By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.
Hussein, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region."
Former president George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq six years ago on the grounds that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to international security. Administration officials at the time also strongly suggested Iraq had significant links to al-Qaeda, which carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Hussein, who was often defiant and boastful during the interviews, at one point wistfully acknowledged that he should have permitted the United Nations to witness the destruction of Iraq's weapons stockpile after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The FBI summaries of the interviews -- 20 formal interrogations and five "casual conversations" in 2004 -- were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute, and posted on its Web site yesterday. The detailed accounts of the interviews were released with few deletions, though one, a last formal interview on May 1, 2004, was completely redacted.
Thomas S. Blanton, director of the archive, said he could conceive of no national security reason to keep Hussein's conversations with the FBI secret. Paul Bresson, a bureau spokesman, said he could not explain the reason for the redactions.
The 20 formal interviews took place between Feb. 7 and May 1, followed by the casual conversations between May 10 and June 28. Hussein was later transferred to Iraqi custody, and he was hanged in December 2006.
The formal interviews covered Hussein's rise to power, the Kuwait invasion, and Hussein's crackdown on the Shiite uprising in extensive detail, while the subject of the weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda were raised in the casual conversations, after the formal interviews. Blanton said this suggests that the FBI received new orders from Washington to delve into topics of intense interest to Bush administration officials.
The FBI spokesman did not know why those subjects were raised in the later meetings. In an interview last year on CBS's "60 Minutes," George L. Piro, the agent who conducted the interviews, said he purposely put Hussein's back against the wall "psychologically to tell him that his back was against the wall," but he did not use coercive interrogation techniques, because "it's against FBI policy." The interviews released yesterday do not suggest any use of coercive techniques.
During the interviews, Piro, who conducted them in Arabic, often appeared to challenge Hussein's account of events, citing facts that contradicted his recollections. He even forced Hussein to watch a graphic British documentary on his treatment of the Shiites, though that did not appear to shake the former president.
At one point, Hussein dismissed as a fantasy the many intelligence reports that said he used a body double to elude assassination. "This is movie magic, not reality," he said with a laugh. Instead, he said, he had used a phone only twice since 1990 and rarely slept in the same location two days in a row.
Hussein's fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. Iran and Iraq had fought a grinding eight-year war in the 1980s, and Hussein said he was convinced that Iran was trying to annex southern Iraq -- which is largely Shiite. "Hussein viewed the other countries in the Middle East as weak and could not defend themselves or Iraq from an attack from Iran," Piro recounted in his summary of a June 11, 2004, conversation.
"The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors," Piro wrote. "Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq."
Hussein noted that Iran's weapons capabilities had increased dramatically while Iraq's weapons "had been eliminated by the UN sanctions," and that eventually Iraq would have to reconstitute its weapons to deal with that threat if it could not reach a security agreement with the United States.
Piro raised bin Laden in his last conversation with Hussein, on June 28, 2004, but the information he yielded conflicted with the Bush administration's many efforts to link Iraq with the terrorist group. Hussein replied that throughout history there had been conflicts between believers of Islam and political leaders. He said that "he was a believer in God but was not a zealot . . . that religion and government should not mix." Hussein said that he had never met bin Laden and that the two of them "did not have the same belief or vision."
When Piro noted that there were reasons why Hussein and al-Qaeda should have cooperated -- they had the same enemies in the United States and Saudi Arabia -- Hussein replied that the United States was not Iraq's enemy, and that he simply opposed its policies.
Jul 2, 2009
Marines Launch Mission in Afghanistan's South Focused on Security and Governance
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan, July 2 -- Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban has evicted local police and government officials and taken power.
Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of mounting a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.
"We're doing this very differently," Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. "We're going to be with the people. We're not going to drive to work. We're going to walk to work."
Similar approaches have been tried in the eastern part of the country, but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half the world's supply of opium and provide the Taliban with a valuable source of income.
The operation launched early Thursday represents a shift in strategy after years of thwarted U.S.-led efforts to destroy Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and extend the authority of the Afghan government into the nation's southern and eastern regions. More than seven years after the fall of the Taliban government, the radical Islamist militia remains a potent force across broad swaths of the country. The Obama administration has made turning the war around a top priority, and the Helmand operation, if it succeeds, is seen as a potentially critical first step.
