World of Opinion
On poverty in Palestine: The report submitted to the cabinet on Sunday by Maj. Gen. Amos Gilead, the Israeli coordinator of activities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, on the poverty prevailing among the Palestinian population should serve as a warning to Israel.
His description, which documents a tragedy in the making, should be taken here as the writing on the wall, because even though it is the Palestinians’ tragedy, it is also ours. Their society is collapsing but Israel’s moral character is crumbling along with it. …
The coordinator’s report demands … measures to make life easier for Palestinian civilians. … But Israel must also start preparing for far-reaching diplomatic steps … with the aim of ending … the intolerable situation in which millions of human beings languish under Israeli occupation.
On Indonesia and terrorism:
As the devastating explosion on the Indonesian island of Bali shows, the United States can lead the war against international terrorism – but can’t win it alone. Indonesia – the most populous Muslim nation – is rapidly becoming a haven for domestic and foreign Islamic terrorists, who hope to use it as a new base of operations. However, President Mega-wati Sukarnoputri has chosen not to bear the political risk of tackling this enormous security problem head-on – and her nation has just paid a steep price for her timid, ineffective leadership.
Any hope of defeating terrorism requires a high level of international cooperation – which Megawati has unwisely chosen to withhold.The tragic folly of that approach should be obvious to Megawati and other Indonesian political leaders. The terrorists responsible for the Bali attack cared only about wreaking havoc against the West, and nothing about the serious harm they caused Indonesia.
On Iraqi denial and deception:
Iraq has made denial and deception a finely tuned art designed to convince the world Saddam Hussein’s regime isn’t cooking up deadly weapons of mass destruction.
An analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency called the Iraqi denial and deception program “a deliberate, methodical, extensive and well-organized national-level, strategic effort, which aims at deceiving not just the United States, not just the United Nations or even the public media, but, in fact, the entire world.”
John Yurechko, a DIA expert on information operations and “D&D,” as he refers to denial and deception, said Hussein goes to great lengths in concealing his intentions from the world. …
Since the end of the Gulf War, he explained, Iraq’s denial and deception campaign has had three main goals: blur the truth about Iraqi compliance with the Nuclear Proliferation treaty and U.N. resolutions; keep U.N. Special Commission inspectors from learning the full extent of Iraq’s WMD capabilities and prevent UNSCOM from completely disarming Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological and long-range missile programs in accordance with U.N. resolutions. …
This is why international inspectors must be given unbridled access to scour Iraq for biological and nuclear weapons.
On American-EU relations:
American decisiveness in the war against terror has divided Europe. Opinions range from Germany’s definitive “nein” to the active support of Tony Blair’s Britain.
The outlook is distressing for anyone who has hoped that Europe could already present a unified international front. In the most difficult moments only the separate nation states affirm their sovereign identities.
With even more vigor, we as Europeans must confront difficult questions. How can we check Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s plans without giving a blank-check to the United States, whose “preventive strike” could inflame half the world? How can we maintain a system of rules hinged on the U.N. without conceding too much space to Iraq and thereby encouraging American unilateralism?
Friendship with the United States and active Europeanism aren’t mutually exclusive; they are complementary.
A more politically centrist Europe, made of stronger initiatives within the European Union and clearer relationships with our friends and allies the United States could secure peace as well as our own national interests.
On need to focus on terrorism:
Ever since the United State launched its counteroffensive against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, it has been an open question whether Osama bin Laden survived. There is still no definitive answer, but recent events indicate that the terrorist organization is still capable of causing mayhem and death. The devastating explosions on Bali are the clearest example. The terrorist activity started earlier this month with the bombing of a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen. It continued with shooting attacks on U.S. Marines in Kuwait that resulted in the death of one Marine and the wounding of another. Both of those attackers were killed, and another 15 individuals linked to al-Qaida were arrested.
The attacks occurred on the anniversaries of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the attack on the USS Cole in a Yemeni harbor two years ago. They also coincided with the appearance of new tapes of Mr. bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri that have been interpreted as urging followers to start a new round of terrorist strikes. …
It all goes to emphasize that, despite the attention given Iraq in recent months, the United States must focus on the war against terrorism. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein might represent a disease that must be quarantined, but al-Qaida and its terrorism are the virulent virus that can still erupt without warning and kill. …