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/ 21 October 2005
Saddam Hussein’s trial before a special tribunal in Baghdad is being portrayed as a watershed moment for the Iraqi people and the global legal system. But critical questions about the conduct of the trial, political interference and the decision to hold it in Iraq rather than under United Nations or international auspices are likely to dog the proceedings and may cast doubt on their legitimacy.
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/ 18 October 2005
The trouble with revolutions is that they raise expectations. When revolutionary change fails to materialise, disillusion sets in. That is the case to some extent in former Soviet Georgia. And it is the problem confronting Viktor Yushchenko, elected Ukraine’s hero-president after last year’s ”orange revolution”.
Red-carpet treatment at the White House for Indonesia’s president and visits by the United States defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to Singapore and Thailand this week, are partly intended to shore up support in south-east Asia for Washington’s ”war on terror”.
President Islam Karimov was quick to blame the uprisings in the Ferghana valley region of eastern Uzbekistan on Islamists. That seemed to be an attempt to deflect criticism by the United States, which gave his regime -million in military aid last year. But pinning the blame on Islamists, while convenient, appears, at best, misleading and, at worst, an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
Many damaging accusations have been levelled at John Bolton, President George W Bush’s controversial nominee as United States ambassador to the United Nations. But perhaps the most serious is that Bolton, as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security since 2001, bungled efforts to dissuade North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.
An uninhabited Pacific reef 1Â 600km due south of Tokyo makes an unlikely battlefield. But wars have been fought over less. And Okinotori Shima, as this hazard to shipping is known, is rapidly becoming a focal point of rising tension between China and Japan. Only two small outcrops of the reef, sovereign Japanese territory that is administratively part of Tokyo, remain above water at high tide.
Michael Tsai points to a large map on the wall of his office in Taiwan’s national defence ministry. It is dotted with red symbols representing dozens of Chinese missile, air and naval bases within easy shooting range of the capital and other major Taiwanese cities. Whatever Beijing may say about its peaceful intentions, Tsai suggests, this map illustrates the reality of the military threat that lurks 160km to the west.
Unrelenting United States pressure on Cuba, set to ratchet up again at next week’s United Nations Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva, is testing relations between the Bush administration and a new generation of centre-left Latin American leaders. As it has done each year since the early 1990s, the US will urge the commission to adopt a resolution condemning Cuba’s human rights record.
The sons of famous men often struggle to make their mark. And Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, is struggling more than most as he contemplates the loss of Lebanon and his country’s increasing international isolation. While his father dominated Lebanon after first intervening in 1976 with United States connivance, Syria’s 14 000 troops and security forces now face a humiliating retreat under popular fire.
Hind el-Hinnawy shocked conservative Muslim Egypt when she publicly declared herself a single mum and launched a paternity suit. The man in the case, Ahmed el-Fishawy, hosted a television talk show offering advice to devout Muslim youth. They had met on the set of a comedy called When Daddy Returned. President Hosni Mubarak may have started a process of change he cannot stop.