The last straw for the Russians was the recent American decision to install missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, supposedly to intercept attacks from Middle East countries like Iran.

From the Russian standpoint, pulling out both countries from its sphere of influence, integrating them into the European Union, associating them to NATO and on top of that installing American missiles in their territories was just too much.

The toughened rhetoric also owes to Russia’s presidential elections next year, when Putin is determined to make his successor.

Middle East

With the civil war in Iraq still escalating, the government of the United States is increasingly interested in the activities of one of that country’s neighbors: Iran. In relation to the nuclear issue, the U.S. is trying to convince the UN Security Council to approve further sanctions to force Tehran to suspend its nuclear technology development program.

The Americans have also been accusing Iran of involvement in the war by providing agents and arming Shiah militias in Iraq. On February 17, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell , testifying before the Senate, accused Iran of manufacturing weapons, transporting them into Iraq and training Iraqi military personnel to use them, further adding that a linkage between these activities and the country’s leadership was “probable”. More information

The year has barely begun and U.S President George W. Bush has declared that Iranians in Iraq were subject to being detained by the U.S. Army and an Iranian embassy in northern Iraq was stormed and five Iranians made prisoner. Information collected in that operation was cited in McConnell’s hearing. Moreover, in 2006 a “listening station” was set up in Dubai to serve as an American embassy for Iranian exiles. (More information).

American journalist Seymour Hersh, famous for having reported two of the last decades’ greatest U.S. military scandals, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the torture practices inside the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison, wrote in the latest edition of the New Yorker magazine that the White House is shifting its strategy in the Middle East to face Iran, Syria, and the Shiah organizations of the Hezbollah in Lebanon and Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army in Iraq

The journalist claims that U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan are responsible for the shift in strategy. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at a session of the U.S. senate in January confirmed “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East””. She pointed out the region’s divide over two groups of countries, reformist and extremist, which will get differentiated treatment.

Included in the first group are the Sunni States of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. hired Saudi Sunni paramilitary to fight the Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to the journalist. (More information)

While Bush is apparently doubling his wager by pointing a finger at Iran too and scaling up the American military presence in Iraq with the deployment of another 21,000 troops, Prime Minister Tony Blair announces a reduction in the number of British military personnel in Iraq and the possibility of a full withdrawal by 2008.

The announcement is related to the forthcoming elections to the British Parliament, possibly due in 2008, since Labour would likely be bruised if British soldiers were still stationed in Iraq, an extremely unpopular cause in England. In spite of his alignment with Bush, Tony Blair has perceived that, with a Democratic majority running the U.S. Congress, the American policy for Iraq will change, and perhaps even more so after the results of the next U.S. presidential election. (Read more in IRAQ: More Troops, And More Violence and POLITICS-IRAN: Defiant but Weighing the Cost of UN Sanctions.)

Darfur and the first measures by the International Criminal Court

Although Sudan is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), just like other countries, the United States included, the humanitarian crisis in that African country received an important mention in the proceedings of that body.

According to one of the ICC’s prosecutors, Luis Moreno Ocampo, a Sudan government minister, Ahmed Muhammed Harun, a close ally of President Omar al-Bashir, is suspected of having helped to recruit, arm and fund the Janjaweed militia.

Claims against the minister, currently in charge of the Humanitarian Affairs portfolio and former head of the Ministry of the Interior, responsible for Sudan’s western region where Darfur is situated, fill a 94-page document. Besides Harun, the leader of the Janjaweed, Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a.k.a. Ali Kushayb, is also accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Only ten of the fifty-one accusations do not name the two suspects. These are the “big shots”, but expectations are that more suspects will be indicted soon.

The document states that there is enough evidence to bring charges against Harun and Kushayb for crimes involving murder, rape, torture and persecution.

Prosecutor Ocampo’s presentation was made after a 21-month investigation carried out in Darfur and was celebrated as an important step so that the International Court of Justice at The Hague may try the suspects.

However, the court, which has no enforcement power, faces difficulty in obtaining the custody of the accused. Sudan’s Minister of Justice Mohammed Ali al-Mardi rejected the allegations and stated that his government will not surrender suspects to the authorities at The Hague. Harun is a member of President Bashir’s inner circle and one of the leaders of the ruling National Party Congress.

Since 2004, the Human Rights Watch has been documenting the responsibility of the Sudanese government in the crimes committed in Darfur. In the document “Entrenching Impunity” there is a description of the government’s strategy to use civilians and military personnel to recruit, support and coordinate the Janjaweed militias. (Read more in the study by the Human Rights Watch on Darfur and in ICC Prosecutor Presents Evidence on Darfur Crimes.)

