Just Foreign Policy News
April 7, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
*Action: Urge Congress to Bar Ground Troops in Libya
Michigan Rep. John Conyers wants to explicitly prohibit U.S. ground forces from being introduced into Libya. Urge your Representative to support this prohibition. Supporters now include: Cohen, Jones, Farr, Grijalva, Honda, Kucinich, McClintock, George
Miller, Stark, Tonko, Woolsey.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/nogroundtroops
*Action: Petition to Obama for Peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Progressive Democrats of America and Peace Action urge President Obama to represent the people who voted and campaigned for him: initiate negotiations; end escalation; start drawing down troops; commit to a withdrawal timetable before 2014; support Afghan-led humanitarian and economic development efforts.
http://tinyurl.com/PDA-peace-petition
*Action: Global Day of Action on Military Spending
April 12. Find an event near you, start an event.
http://www.demilitarize.org/
Joanne Carter: Impact of Global Health Cuts Alarming, But Not Alarmist
Executive Director of RESULTS says Rajiv Shah understated the impact of the cuts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-carter/impact-of-global-health-c_b_843864.html?ir=World
Adam Curtis: Goodies and Baddies
A fascinating history of the political roots of "humanitarian intervention," going back to the Biafra war.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/goodies_and_baddies.html
"Friends of the White Intifada" on Facebook
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http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-the-White-Intifada-no-violence/199836420048690
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Six House Democrats objected to a White House announcement on labor rights measures to accompany a US-Colombia trade agreement on the grounds that there would not be time to see if the measures were implemented and led to a decrease in violence against trade unionists before Congress considers the trade agreement, Inter Press Service reports. Human rights groups said the "action plan" does not go far enough in addressing the systemic problems that underlie the labor violence, impunity, and human rights violations in Colombia.
2) Preliminary election results in Haiti showed Michel Martelly received the support of only 16.7 percent of registered voters, the Center for Economic and Policy Research reports. Reports indicate that turnout was even lower than in the first round, when it was a historically low 22.8 percent.
3) Voter approval of the President on national security issues fell to its lowest level since he took office after his national address on the Libya war, according to Rasmussen Reports.
4) A top Afghan official confirmed Wednesday that the country’s government had been in peace talks with the Taliban for some time, the New York Times reports. The US said it fully backed the talks. There have been numerous reports of recent talks being carried out between the Taliban and other interested parties, including the UN, Britain, Germany, Norway and the US. A former Taliban cabinet member who is now a member of the High Peace Council said intermediaries had won approval from Turkey to provide a safe location for serious talks with Taliban representatives.
5) A study at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany confirmed that U.S. troops in Afghanistan suffered an unprecedented number of catastrophic injuries last year, including a tripling of amputations of more than one limb, the Los Angeles Times reports. In 2010, 171, 11% of all the casualties brought to Landstuhl, had undergone amputations, a much higher proportion than in past wars. Of the 171, 65 had lost more than one limb. Injuries to the genital area were also on the increase. In 2009, 52 casualties were brought to Landstuhl with battlefield injuries to their genitals or urinary tract. In 2010, that number was 142. "Everybody was taken aback by the frequency of these injuries: the double amputations, the injuries to the penis and testicles," said a doctor involved in the study.
Libya
6) General Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa command, told a Senate hearing that Libya’s seven-week-old civil war is reaching stalemate, Reuters reports. The air strikes have paradoxically caused the stalemate, prolonging the civil war, Reuters says.
Rebels fighting to overthrow Gaddafi said a NATO air strike killed five of their fighters. "NATO are liars. They are siding with Gaddafi," said one of the rebels.
Bahrain
7) Bahrain has taken on the likeness of a police state, the New York Times reports. There have been mass arrests, mass firings of government workers, reports of torture and the forced resignation of the top editor of the nation’s one independent newspaper. Emergency laws give the security forces the right to search houses at will without a warrant and dissolve any organization, including legal political parties, deemed a danger to the state. Even two members of the national soccer team were arrested this week, despite apologizing on television for attending antigovernment rallies last month. "They are leaving no oppressive stone unturned," said Dan Williams, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch.
The Obama administration, which considers Bahrain a crucial ally, has issued tempered criticisms of the crackdown.
Israel/Palestine
8) The Palestinian Authority, working toward global recognition of statehood in September, got an endorsement from the IMF, which said the authority was fully capable of running the economy of an independent state, the New York Times reports. The IMF said for the first time it viewed the authority as "now able to conduct the sound economic policies expected of a future well-functioning Palestinian state, given its solid track record in reforms and institution-building in the public finance and financial areas."