Traveling through swirling dust clouds under the light of a half-moon, the first Marine units departed from this remote desert base shortly after midnight on dual-rotor CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters backed by AH-64 Apache gunships and NATO fighter jets. Additional forces poured into the valley during the pre-dawn hours on more helicopters and in heavy transport vehicles designed to withstand the makeshift but lethal bombs that Taliban fighters have planted along the roads.
The initial Marine units did not face resistance as they converged on their destinations. Marine commanders said before the start of the operation that they expected only minimal Taliban opposition at the outset but that assaults on the forces would probably increase once they moved into towns and began patrols. Field commanders have been told to prepare for suicide attacks, ambushes and roadside bombings.
Officers here said the mission, which required months of planning, is the Marines' largest operation since the 2004 invasion of Fallujah, Iraq. In the minutes after midnight, well-armed Marines trudged across the tarmac at this sprawling outpost to board the Chinooks, which lumbered aloft with a burst of searing dust. A few hours later, another contingent of Marines boarded a row of CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters packed onto a relatively small landing pad at a staging base in the desert south of here. As the choppers clattered through the night sky, dozens of armored vehicles rolled toward towns along the river valley.
The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an-eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.
In areas south of the provincial capital, local leaders, and even members of the police force, have fled. An initial priority for the Marines will be to bring back Afghan government officials and reinvigorate the local police forces. Marine commanders also plan to help district governors hold shuras -- meetings of elders in the community -- in the next week.
"Our focus is not the Taliban," Nicholson told his officers. "Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet."
But Nicholson and his top commanders recognize that making that happen involves tackling numerous challenges, starting with a lack of trust among the local population. That mistrust stems from concern over civilian casualties resulting from U.S. military operations as well as from a fear that the troops will not stay long enough to counter the Taliban. The British army, which had been responsible for all of Helmand since 2005 under NATO's Afghan stabilization effort, lacked the resources to maintain a permanent presence in most parts of the province.
"A key to establishing security is getting the local population to understand that we're going to be staying here to help them -- that we're not driving in and driving out," said Col. Eric Mellenger, the brigade's operations officer.
With the arrival of the Marines, British forces have redeployed around the capital of Helmand, Lashkar Gah, where they are conducting a large anti-Taliban operation designed to complement the Marine mission. Two British soldiers were reported killed in fighting in the province Wednesday.
The Marines have also been vexed by a lack of Afghan security forces and a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel. Nicholson had hoped that his brigade, which has about 11,000 Marines and sailors, would be able to conduct operations with a similar number of Afghan soldiers. But thus far, the Marines have been allotted only about 500 Afghan soldiers, which he deems "a critical vulnerability."
"They see things intuitively that we don't see," he said. "It's their country, and they know it better than we do."
Despite commitments from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that they would send additional personnel to help the new forces in southern Afghanistan with reconstruction and governance development, State has added only two officers in Helmand since the Marines arrived. State has promised to have a dozen more diplomats and reconstruction experts working with the Marines, but only by the end of the summer.
To compensate in the interim, the Marines are deploying what officers here say is the largest-ever military civilian-affairs contingent attached to a combat brigade -- about 50 Marines, mostly reservists, with experience in local government, business management and law enforcement. Instead of flooding the area of operations with cash, as some units did in Iraq, the Marine civil affairs commander, Lt. Col. Curtis Lee, said he intends to focus his resources on improving local government.
Once basic governance structures are restored, civilian reconstruction personnel plan to focus on economic development programs, including programs to help Afghans grow legal crops in the area. Senior Obama administration officials say creating jobs and improving the livelihoods of rural Afghans is the key to defeating the Taliban, which has been able to recruit fighters for as little as $5 a day in Helmand.
In meetings with his commanders at forward operating bases over the past three days, Nicholson acknowledged that focusing on governance and population security does not come as naturally to Marines as conducting offensive operations, but he told them it is essential that they focus on "reining in the pit bulls."
