Daily Press Cuttings

 

Thursday 20th January 2000

The Guardian (front page story): Zimbabwe/Congo/UK: UK prime minister Tony Blair has overruled the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, by giving the go-ahead for the sale of spare parts to Zimbabwe for British Hawk fighter jets being used in an African civil war that has cost tens of thousands of lives. The Downing Street decision drives the biggest hole yet through Mr Cook's ethical foreign policy, which was supposed to deny arms to countries engaged in external aggression or internal repression. Zimbabwe, which is deeply involved in the Congo war, fails on both counts. Angola: The UN Security Council last night saw video-tape evidence from former senior military leaders of the Unita rebel movement in Angola that the Unita leader Jonas Savimbi personally ordered the shooting down of two UN planes just over a year ago, killing a total of 23 people.

FT: Congo (Kinshasa)/UN: Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, last night asked the Security Council to deploy 5500 peacekeepers in war-torn Congo. The proposed operation would return UN troops to a country that brought the world body close to political collapse four decades ago and cost the life of Dag Hammarskjold, its second secretary general, in an air crash on his way to peace talks. World Trade: Mike Moore, head of the World Trade Organisation, yesterday proposed that the United Nations work more closely with the WTO to stem a threat to economic globalisation from a “potentially dangerous rise” in isolationist nationalism. Transparency: Law enforcement experts are considering imposing tougher penalties on countries that fail to co-operate in the fight against money laundering. The 26-nation Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will examine next month whether it should go beyond previous proposals to “name and Shame” unco-operative countries and press them to increase due diligence and reporting of dubious financial transactions. Indonesia: Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesian president, yesterday threatened to sack General Wiranto, his powerful co-ordinating minister for political and security affairs, if the former head of the armed forces was found guilty of human rights abuses in East Timor.

IHT: Brazil: President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has demanded and received the resignation of Brazil's first civilian defence minister, Elcio Alvares, after rumours circulated for weeks that the official had links to organised crime.

The Independent: Burundi: Former South African president Nelson Mandela won UN Security backing yesterday for his new role as mediator in Burundi's seven-year-old civil war that has left an estimated 200,000 people dead. The 15-member council adopted a resolution endorsing Mr Mandela's new mandate to seek peace in Burundi and condemned the continuing ethnic violence in the central African country.

Wednesday 19th January 2000

FT: Health: Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the World Health Organisation yesterday launched an international commission of eminent economists intended to push health issues to the forefront of the global economic development agenda. Chaired by Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard University, the 15 member commission on macroeconomics and health has been given two years to consolidate the evidence and provide practical recommendations on how investment in health can promote economic growth and reduce poverty and inequality. Among other issues, the commission will tackle incentives for drug companies to develop and make available drugs and vaccines for diseases mainly affecting the poor. World Bank /Environment: The World Bank yesterday launched the first global market to reduce carbon emissions in an effort to combat climate change and promote the transfer of environmentally friendly technology to developing countries. Debt defaults: The number of defaults on corporate and government debt more than doubled last year to reach a record $44.6 billion, according to figures released from Moody's, the US rating agency. The rise was mainly the result of rapid growth of the high-yield market and the after-effects of the Asian crisis. The largest single defaulter was Ecuador. Cambodia: Bloody land disputes will escalate in Cambodia and economic growth will suffer if parliament fails quickly to adopt a workable new land ownership law, Sam Rainsy, opposition leader warned yesterday. Nigeria: Letter from Ledum Mitee, President of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, refutes a recent FT article that Shell is near a breakthrough in its relations with the Ogoni. The Ogoni are still looking for evidence that Shell accepts responsibility for its damaging actions in Ogoni and is prepared to take the necessary remedial steps. ECGD/UK: Significant changes to the role of the government's export credit agency could undermine the ability of the aerospace industry to compete in the global market, the Society of British Aerospace companies warned yesterday.

Agence France Presse: Cote d'Ivoire/France: French Euro MP Thierry Jean-Pierre has revealed that FF 180 million of European Union (EU) aid money to Cote D'Ivoire was misappropriated by the previous government. The military government has launched a “clean hands” approach to government finance, and Mr Jean-Pierre is calling on the EU to help it finance a full audit of the accounts of the previous government.

The Guardian: Angola: The Foreign Office minister Peter Hain yesterday took the unique step of publicly naming three businessmen whom he claimed had been breaking UN sanctions on rebel forces in Angola. The three people were Jacques Lemaire, a Belgian who flew in fuel supplies to UNITA, Tony Texeira, a Portuguese South African and chairman of the Central African Mining Company and Ukrainian Victor Bout, who has run the air transport company Cess, which has flown arms to Unita. He referred all three to the UN sanctions committee, which has the power to prosecute them under international law. Kenya: Unrest in the Kenyan army has led to persistent rumours of a coup plot against the government of President arap Moi. A military source has revealed that since Friday “there has been a 24-hour state of high alert in the armed forces.”