A World Bank report agreed, but added that sustainable growth was dependent on a vibrant private sector, which it said was "unlikely to emerge while Israeli restrictions on access to natural resources and markets remain in place, and as long as investors are deterred by the increased cost of business associated with the closure regime."
Yemen
9) Saudi Arabia is trying to broker a deal to have Yemen’s president hand over power, possibly to an interim council, Reuters reports. Some said President Saleh was listening more to Saudi Arabia than to the U.S. Sources said talks had most recently bogged down over Saleh’s demand for assurances that he and members of his family will not face prosecution.
Honduras
10) A delegation of Catholic and other human rights advocates urged that a commission made up of members of Congress visit Honduras to see the persecution and violations of human rights, the Catholic News Service reports. Since Lobo became president, the delegation said, 463 people have died, including 30 "campesinos," or peasants, 10 journalists and 17 teachers.
Guatemala
11) Guatemalan trade unionists have been pursuing a complaint for labor rights abuses – including murder – under DR-CAFTA since 2008, but have yet to receive any relief, Inter Press Service reports. The AFL-CIO said the case showed that in important respects, labour conditions in Guatemtal have remained unchanged or have worsened since the trade agreement was ratified.
Mexico
12) Prominent Mexicans have sparked a "sizzling public debate" by saying that the "war on drugs" is not working, and the government has to make a truce with the drug cartels, Time Magazine reports. After 35,000 drug-related murders, car bombs and shootouts, much of the public has grown weary of the war. The next Mexican government could say "there will be no war on drugs in Mexico if there isn’t one in the United States," said one historian. "The U.S. government is not stopping drug use or the flow of weapons or money laundering."
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) U.S.-Colombia Deal on Labour Rights Met with Scepticism
Aprille Muscara, Inter Press Service, Apr 6
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55163
Washington – On the eve of a meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos here on Thursday, the White House announced that a deal has been reached on key labour issues upholding the countries’ stalled bilateral trade pact.
Largely hailed by Republican lawmakers, the preliminary details of the deal, dubbed an "Action Plan for Labour Rights", were received sceptically by some Democrat representatives, while labour and rights groups noted that they lacked breadth, depth, and accountability measures.
The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was negotiated under the last George W. Bush administration and has been log-jammed in the pipeline since due to serious concerns about the South American country’s lax labour laws, history of violence against union leaders, and shaky human rights record.
"Trade union and labour rights violations are taking place within a broader context that is not addressed by this action plan," Gimena Sanchez, an Andean expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, told IPS.
"That context includes a continued internal armed conflict, re-grouped and reconstituted paramilitarism that operate throughout the country, and alarming impunity on labour and all other human rights cases," she explained.
[…] Republicans have set a desired date of Jul. 1 for the pacts to be introduced into Congress, while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in January that the Colombia FTA would be sent to lawmakers "this year".
The deal announced on Wednesday, and expected to be formally approved during the presidents’ meeting on Thursday, seems to somewhat smooth the pact’s still bumpy path toward passage, but a concrete timeline for the Colombian trade agreement remains unclear.
A possible clue lies in the particulars of the labour deal released thus far (the full action plan has yet to be made public); namely, in a set of dated benchmarks that the Colombian government will pledge to meet.
"President Obama insisted that a number of serious and immediate labour concerns be addressed before he would be willing to send the Agreement to Congress," the fact sheets said. "Successful implementation of key elements of the Action Plan will be a precondition for the Agreement to enter into effect."
The targets include steps to protect the safety and rights of workers, union leaders, and labour activists, with "due dates" set as early as Apr. 22 and one as late as December of this year.
Given that almost all of the published benchmarks must be met by July, rights groups are concerned about the rapid timeframe for the listed reforms and their feasibility.
"The concern we have is that you just won’t know if any of these steps will actually reduce violence against trade unionists because it moves far too quickly for anyone to actually evaluate and ensure that these steps are carried out," Lisa Haugaard, executive director of the Washington- based Latin America Working Group, told IPS. "These are very fundamental changes and I don’t think that the Colombian government, even with goodwill, can carry this out that quickly," she continued.
Six House Democrats – Representatives Jim McGovern, George Miller, Rosa DeLauro, Mike Michaud, Linda Sanchez, and Jan Schakowsky – echoed these timeline concerns in their reaction to the announced action plan on Wednesday.
"While we welcome these initiatives, we are particularly concerned that we will not have time to determine whether they have been fully carried out – let alone resulted in a dramatic decrease of violence against unionists, increased ability by Colombian workers to exercise their rights to organise and bargain collectively, and a breaking of the culture of impunity that has so characterised justice and the rule of law in Colombia," they said.