"We're not going to measure your success by the number of times your ammunition is resupplied. . . . Our success in this environment will be very much predicated on restraint," he told a group of officers from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines on Sunday. "You're going to drink lots of tea. You're going to eat lots of goat. Get to know the people. That's the reason why we're here."
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan, July 2 -- Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban has evicted local police and government officials and taken power.
Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of mounting a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.
"We're doing this very differently," Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. "We're going to be with the people. We're not going to drive to work. We're going to walk to work."
Similar approaches have been tried in the eastern part of the country, but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half the world's supply of opium and provide the Taliban with a valuable source of income.
The operation launched early Thursday represents a shift in strategy after years of thwarted U.S.-led efforts to destroy Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and extend the authority of the Afghan government into the nation's southern and eastern regions. More than seven years after the fall of the Taliban government, the radical Islamist militia remains a potent force across broad swaths of the country. The Obama administration has made turning the war around a top priority, and the Helmand operation, if it succeeds, is seen as a potentially critical first step.
Traveling through swirling dust clouds under the light of a half-moon, the first Marine units departed from this remote desert base shortly after midnight on dual-rotor CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters backed by AH-64 Apache gunships and NATO fighter jets. Additional forces poured into the valley during the pre-dawn hours on more helicopters and in heavy transport vehicles designed to withstand the makeshift but lethal bombs that Taliban fighters have planted along the roads.
The initial Marine units did not face resistance as they converged on their destinations. Marine commanders said before the start of the operation that they expected only minimal Taliban opposition at the outset but that assaults on the forces would probably increase once they moved into towns and began patrols. Field commanders have been told to prepare for suicide attacks, ambushes and roadside bombings.
Officers here said the mission, which required months of planning, is the Marines' largest operation since the 2004 invasion of Fallujah, Iraq. In the minutes after midnight, well-armed Marines trudged across the tarmac at this sprawling outpost to board the Chinooks, which lumbered aloft with a burst of searing dust. A few hours later, another contingent of Marines boarded a row of CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters packed onto a relatively small landing pad at a staging base in the desert south of here. As the choppers clattered through the night sky, dozens of armored vehicles rolled toward towns along the river valley.
The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an-eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.
In areas south of the provincial capital, local leaders, and even members of the police force, have fled. An initial priority for the Marines will be to bring back Afghan government officials and reinvigorate the local police forces. Marine commanders also plan to help district governors hold shuras -- meetings of elders in the community -- in the next week.
"Our focus is not the Taliban," Nicholson told his officers. "Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet."
But Nicholson and his top commanders recognize that making that happen involves tackling numerous challenges, starting with a lack of trust among the local population. That mistrust stems from concern over civilian casualties resulting from U.S. military operations as well as from a fear that the troops will not stay long enough to counter the Taliban. The British army, which had been responsible for all of Helmand since 2005 under NATO's Afghan stabilization effort, lacked the resources to maintain a permanent presence in most parts of the province.
"A key to establishing security is getting the local population to understand that we're going to be staying here to help them -- that we're not driving in and driving out," said Col. Eric Mellenger, the brigade's operations officer.
With the arrival of the Marines, British forces have redeployed around the capital of Helmand, Lashkar Gah, where they are conducting a large anti-Taliban operation designed to complement the Marine mission. Two British soldiers were reported killed in fighting in the province Wednesday.
The Marines have also been vexed by a lack of Afghan security forces and a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel. Nicholson had hoped that his brigade, which has about 11,000 Marines and sailors, would be able to conduct operations with a similar number of Afghan soldiers. But thus far, the Marines have been allotted only about 500 Afghan soldiers, which he deems "a critical vulnerability."
"They see things intuitively that we don't see," he said. "It's their country, and they know it better than we do."
Despite commitments from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that they would send additional personnel to help the new forces in southern Afghanistan with reconstruction and governance development, State has added only two officers in Helmand since the Marines arrived. State has promised to have a dozen more diplomats and reconstruction experts working with the Marines, but only by the end of the summer.
To compensate in the interim, the Marines are deploying what officers here say is the largest-ever military civilian-affairs contingent attached to a combat brigade -- about 50 Marines, mostly reservists, with experience in local government, business management and law enforcement. Instead of flooding the area of operations with cash, as some units did in Iraq, the Marine civil affairs commander, Lt. Col. Curtis Lee, said he intends to focus his resources on improving local government.