Elections in Senegal

Senegal became independent from France in 1960. One of the masterminds of the independence, poet Leopold Senghor, was the first president and was successively reelected until 1981, when Abdou Diouf replaced him.

During his successive administrations, only three political parties were allowed to function: Senghor and Diouf’s Senegalese Socialist Party (PSS), the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), a democratic-liberal party whose main leader was Abdoulaye Wade, and the Marxist Leninist African Party for Independence (PAI). Later on, a multi-partisan system was introduced with the aim of dividing the opposition.

A former British enclave in Senegal, Gambia became independent in 1965. There were several attempts to unite the two countries, and even a new name was chosen for the new country: Senegambia. Yet, in practice, mainly because of the opposition made by Gambia’s leaders, the plan was never fulfilled.

The PSS ruled for 40 years, with a PDS candidate, in the person of Abdoulaye Wade, being elected for the first time in 2000, after he had spent 26 years trying. Now he was reelected in the first round in the poll held on February 25, described by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as showing some problems but free of frauds. The 80-year-old Wade received the majority of his votes in 13 of the 35 counties that compose the country, obtaining 56.08% of all valid votes.

Since his first inauguration, Wade has lost many allies, some of whom he faced in the polls. Two of them –Moustapha Niasse and Idrissa Seck– served as prime ministers in his administration. Another contender, Ousmane Tanor Dieng, was prime minister during the former president’s term of office –Abdou Diouf of the Socialist Party of Senegal. (Read more on the official web site of the government of Senegal and of the Socialist party of Senegal.)

Pilot tests for “One U.N.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s term starts with a major overhauling in sight. A new management model for the UN agencies is to be piloted in eight countries starting this year.

Albania, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uruguay and Vietnam were the countries that offered to test the challenges of unifying the work of the countless UN agencies, operating in each country with a single program and budget. The United Nations Development Group (UNDG) will evaluate the experience in 2008 and, if results are positive, the intention is to have other countries adopt the model.

At first, agencies involved in the test are the UNDP (United Nations Development Program), UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund), UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women), UNV (United Nations Volunteers program), and UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS). Other agencies, funds and programmes will follow suit.

The initiative, whose aim is to avoid redundant programs and reduce the agencies’ operating costs, is being called One U.N. and is based on the document “Delivering as One”, published in November last year, the product of discussions held since 2005 by the United Nations system, donor countries and the government of Vietnam, the first country to accept taking part in the pilot test. (Read more in “Delivering as One”.)

In addition to testing the organization’s structure, Ban Ki-Moon decreed the end of the transition period between his and Kofi Annan’s tenures, appointing, in late February, North-American diplomat Lynn Pascoe to the post of under-secretary for political affairs.

The former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia will replace the Nigerian Ibrahim Gambari in one of the UN’s most prominent posts. Apart from Indonesia, where he had been since 2004, Pascoe was at his country’s missions in the former Soviet Union, in China and as Director of the American Institute in Taiwan.

The announcement was made by Ki-Moon’s chief-of-staff, the Indian Vijay Nambiar, who took the occasion to announce other appointments to high posts within the organization, choices according to him based on each one’s capabilities and taking into account gender and geographical distribution issues.

In addition to the North-American, a Chinese, Sha Zulang, was appointed to occupy the office vacated by Colombian José Antonio Ocampo as under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs. Sha was a special representative of the government of China to the UN office in Geneva, and most of his professional experience focused on disarmament issues and in the fields of social and economic development, particularly within the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The Japanese Kiyotaka Akasaka will occupy the office left by the Indian Shashi Tharoor as Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, and the Egyptian Muhammad Shaaban is the new Under-Secretary-General for General Assembly Affairs and Conference Management. Shaaban was the National Coordinator for Reform Initiatives in the Middle East and assistant to the Foreign Ministry of Egypt.

This was the first time an American was ever appointed to a high-ranking U.N. office. Pascoe’s appointment was a recommendation of the U.S. government, confirming information leaked prior to the official announcement. The highest post that had ever been occupied by an American in the UN structure was a 15-year office in the administrative area.

The Bush administration relinquished this post in expectation of securing control of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which supervises 100,000 UN Peacekeeping Forces and a budget of nearly five billion dollars.

Despite his U.S. alignment, Ban Ki-Moon upheld the permanence of the unit’s incumbent director, Jean-Marie Guehenno. The latter has already stated that, provided the Assembly General approves the motion, he intends to divide the department in two so that another under-secretary-general, for an office still to be created, coordinates logistics.