And once the FTA finally enters into force, Haugaard noted, there is no clear mechanism for or guarantee of follow-up, as the targets listed in the action plan are not tied to the trade pact itself.
Ultimately, rights groups argue, the action plan does not go far enough in addressing the systemic problems that underlie the labour violence, impunity, and human rights violations in Colombia.
"Unless significant steps are taken to address the impunity and illegal armed groups prior to movement on the agreement, we are likely to see deterioration in labour and human rights once the FTA is implemented," Sanchez told IPS.
[…]
2) Martelly’s Historically Weak Mandate
Center for Economic and Policy Research, Tuesday, 05 April 2011 13:13
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/martellys-historically-weak-mandate
Preliminary results announced by the CEP last night showed Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly with 67.6 percent of the vote, while Mirlande Manigat received 31.5 percent. While news headlines focus on the "landslide" victory for Martelly, he actually received the support of only 16.7 percent of registered voters – far from a strong mandate – as early reports show Martelly with just 716,986 votes to Manigat’s 336,747. Reports indicate that turnout was even lower than in the first round, when it was a historically low 22.8 percent, and Martelly’s percent of votes (as well as Manigat’s) would have been even smaller were it not for the use of new electoral lists which removed some 400,000 people from the rolls.
Nevertheless, media reports have largely ignored the issue of turnout. AOL’s Emily Troutman reported last night that, "Martelly’s 67 percent of the vote is nearly unprecedented in Haiti and a clear mandate for his leadership". Not only is the 67 percent number misleading in terms of his overall support, it is also far from unprecedented (as other reporters have also stated). In 1990 Aristide was elected with 67 percent of the vote, but with significantly higher turnout. Aristide received over one million votes in 1990 even though there were over one million fewer registered voters at the time. In 1995, Preval was elected with over 87 percent of the vote. In 2000, Aristide received over 3.5 times as many votes as Martelly did in the runoff elections last month. Even Preval’s most recent term began with a greater mandate than Martelly’s; in 2006 he received nearly one million votes with 700,000 fewer registered voters.
It is also worth noting that the electoral process has been deeply flawed from the beginning. Despite an aggressive and expensive get-out-the-vote campaign from the UN and U.S., the second round suffered from many of the same problems as the first: low turnout and a high number of irregularities. The legality of the second round remains in doubt given that a majority of the CEP’s members appear never to have verified the first round results.
There were also widespread irregularities in the March 20 elections. Although the US issued a statement last night saying that irregularities "were isolated and reduced", some 15 percent of the tally sheets were quarantined from preliminary results due to fraud or other irregularities. This is a greater portion excluded than in the first round, and represents over 100,000 votes.
It is clear that a candidate that won only 4.6 percent of the electorate in the first round and 16.7 percent in the second round does not have a strong mandate to rule. In such a context, one would hope that Martelly would seek to work with civil society and with his political opponents, especially those that were arbitrarily excluded from the elections, as Fanmi Lavalas and several other parties were.
[…]
3) Ratings For Obama’s National Security Performance Fall to New Low
Rasmussen Reports, Sunday, April 03, 2011
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/march_2011/ratings_for_obama_s_national_security_performance_fall_to_new_low
Although President Obama made an address to the nation Monday night to explain his decision to commit U.S. military forces to Libya, fewer voters than ever give him positive grades on his handling of national security issues.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows 37% give the president good or excellent ratings on his handling of national security issues. Slightly more voters (40%) say the president is doing a poor job when it comes to national security.
Last week, just after his decision to get involved in Libya, 43% gave the president positive marks for his handling of national security, while 34% rated his performance as poor.
Positive marks for the president on national security are now at their lowest level since he took office in January 2009. His poor rating is the highest measured since last August. One year ago, 45% gave the president positive ratings on national security, while 32% rated the job he was doing as poor.
[…] President Obama’s address doesn’t appear to have made voters more confident about his handling of the situation in Libya, nor has it made them feel more strongly that Libya is important to U.S. national security. Just 27% of voters say Libya is important to our nation’s national security, while 48% disagree.
[…]
4) Top Afghan Official Confirms Talks With The Taliban
Rod Nordland, New York Times, April 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/asia/07afghanistan.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – A top Afghan official confirmed on Wednesday that the country’s government had been in peace talks with the Taliban.
The official, Mohammad Massoom Stanekzai, secretary of the High Peace Council and an adviser to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said reconciliation talks had been under way with insurgents for some time.