Once basic governance structures are restored, civilian reconstruction personnel plan to focus on economic development programs, including programs to help Afghans grow legal crops in the area. Senior Obama administration officials say creating jobs and improving the livelihoods of rural Afghans is the key to defeating the Taliban, which has been able to recruit fighters for as little as $5 a day in Helmand.
In meetings with his commanders at forward operating bases over the past three days, Nicholson acknowledged that focusing on governance and population security does not come as naturally to Marines as conducting offensive operations, but he told them it is essential that they focus on "reining in the pit bulls."
"We're not going to measure your success by the number of times your ammunition is resupplied. . . . Our success in this environment will be very much predicated on restraint," he told a group of officers from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines on Sunday. "You're going to drink lots of tea. You're going to eat lots of goat. Get to know the people. That's the reason why we're here."
Cory Aquino in Serious Condition
News Desk
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Publication Date: 02-07-2009
The cancer-stricken Corazon Aquino has been moved from the intensive care unit to a regular room of Makati Medical Centre and has refused to undergo another cycle of chemotherapy, her spokesperson Deedee Siytangco said Wednesday night.
In an earlier phone interview at 6:20pm, Siytangco said the former president, who is battling colon cancer, had been confined at the hospital for a week and a half because of loss of appetite, but was conscious.
“Her whole family is with her now. She’s in serious condition but we’re hoping for the best,” Siytangco said.
There was no word from actress and TV host Kris Aquino, the former President’s youngest daughter and for a time the family spokesperson on her mother’s condition.
Kris’ manager and longtime friend Boy Abunda said she was weeping and inconsolable.
Abunda said he spoke with Kris by phone at around 6pm Wednesday.
“She asked the people to allow her this time for herself. She said she would rather not talk about her mom’s condition at the moment,” Abunda said.
Call for prayers
Earlier Wednesday at the first of a novena of healing Masses for the 76-year-old Aquino at the Greenbelt 5 chapel in Makati City, Siytangco said “Tita Cory” could “talk and pray” but was “not well”.
“She needs all your prayers,” Siytangco said.
The open-sided chapel was standing room only for the noontime Mass dedicated to Aquino and others afflicted with cancer.
“Our hearts are burdened because of the illness of our beloved former president, and the pain and discomfort she has to endure,” broadcaster Korina Sanchez said, reading the novena prayer.
“You took the hand of our dear sister Cory, as she struggled through every trial, as she confronted every challenge, and embraced every cross of her life. Take her hand now and have mercy on her and upon all poor souls who are in agony and make Your will known to them,” said Sanchez, who has asked the former president to be a sponsor at her wedding to Senator Mar Roxas.
Among those present at the Mass were former members of the Aquino Cabinet led by former Senate president Franklin Drilon and wife Mila, former finance secretary Ramon del Rosario Jr, Popoy Juico and his wife Margie, who served as Aquino’s appointments secretary, Manila Mayor Fred Lim, and anti-Arroyo activists Dinky Soliman and Leah Navarro of the Black and White Movement.
In Negros Occidental, Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra also called on the faithful to pray for Aquino’s well-being.
Kabankalan Bishop Patricio Buzon did the same in extolling Aquino’s legacy to the nation, which was to end the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986 and restore freedom and democracy to the nation.
‘We need her’
In a statement issued by his office, Aquino’s only son, Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, said he “sincerely thanks all those who attended the novena Mass and those who continue to pray for his mother’s healing".
Drilon said he last spoke with Noynoy Aquino last week and that the latter “did not sound very optimistic because of his mother’s appetite problem”.
“We have no other recourse but to pray, pray very hard, for her,” Drilon said in a phone interview. “It’s very difficult to lose Cory at this time when we need her most.”
Aquino, known as the icon of Filipino people power, remained active in social and political causes even after stepping down from office.
In July 2005, she added her voice to the growing call for President Arroyo’s resignation over allegations of vote-rigging and corruption, and later joined protest rallies against the administration.
Senators Roxas and Manuel Villar Jr, both presidential aspirants, called on the people to pray for Aquino.