WHO’s stance on generic drugs disputed

Elected last November, Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization, (See International Periscope 9), after only two months in office has received strong criticism form civil society organizations and humanitarian organizations for her positions on generic drugs.

Such strong reaction was in response to comments made by Dr. Chan, the first Chinese ever to head a UN agency, whereby she advocates that countries should be cautious in offering compulsory licenses to break patents in order to be able to produce cheaper generic drugs until a point of equilibrium is reached between quality and quantity.

The implications of Dr. Chan’s comments, plus those made on other occasions when she expressed her admiration for the pharmaceutical industry, undermine the struggles by developing countries and advocacy groups to break the patents of drugs such as those used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS.

The WTO has provided for patent-breaking compulsory licenses since 2001, and countries have a permission to issue them to meet the demands of a public health emergency. Yet, in the eyes of the social movement, the WHO seems to be ever more close to the pharmaceutical industry, a status for which the U.S. is mostly accountable.

Last year, before Dr. Chan took office, the U.S. harshly criticized the organization for having been a party to a publication that criticized U.S. trade policies, exposing ways of exploiting the flexibility inherent to the WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to gain access to cheaper medication.

According to activists, the agency’s incumbent director’s position denies the WHO history of struggling for access to medication and seeking loopholes in the TRIPS with the purpose of benefiting public health.

WTO’s concern with the environment

With the U.N. report on global warming still fresh in the people’s minds, ninety Ministers of the Environment convened a meeting of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya, last February.

Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), who declared that his organization is ready to prioritize the environment on the negotiations agenda, followed the meeting attentively.

According to Lamy, when the WTO was created in 1995, the question of sustainable development was already on the agenda, while the current Doha Round talks first introduced environmental goals to multilateral trade. For him, Doha’s contribution is to permit more efficient resource allocation at a global scale, including natural resources, through the continuous elimination of trade barriers (tariffs and subsidies).

Thus, still according to Lamy, Doha would arguably allow an improved interaction between the WTO and the Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), with the promise of breaking barriers on the trading of clean technologies and services as well as reducing subsidies to farming practices harmful to the environment. Lamy said, “The world must forge ahead with these negotiations as fast as it possibly can. Not because the negotiations are going to save the world’s environment. But because they are the very modest start that the international community has agreed to make to address environmental challenges through the prism of trade”.

The WTO in partnership with the ILO also published an empirical study on the relation between trade and employment, which was very well received by the international labour movement because it represents the acknowledgement that the two factors are related from the point of view of the economy. Moreover, if they are interrelated, why not focus again on the relation between trade and labour rights? This theme will certainly raise further discussions.

Shanghai Stock Exchange plunges and scares the world

In the last week of February, Stock Exchanges throughout the globe saw their listed companies’ share prices fall as a ripple effect of a more dramatic loss of the Shanghai index, in an indication that the Chinese economy was going through turbulence.

The meltdown began when rumors that the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, scheduled to meet the following week, would adopt economic measures designed to set up more controls on the country’s capital flows.

The decisions announced by the Central Committee were not to that effect, although one of them established equal treatment for national and foreign investments, since the latter had been favored until then. The bulk of the decisions focused on strengthening the Chinese internal market framework by establishing new rules facilitating the creation of local private companies, boosting investments in social programs and increasing military spending in 2007 by 17.8%, or 2.2% of the country’s GDP.

On the same date, Allan Greenspan, the former FED chairman, forecast that the American economy was closer to a recession as a result of the low 2.2 percent GDP growth, a figure which had just been released in spite of more optimistic outlooks, further contributing to the havoc.

It is worth recalling that China’s economy is in transition to a mixed economy, driven by market forces to some extent, yet with the government still exerting tremendous influence. For example, China holds hard currency reserves of US$ 1 trillion, 75% of which believed to be invested in U.S. Treasuries, that showcases how intertwined both economies are, besides the huge and chronic U.S. trade deficit with China; in a nutshell, whatever happens in one of these countries, reverberates in the other.

An initiative currently being studied by Chinese authorities is to create a national investment agency to manage the allocation of these reserves.

The actual problem, however, is the speculative-driven volume of resources invested worldwide in search of future gains, and as such the Shanghai Stock Exchange is just like any other. There you buy and sell stocks, and speculators operate. In this case, stirred by the rumours, some speculators started to frantically sell certain overvalued stocks in order to repurchase them at a discount.

Not quite different, theoretically, from the speculative attacks against the Mexican peso in 1994 or the Brazilian real in 1998, though now the target are exchange-traded stocks. The happening had great repercussion because it occurred in China, and for the first time, but it is the virtual nature of speculative capitals that weaken and subject the world economy.