"We’re in touch, we talk all the time, we’ve done a lot, we’ve sent representatives to their sides and they’ve sent representatives to our side," said Mr. Stanekzai, who advises Mr. Karzai on reconciliation issues. Asked if these were talks about talks, Mr. Stanekzai replied, "It is a step beyond that."
The remarks came at a news conference to announce a $50 million donation from the United States government to the High Peace Council to support reconciliation efforts with the Taliban.
Mr. Stanekzai’s remarks were the most public confirmation by a senior Afghan official that talks with the Taliban were under way. The United States is supporting the effort, Mr. Stanekzai said. The American ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, who was also present, concurred. "We are all 100 percent behind reintegration and reconciliation," Mr. Eikenberry said.
Taliban spokesmen have repeatedly maintained that the insurgents are not participating in talks with the Afghan government, and that they will not do so until their precondition of a complete withdrawal of foreign forces is met. Claims to the contrary are part of American and Afghan government propaganda, they have said.
"For political reasons, the antigovernment elements cannot confirm they are ready for talks with the Afghan government," Mr. Stanekzai said. In keeping with Afghan government practice, he did not refer to the Taliban or related insurgents by their groups’ names, but rather by using the term "antigovernment elements."
He said much of what had been happening had, by necessity, been in secret. "When we do something, you won’t be able to see the results right away," he said. "This is a process; it will take some time."
Mr. Stanekzai and Mr. Eikenberry emphasized that reconciliation efforts were led by Afghans. "We are in the front," Mr. Stanekzai said. "The Americans are giving us financial support; if anything beyond that support is required, then their support would be there."
However, there have been numerous reports of recent talks being carried out between the Taliban and other interested parties, including the United Nations, Britain, Germany, Norway and the United States.
"These peace efforts by the High Peace Council are just a cover," said Mohammed Mohakik, a council member and a prominent leader of the Hazaras, a minority group long oppressed in Afghanistan. "The real efforts are going on behind the curtain and are not transparent."
[…] It has already been reported that Western diplomats, Taliban leaders and the Afghan government have been discussing means to start serious talks, including how to guarantee the safety and safe passage of Taliban participants, as well as where such talks could be held.
Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban cabinet member who is now a member of the High Peace Council, said intermediaries had already won approval from Turkey to provide a location.
[…]
5) U.S. troops in Afghanistan suffer more catastrophic injuries
Study shows 2010 saw at least 171 troops suffer battlefield injuries resulting in amputations; 65 of them lost two limbs or more.
Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times, 4:11 PM PDT, April 6, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan-wounds-20110407,0,3925334.story
Landstuhl, Germany, and Helmand – Grim combat statistics that one military doctor called "unbelievable" show U.S. troops in Afghanistan suffered an unprecedented number of catastrophic injuries last year, including a tripling of amputations of more than one limb.
A study by doctors at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where most wounded troops are sent before returning to the U.S., confirmed their fears: The battlefield has become increasingly brutal.
In 2009, 75 service members brought to Landstuhl had limbs amputated. Of those, 21 had lost more than one limb.
But in 2010, 171, 11% of all the casualties brought to Landstuhl, had undergone amputations, a much higher proportion than in past wars. Of the 171, 65 had lost more than one limb.
Injuries to the genital area were also on the increase. In 2009, 52 casualties were brought to Landstuhl with battlefield injuries to their genitals or urinary tract. In 2010, that number was 142.
Dr. John Holcomb, a retired Army colonel with extensive combat-medicine experience, said he and other doctors involved in the study were shocked by the findings, which he labeled as "unbelievable."
"Everybody was taken aback by the frequency of these injuries: the double amputations, the injuries to the penis and testicles," said Holcomb, now a medical professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. "Nothing like this has been seen before."
Military brass say the increase in catastrophic injuries can be attributed to the Taliban’s use of improvised explosive devices, the roadside bombs that account for the majority of U.S. and NATO deaths and injuries. Last year was also the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with 499 killed, according to the Defense Department.
[…] The increase in catastrophic wounds has taken an emotional toll on the medical personnel at Landstuhl, said Navy Cmdr. Joseph Sheldon, one of nine chaplains at the U.S. military hospital.
Sheldon and the other chaplains are also present when patients awake to learn of the extent of their battlefield injuries. He remembers sitting with a wounded Marine on Christmas Eve. "There was a lot of silence and a lot of tears, for both of us," Sheldon said. "Everybody wants their life to be the way it was, but it’s not. Coming to grips with that is hard."
[…] The Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment, has been particularly hard hit, with 24 Marines killed and more than 175 wounded while deployed in the Sangin district of Helmand province.