“I have heard the news that President Aquino is undergoing a difficult time in her illness,” Roxas said, adding that he joined the people in praying for her quick recovery.
“President Cory is one of the greatest leaders I respect and emulate,” he said, adding:
“Mrs President, please fight on. We need you.”
Villar said the former president was entering “a critical period in the battle against cancer”.
“We will forever be indebted to President Cory for her significant contribution to the restoration of democracy in the country. In this time when there are serious threats to our democracy, she remains the icon that our people turn to for hope,” Villar said in a statement.
“Our prayers are also with the members of her family. May their unshakeable faith in God strengthen them in this difficult time,” he said.
‘Let’s storm heaven’
Even Malacañang called on the public to pray for Aquino’s immediate recovery.
“That’s bad news,” Cabinet Secretary Silvestre Bello, who served as justice secretary during the Aquino administration, said of reports that Aquino was seriously ill.
“Let’s start praying for her. Let’s storm heaven with our prayers for the former President to be given a new lease on life,” Bello said in a phone interview.
He said he had always included Aquino in his prayers, and that he would go to St Jude Church near Malacañang to offer prayers for her.
Malacañang held a thanksgiving Mass early in May for the successful colon cancer operation of Aquino at Makati Medical Centre. Arroyo, then in Syria, called to instruct her Cabinet officials to organise the Mass.
In attendance at that Mass was Aquino’s brother Jose Cojuangco and wife Margarita Cojuangco, and brother-in-law Agapito “Butz” Aquino.
Reports from Fe Zamora, Allison W. Lopez, Marinel R. Cruz, Christine O. Avendaño and TJ Burgonio in Manila; Carla P. Gomez, Inquirer Visayas
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Publication Date: 02-07-2009
The cancer-stricken Corazon Aquino has been moved from the intensive care unit to a regular room of Makati Medical Centre and has refused to undergo another cycle of chemotherapy, her spokesperson Deedee Siytangco said Wednesday night.
In an earlier phone interview at 6:20pm, Siytangco said the former president, who is battling colon cancer, had been confined at the hospital for a week and a half because of loss of appetite, but was conscious.
“Her whole family is with her now. She’s in serious condition but we’re hoping for the best,” Siytangco said.
There was no word from actress and TV host Kris Aquino, the former President’s youngest daughter and for a time the family spokesperson on her mother’s condition.
Kris’ manager and longtime friend Boy Abunda said she was weeping and inconsolable.
Abunda said he spoke with Kris by phone at around 6pm Wednesday.
“She asked the people to allow her this time for herself. She said she would rather not talk about her mom’s condition at the moment,” Abunda said.
Call for prayers
Earlier Wednesday at the first of a novena of healing Masses for the 76-year-old Aquino at the Greenbelt 5 chapel in Makati City, Siytangco said “Tita Cory” could “talk and pray” but was “not well”.
“She needs all your prayers,” Siytangco said.
The open-sided chapel was standing room only for the noontime Mass dedicated to Aquino and others afflicted with cancer.
“Our hearts are burdened because of the illness of our beloved former president, and the pain and discomfort she has to endure,” broadcaster Korina Sanchez said, reading the novena prayer.
“You took the hand of our dear sister Cory, as she struggled through every trial, as she confronted every challenge, and embraced every cross of her life. Take her hand now and have mercy on her and upon all poor souls who are in agony and make Your will known to them,” said Sanchez, who has asked the former president to be a sponsor at her wedding to Senator Mar Roxas.
Among those present at the Mass were former members of the Aquino Cabinet led by former Senate president Franklin Drilon and wife Mila, former finance secretary Ramon del Rosario Jr, Popoy Juico and his wife Margie, who served as Aquino’s appointments secretary, Manila Mayor Fred Lim, and anti-Arroyo activists Dinky Soliman and Leah Navarro of the Black and White Movement.
In Negros Occidental, Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra also called on the faithful to pray for Aquino’s well-being.
Kabankalan Bishop Patricio Buzon did the same in extolling Aquino’s legacy to the nation, which was to end the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986 and restore freedom and democracy to the nation.