Tuesday 18th January 2000

Newsweek Magazine: Jubilee 2000: Article takes an in-depth look at Bono's involvement with Jubilee 2000 and his high level lobbying in the USA. The full text is attached.

The Guardian: Indonesia: Sectarian fighting that has ravaged Indonesia's Molucca islands for the last year spread tot he tourinst island of Lombok yesterday when Muslim rioters rampaged through two towns, setting fire to buildings including seven churches. Separate article reports on the EU's decision to lift the arms embargo against Indonesia that expired yesterday. Chile: The victory of Chilean socialist Ricardo Lagos on Sunday has brought about such a close alignment in the political philosophies of some of south America's leaders that politicians are already trumpeting a historic opportunity to build economic and cultural bridges in the southern portion of Latin America.

FT: IMF: FT leader says that the German candidate to head the IMF, Mr Caio Koch-Weser, will be a lame duck from the start. The paper argues that it is necessary to reconsider. It is no less necessary to abandon the peculiar idea that such a position can be a European fiefdom or even that it matters what nationality the successful candidate possesses. The world simply needs the best possible candidate. If it is to get that person, it needs to think again, not just about who should be chosen, but how.

IHT: Poverty: A recent report from the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute says that poverty rather than food shortages, is the main underlying cause of hunger. It says that 80 per cent of all malnourished children in the Third World in the past decade lived in countries that reported food surpluses. Africa/US: Article says that US President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright have forthrightly acknowledged America's Cold War complicity with tyrants and warlords across the continent whose crimes paved the way for today's conflicts. The list is lamentably long: Marshal Mobutu in Zaire, Samuel Doe in Liberia, Gafaar Nimeiri in Sudan, Mohammed Siad Barre in Somalia and the Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi, who now perpetuates a pointless war with the benefit of diamond smuggling revenue. But the administration has been slower to recognise that a well-intentioned effort to forge special relationships with less malevolent but no more accountable leaders has failed to arrest their destructive tendencies.

The Independent: Indonesia/ EU: An Indonesian cabinet minister believes that the European Union is endangering Indonesia's fragile democracy by resuming the export of weapons at a time of intense unrest and growing fears of a military coup. The maritime minister Sarwono Kusumaatmadja said that it was “two-faced of European nations to speak of promoting reform in Indonesia while simultaneously selling arms to the country's divided and mutinous military. Amnesty International described the decision to renew arms sales to Indonesia as “grossly irresponsible.” Independent leader says that the Foreign Office returns the arms trade to an ethics-free zone. “We now once more inhabit a morality free zone where money means everything, and principles count for nothing.”

Monday 17th January 2000

The Guardian: Chile: Socialist candidate Ricardo Lagos narrowly beat the populist rightwing candidate, Joaquin Lavin, in the Chilean presidential election yesterday. With 87.45 per cent of the ballot counted last night, Mr Lagos had 51.3 per cent to 48.6 per cent for Mr Lavin. Mr Lagos's victory will allow the governing centre-left coalition, known as the Concertacion, to retain a third consecutive term in power. Mr Lagos is the first representative of the left wing of the coalition to be elected president and is expected to push hard to rebuild social and cultural institutions destroyed by the military dictatorship.

The Voice: Somalia: Two Somali faction leaders have opened a new sea port close to the capital—more than seven years after Mogadishu's main port was closed by civil war. Jasira, eight miles south-west of the city, was inaugurated on January 9^th.

The FT: IMF: Caio Koch Weser, a German finance ministry official who has spent 25 years with the World Bank is the front-runner to succeed Michel Camdessus as Managing Director of the IMF, but feelings about him in all the G-7 capitals other than Berlin range from grudging acceptance to hostility. The issue will be discussed at the Group of Seven industrialised nations finance ministers' meeting in Tokyo next weekend, but will not be resolved there. it looks as though Stanley Fischer, the first deputy MD, may end up running the IMF for some time after Mr Camdessus departs next month. He might even get the job. Kenya: Africa Online, the continent's most broadly based internet service provider, has bought its main Kenyan rival, Net 2000, for $3.3 million—the first of a string of planned acquisitions as the company seeks to become Africa's premier internet service provider. Africa Online already operates in six sub-Saharan African countries, most recently moving into Swaziland, and is planning to double that number by the end of the year. Nigeria: Royal Dutch/Shell appears to be on the verge of the first “significant breakthrough” in its estranged relations with the Ogoni tribe in Nigeria since the execution in 1995 of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni rights activists by the then military government. Shell has had a series of meetings with Ogoni representatives, brokered by church and civic leaders in Nigeria.

The Times: UK/Indonesia: Britain may resume sales of Hawk fighter aircraft to Indonesia within days of a Foreign Office minister visiting East Timor. John Battle will arrive in Dili on Wednesday to offer help to returning refugees and to bolster the Government of the newly independent territory as it tries to rebuild the shattered capital. The arms sales of Hawk aircraft remain a sensitive issue. Of the 16 British Aerospace Hawk fighters approved by the previous Conservative Government, nine were supplied last year and the remaining seven could now be delivered.