More than a dozen Marines from the battalion have lost two or more limbs. One of them is 1st Lt. James Byler, 25, of Long Island, New York, who was leading a patrol in early October when an explosion severed his legs and snapped off the ends of several fingers.
Byler’s patrol was walking slowly, carefully, in what is called "ranger style," with each man following in the footsteps of the man in front of him. "Everyone had gone over that spot," said Byler, now recuperating in the U.S. "I was just the one who stepped on it when it exploded. "It wasn’t a big one, but it was enough to blow my legs off."
Libya
6) Libya war reaching stalemate, Washington says
Michael Georgy, Reuters, Thu Apr 7, 1:44 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110407/wl_nm/us_libya
Ajdabiyah, Libya – Libya’s seven-week-old civil war is reaching stalemate, a senior U.S. general said on Thursday, after rebels fighting to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi said a NATO air strike killed five of their fighters.
Wounded rebels being brought to a hospital in Ajdabiyah in rebel-held east Libya said they were hit by a NATO strike on their trucks and tanks outside the contested port of Brega. NATO said it was investigating an attack by its aircraft on a tank column in the area along the Mediterranean coast on Thursday, saying the situation was "unclear and fluid."
General Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa command, told a Senate hearing Washington should not provide arms to the rebels without a better idea of who they were.
Asked if there was an emerging stalemate, he replied: "I would agree with that at present, on the ground."
The fighting for Brega, the only active front, has dragged on for a week and has entered a daily pattern of advances back and forth with neither side making major gains.
Medical workers carried blood-soaked uniforms from hospital rooms in Ajdabiyah, gateway to the insurgent stronghold of Benghazi in the east, after wounded fighters were ferried back from Brega.
"It was a NATO air strike on us. We were near our vehicles near Brega," wounded fighter Younes Jumaa said from a stretcher at the hospital. Nurse Mohamed Ali said at least five rebels were dead. Rebel fighters were weeping on their knees in the corridor.
"NATO are liars. They are siding with Gaddafi," said Salem Mislat, one of the rebels.
It was the second time in less than a week that rebels had blamed NATO for bombing their comrades by mistake. Thirteen were killed in an air strike not far from the same spot on Saturday.
A doctor who had been at the front among rebel ambulance crews said they were hit by a government rocket attack immediately after the air strike. One medical worker was killed.
The air strikes have paradoxically caused the stalemate, grounding Gaddafi’s air force and preventing him from landing a knockout blow. However, the rag-tag rebel army is too undisciplined to press the advantage accorded by air power.
[…]
Bahrain
7) Bahrain’s Rulers Tighten Their Grip On Battered Opposition
Clifford Krauss, New York Times, April 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/middleeast/07bahrain.html
Saar, Bahrain – Thousands of weeping mourners filled the streets of this dusty village on Wednesday, pumping their fists and calling for the death of the royal family.
The protesters did not seem intimidated by the presence of police cars and an army helicopter overhead. "We only bow to God," they chanted as they carried a coffin draped in Bahraini flags.
The funeral march was for Sayed Hameed Sayed Mahfood, a 60-year-old plumber, who was found dead in a garbage bag, 100 feet away from his car.
Doctors said that there was no sign of trauma and that it appeared that he had died of a heart attack, but no one here believed them. Only the week before, a 15-year-old boy in the village was bludgeoned to death by the police, several villagers said, for doing nothing more than running away from them.
With Saudi troops now in the country to support King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, Bahrain has taken on the likeness of a police state. There have been mass arrests, mass firings of government workers, reports of torture and, on Sunday, the forced resignation of the top editor of the nation’s one independent newspaper.
Emergency laws give the security forces the right to search houses at will without a warrant and dissolve any organization, including legal political parties, deemed a danger to the state. Even two members of the national soccer team were arrested this week, despite apologizing on television for attending antigovernment rallies last month.
In response, a once joyous but splintered opposition has been forced to come up with new strategies. The intensity of the repression is pushing some toward militancy, while others are holding back, at least for now.
"People are in shock because of the intensity of the crackdown," said Aqeelah Wahab, the daughter of Abdul Wahab Hussein, the leader of a militant Shiite party, Al Wafa, who was pulled out of his home and imprisoned last month. She is an activist herself. "With this government, you don’t know what they will do. The people are taking a break to see what the government will do with the prisoners."
[…] The government and pro-government media are celebrating the relative calm in downtown Manama as a return to the kind of normality that has made this tiny island nation an important banking center and regional tourist destination. They charge that the predominantly Shiite opposition is inspired and even aided by Iran, although most Bahraini Shiites are Arabs, unlike Iranians, and associate themselves more closely with Iraqi Shiites.