‘We need her’
In a statement issued by his office, Aquino’s only son, Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, said he “sincerely thanks all those who attended the novena Mass and those who continue to pray for his mother’s healing".
Drilon said he last spoke with Noynoy Aquino last week and that the latter “did not sound very optimistic because of his mother’s appetite problem”.
“We have no other recourse but to pray, pray very hard, for her,” Drilon said in a phone interview. “It’s very difficult to lose Cory at this time when we need her most.”
Aquino, known as the icon of Filipino people power, remained active in social and political causes even after stepping down from office.
In July 2005, she added her voice to the growing call for President Arroyo’s resignation over allegations of vote-rigging and corruption, and later joined protest rallies against the administration.
Senators Roxas and Manuel Villar Jr, both presidential aspirants, called on the people to pray for Aquino.
“I have heard the news that President Aquino is undergoing a difficult time in her illness,” Roxas said, adding that he joined the people in praying for her quick recovery.
“President Cory is one of the greatest leaders I respect and emulate,” he said, adding:
“Mrs President, please fight on. We need you.”
Villar said the former president was entering “a critical period in the battle against cancer”.
“We will forever be indebted to President Cory for her significant contribution to the restoration of democracy in the country. In this time when there are serious threats to our democracy, she remains the icon that our people turn to for hope,” Villar said in a statement.
“Our prayers are also with the members of her family. May their unshakeable faith in God strengthen them in this difficult time,” he said.
‘Let’s storm heaven’
Even Malacañang called on the public to pray for Aquino’s immediate recovery.
“That’s bad news,” Cabinet Secretary Silvestre Bello, who served as justice secretary during the Aquino administration, said of reports that Aquino was seriously ill.
“Let’s start praying for her. Let’s storm heaven with our prayers for the former President to be given a new lease on life,” Bello said in a phone interview.
He said he had always included Aquino in his prayers, and that he would go to St Jude Church near Malacañang to offer prayers for her.
Malacañang held a thanksgiving Mass early in May for the successful colon cancer operation of Aquino at Makati Medical Centre. Arroyo, then in Syria, called to instruct her Cabinet officials to organise the Mass.
In attendance at that Mass was Aquino’s brother Jose Cojuangco and wife Margarita Cojuangco, and brother-in-law Agapito “Butz” Aquino.
Reports from Fe Zamora, Allison W. Lopez, Marinel R. Cruz, Christine O. Avendaño and TJ Burgonio in Manila; Carla P. Gomez, Inquirer Visayas
Americans Expect Security in Iraq to Worsen After Pullout
PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup polling conducted on June 30, the deadline for U.S. forces to withdraw from urban areas of Iraq, finds Americans largely pessimistic about the likely impact of this change. Overall, 58% of Americans believe the security situation in Iraq will worsen now that much of it is in the hands of Iraqi security forces; only 36% believe security will stay the same or improve.
According to the detailed responses, Americans who believe deterioration in Iraqi security will follow the recent U.S. pullout are closely divided in their perceptions of how severe it will be. About 3 in 10 Americans say security will get a little worse while 27% say it will get a lot worse. Very few -- only 4% -- believe it will get a lot better.
Late last year, the Iraqi parliament voted to approve the Status of Forces Agreement reached between President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that established a time frame for the gradual reduction of U.S. military involvement in that country. The June 30 deadline for withdrawal of U.S. forces from major cities and towns represents the first phase of that build-down. The agreement calls for the removal of all U.S. troops from all areas of Iraq by December 31, 2011.
Despite the timely implementation of Phase 1, only 27% of Americans believe the complete withdrawal will happen by the 2011 deadline. Democrats (35% of whom expect that deadline to be met) are only slightly more confident about this withdrawal than are Republicans and independents (22% each).
Americans have been waiting a long time for the United States to pull out of Iraq. Gallup polling as far back as June 2005 found a majority of U.S. adults (51%) saying they favored a timetable for removing U.S. troops from Iraq, rather than maintaining forces there indefinitely. By September 2007, that figure was 60%, and it remained 60% in Gallup's last measure in February 2008.