[…] Two political prisoners who were released have said that many detainees have been tortured with electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse, said Mohammed al-Maskati, president of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights. As many as 800 workers have been fired from the government and companies partly owned by the government, apparently on the suspicion that they had attended the rallies, said the lawmakers who resigned in protest. And scores of university students have lost government-sponsored scholarships.
"They are leaving no oppressive stone unturned," said Dan Williams, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch who is in Bahrain. "They enter the homes of people already detained and ransack their homes; they are keeping people in detention with limited access to their lawyers and families."
The Obama administration, which considers Bahrain a crucial ally, has issued tempered criticisms of the crackdown but has not pressed for a change in government. Bahrain hosts the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and its Sunni monarchy is strongly backed by Saudi Arabia.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
8) Bid for State of Palestine Gets Support From I.M.F.
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, April 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/middleeast/07palestinians.html
Jerusalem – The Palestinian Authority, which is working toward global recognition of its statehood in September, got an endorsement on Wednesday from the International Monetary Fund, which said that the authority was fully capable of running the economy of an independent state.
The fund issued its latest report on the economies of the West Bank and Gaza, to be presented next week to a donors’ conference in Brussels. It said for the first time that it viewed the authority as "now able to conduct the sound economic policies expected of a future well-functioning Palestinian state, given its solid track record in reforms and institution-building in the public finance and financial areas."
The World Bank, which will be reporting at the same conference, will make a similar point, one that it made last fall. "If the Palestinian Authority maintains its performance in institution-building and delivery of public services, it is well positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future," the World Bank says in its report, to be released Thursday.
Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, said Tuesday that his government was "in the home stretch" of state building, what he called "our rendezvous with freedom." He was taking part in a ceremony in the West Bank city of Ramallah to mark the opening of a new venture capital fund that has raised more than $28 million for the West Bank.
Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund estimated the Palestinian areas’ real G.D.P. growth at around 9 percent in 2010. They attributed the growth to structural reforms and rigorous budget preparations by the Palestinian Authority, as well as the easing of Israeli restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza, and donor aid.
But both worried about overdependence on foreign aid and said that the current growth rate could not continue without further easing of Israeli restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza.
The authors of the World Bank report noted, "Aid is what keeps many Palestinians above the poverty line, particularly in Gaza, where unemployment is still 37.4 percent and a staggering 71 percent of the population benefited from some form of social assistance in 2009."
They added that sustainable growth was dependent on a vibrant private sector, which they said was "unlikely to emerge while Israeli restrictions on access to natural resources and markets remain in place, and as long as investors are deterred by the increased cost of business associated with the closure regime."
[…]
Yemen
9) Saudi and allies focus on Yemen’s Saleh exit
Samia Nakhoul and Amena Bakr, Reuters, Thu, Apr 7 2011
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/04/06/idINIndia-56169220110406
London/Dubai – Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are trying to broker a deal to have Yemen’s president step down and hand over power, possibly to an interim council of tribal and political leaders, sources told Reuters on Wednesday.
Ali Abdullah Saleh’s at times bloody response to protests, inspired by those in Egypt and Tunisia, against his 32-year rule has tried the patience of his U.S. and Saudi backers.
A variety of official sources say they are now ready to push aside a long-time ally against the Yemen-based wing of al Qaeda in the hope of staving off a chaotic collapse of the poorest Arab state. "The proposal is to have a governing council grouping all the various political parties and tribes for a period that would not exceed three months," one Gulf official told Reuters.
The plan is to be presented to Saleh and his opponents at talks to take place soon in Saudi Arabia. "The council will set the way for elections," the Gulf official added, echoing other sources in the region and beyond.
More than 100 people have been killed since anti-government protests began in Yemen, including the March 18 killings of 52 anti-government protesters by rooftop snipers in Sanaa.
[…] Security forces and armed men in civilian clothes fired on protesters in Taiz and the Red Sea port of Hudaida on Monday, killing 21 people. The next day they again fired at a crowd of tens of thousands of protesters in Taiz, wounding dozens. Protesters responded by hurling rocks. Three people were killed in clashes in the capital Sanaa.
[…] Recent talks between Saleh and the opposition, some held in the presence of the U.S. ambassador, yielded little. Sources close to the talks in Sanaa say the United States gave Saleh an ultimatum to accept a deal and has since lost patience.
But some said Saleh listened more attentively to Riyadh. "I don’t think the United States is a player, they have much less influence … the only country Saleh cares about is Saudi Arabia," said analyst Barak Barfi of the New America Foundation. "If the U.S. cuts off military aid, it hurts them as much as Saleh and he knows it… The Yemenis need pressure from Riyadh."
[…] The sources said talks had most recently bogged down over Saleh’s demand for assurances that he and members of his family will not face prosecution, particularly for the corruption that is a particular grievance of many of the thousands of protesters who have been camping out at Sanaa University for two months.
Opposition sources have said they would be prepared to accept Saleh’s vice-president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, as interim head of state and to discuss removing some of Saleh’s sons who have key positions once Saleh has stepped down. They want Saleh to leave the country during the transition period.
Honduras
10) Delegation urges Congress to address human right abuses in Honduras
Emily Lahr, Catholic News Service, Wednesday, April 6, 2011
http://www.uscatholic.org/news/2011/04/delegation-urges-congress-address-human-right-abuses-honduras
Washington – A group of Catholic and other human rights advocates said that since their country’s 2009 coup, Hondurans have struggled with human rights abuses, and they encouraged the U.S. Congress to refuse to cooperate with the Honduran government.
"What we have now is the leftovers of a state," said Berta Olivia from the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras, one of the three delegates who spoke at a briefing March 23 for congressional staff.
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., sponsored the session on Capitol Hill with visiting human rights delegates from Honduras to discuss their charges of police repression of teachers, political activists, journalists and human right defenders.
Olivia, along with the other two delegates, urged the United States to cut financial support for government institutions, particularly the police. She asked that the United States help prevent Honduras from rejoining the Organization of American States, which promotes social and economic development in the Western Hemisphere.
The OAS condemned Honduras’ 2009 coup and suspended its membership. Olivia also urged that a commission made up of members of Congress visit the country to see the persecution and violations of human rights.
[…] Since Lobo became president, the delegation said, 463 people have died, including 30 "campesinos," or peasants, 10 journalists and 17 teachers, with more than 150 people in self-imposed exile. "Never in the history of Honduras have so many teachers been assassinated," said Olivia.
[…] The Committee of Relatives has been completely overwhelmed with the number of claims of human rights violations, Olivia said. She said her group had presented 702 complaints to the attorney general, but none had been addressed.
Journalists have also felt the pressure from the government and are leaving the country, said Lucy Mendoza, a member of the staff of the Jesuit-sponsored ERIC Institute in Honduras. The Team for Reflection, Investigation and Communication, known by its acronym in Spanish, ERIC runs a community radio station in El Progreso, Honduras, which was temporarily shut down in 2009 amid the presidential crisis.
[…]
Guatemala
11) Unions Seek Labour Justice Under Free Trade Deal
Danilo Valladares, Inter Press Service, Apr 6
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55146
Guatemala City – "My brother was murdered, and we’re still the victims of threats and harassment, which is why we filed the petition" under the free trade agreement signed with the United States by Central America and the Dominican Republic, (DR-CAFTA), said Guatemalan trade unionist Noé Ramírez.
Ramírez, a member of the Union of Banana Workers of the northeastern province of Izabal, is seeking justice for the September 2007 killing of his brother Marco Tulio, who also belonged to the union. "No progress has been made" in the investigation of the murder," he told IPS.
He added that the petition is also aimed at securing respect for labour rights in Guatemala, where "many companies do not fulfil their obligations, like social security contributions.
"They deduct the money from our pay, but they don’t make the payments into the system," he complained.
The Central American countries involved in CAFTA, which went into effect in most of the signatory nations in 2006, are Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
DR-CAFTA has a chapter on labour rights in which its members undertake a commitment to "respect, promote and realise" core workers’ rights, enforce their own national labour laws, and provide adequate access to legal redress for workers. But Guatemala has failed to live up to the free trade agreement’s labour provisions, trade unionists say.
In April 2008, six Guatemalan unions, including the banana workers’ union, denounced several labour abuses before the DR-CAFTA Office of Trade and Labour Affairs (OTLA), including the murders of Ramírez and another trade unionist. The complaint was filed on behalf of the Guatemalan unions by the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO).
According to the AFL-CIO, "This petition demonstrates that, in certain important respects, labour conditions in the country have remained unchanged or have worsened since the trade agreement was ratified. The level of physical violence against trade unionists increased markedly in 2006-2008. Violations of freedom of association and collective bargaining continue apace, and access to fair and efficient administrative or judicial tribunals remains elusive."
With respect to Ramírez’s murder, the complaint notes that it took police several hours to arrive at the crime scene when he was killed, although there is a police station just two kilometres away. "To date, the authorities have shown little interest in carrying out a serious investigation," the petition adds.
The AFL-CIO complaint was even referred to by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. When she testified in early March before the Senate Appropriations Committee, she said the administration of Barack Obama was considering taking the matter to CAFTA’s dispute settlement system.
The Guatemalan government is hastily taking steps to prevent that from happening, as it could be fined 15 million dollars for violating CAFTA provisions.
Francisco Villagrán, Guatemala’s ambassador in Washington, announced on Mar. 18 that the General Labour Inspection office would be strengthened, compliance with court orders would be overseen, and employees in foreign-owned maquila export assembly plants that operate in tax-free zones would be protected, among other measures.
"It’s not that important for us for Guatemala to be fined for 15 million dollars; what is important is for it to be obligated to enforce the country’s labour laws," David Morales, with the Union of Food, Agroindustry and Related Industry Workers of Guatemala (FESTRAS), told IPS.
The trade unionist said "in this country, as in the rest of Central America, unions continue to face repression," which is why the local unions had to file the complaint through the AFL-CIO.
The cases mentioned by the petition include the murders of the two trade unionists, as well as three other cases of abuses such as unlawful dismissal of trade unionists, poor labour conditions, refusal to bargain with the legally recognised union, the blacklisting of labour activists, and the failure to contribute to the social security system by Guatemalan companies that export to the United States.
[…]
Mexico
12) Should Mexico Call for a Cease-Fire with Drug Cartels?
Ioan Grillo, Time Magazine, Thursday, Apr. 07, 2011
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2063696,00.html
Mexico City – The image of seven corpses of young men and women who had been tortured, murdered and dumped in a car was depressingly familiar in drug-war-torn Mexico. But unlike the thousands of other killings, one victim of last week’s multiple homicide in the spa town of Cuernavaca had a well-known father, and that man’s grief gained national attention.
The journalist and poet Javier Sicilia led a march to commemorate the death of his son and his son’s friends, who all appear to be innocent victims caught up in the violence. In the media spotlight, Sicilia said what has been on the mind of many weeping parents. The war on drugs is not working, he said, and the government has to make a truce with the cartels. "Drug trafficking goes on. The United States doesn’t care and is not helping us at all," Sicilia told reporters. "The mafias are here. We should make a pact."
The statement sparked a sizzling public debate, which many Mexicans have been conducting in private for years: Should the government reach out to criminal gangs to calm the bloodshed? President Felipe Calderón, who kicked off a crackdown on the cartels in December 2006, has insisted that he will never negotiate with criminals. But after 35,000 drug-related murders, car bombs and shootouts, much of the public has grown weary of the war. "There has been an important sea change of opinion," says John Mill Ackerman of Mexico’s National Autonomous University. "People are no longer buying the story that things have to get worse before they get better." Calderón is banned by the constitution from running in the presidential election next year, and whoever follows him could be open to new ideas on Mexico’s crime problem.
How any truce could look in reality is a tough question. In a follow-up news conference, Sicilia explained that by "pact" he meant that gangsters should be urged to avoid hurting the public and respect the prisoners they take. Others suggest that a truce could simply mean a government decision to chase drug traffickers less and give police more time to tackle crimes like kidnapping and extortion, which are rampant. There is also a debate as to whether the government should allow cartels to dominate specific trafficking routes, thus avoiding the bloody turf wars. This notion is so commonly discussed, it has its own terminology: "repartir plazas," roughly meaning "to award turfs."
Most historians of Mexico say the tactic of awarding turfs was employed during the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), keeping the country relatively peaceful until the party lost power in 2000. However, PRI leaders deny this, claiming they were simply better at combating crime. Opinion polls show that the PRI is the current favorite to win back the presidency in 2012, as many voters feel that life was safer back in the days of one-party rule. The PRI’s record and policy on drug cartels will likely come under much discussion in the runup to the race.
But many are calling for a change in drug-war tactics no matter who wins in 2012. Historian Lorenzo Meyer says a public debate about a pact with cartels is long overdue. "The current policy has created violence and chaos that leaves citizens totally unprotected," Meyer says. "A new government could say that there will be no war on drugs in Mexico if there isn’t one in the United States. The U.S. government is not stopping drug use or the flow of weapons or money laundering." American operatives in the drug war have been among the biggest fans of Calderón’s offensive. On Tuesday, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Michele Leonhart praised Calderón for standing firm against cartels while at a conference in Cancún. Leonhart emphasized how Calderón pursues "a war without truce" – an apparent stab at Sicilia’s comments.
[…]
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