Gallup polling that month also found 65% of Americans saying the U.S. has an obligation to establish a "reasonable level of stability and security" in Iraq before leaving. With violence in Iraq generally trending downward and the January elections there having gone smoothly, Americans no doubt welcome this week's milestone. However, even though the United States has thus far lived up to its part of the security pact with Iraq by withdrawing forces from urban areas and turning security there over to the Iraqis, most Americans are skeptical that the full withdrawal will occur on time.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,011 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted June 30, 2009, as part of Gallup Poll Daily tracking. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Polls conducted entirely in one day, such as this one, are subject to additional error or bias not found in polls conducted over several days.
New Editor-in-chief for The South China Morning Post
The South China Morning Post just announced a long rumored shift in editorial lineup. Below is the internal memo released a short while ago.
To: All Staff
From: Kuok Hui Kwong
Date: 2 July 2009
To all my colleagues,
It is with regret that I announce Mr. C.K. Lau’s decision to resign from his position as Editor of the South China Morning Post, after a long and distinguished career with us. C.K. discussed with me a couple of months ago regarding his plan to pursue his personal interests. We have mutually agreed that his last day with us will be 10 July 2009. During his tenure at the Post, C.K. has played a key role in strengthening and improving our editorial operations. A committed and well-respected professional, he has contributed significantly to the Post and to the overall media community in Hong Kong.
Effective from 13 July 2009, Mr. Reginald Chua will join us as Editor-in-Chief. On top of managing the day-to-day editorial operations of the Post, Reg will work with me on the long-term strategies for our editorial coverage. Reg has enjoyed a successful career at the Wall Street Journal spanning the past 16 years. He was most recently Deputy Managing Editor at The Wall Street Journal based in New York, where he led, amongst other responsibilities, the development of the Journal’s computer-assisted reporting capabilities and oversaw the paper’s graphics. Prior to moving to New York, he was the Editor of the Journal’s Hong Kong-based Asian edition. Reg graduated with a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics from the University of Chicago.
Effective the same date, Mr. David Lague will be appointed as Managing Editor. As a member of the newsroom’s senior management team, David will oversee editorial quality and standards, training and projects. He will also be involved in daily news operations. A news and features writer with the South China Morning Post in 1987-88, David returns to the paper after more than two decades as a reporter and editor in the Asia-Pacific region. Most recently, he was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times in Beijing. Before joining New York Times Company, he was managing editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. David was also China correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. David graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in science from Murdoch University.
David will work closely with Wang Xiangwei and Cliff Buddle, the Post’s deputies, to help manage the newsroom, steer its coverage, and continue to build on the paper’s strong position. Xiangwei, Cliff and David will report to Reg.
On behalf of the Board of Directors and the Management of SCMP Group, we express our deep appreciation to C.K. for his contribution and persevering dedication, and wish him the very best in his new endeavours. Please also join me in welcoming Reg and extending your full support to him, and in welcoming David back to Post.
Hui Kuok
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Thailand's Press Club Faces Police Probe Over Lese Majeste
| Pravit Rojanaphruk The Nation (Thailand) Publication Date: 02-07-2009 |
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For the first time in its five-decade history, the whole board of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) has been accused of committing lese majeste, a crime with a maximum jail sentence of 15 years. Laksana Kornsilpa, 57, a translator and a critic of ousted and convicted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra filed a lese majeste complaint against the 13-member board at Lumpini police station on Tuesday night. Laksana was quoted on ASTV Manager website as claiming the board's decision to sell DVD copies of Jakrapob Penkair's controversial speech at the club back in 2007 constituted an act of lese majeste. She alleged that the whole board "may be acting in an organised fashion and the goal may be to undermine the credibility of the high institution of Thailand". ASTV Manager daily also quoted Laksana as saying some major local newspapers may also part of a movement to undermine the monarchy. FCCT president Marwaan Macan-Markar said the board members have decided not to give separate interviews. It issued a statement saying: "The FCCT will cooperate with such an inquiry [by the police]." The board, includes three British nationals including the BBC's Bangkok correspondent Jonathan Head, three American nationals, including two working for Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, an Australian national and a Thai news reader for Channel 3, Karuna Buakamsri. Social critic and lese majeste case defendant Sulak Sivaraksa, reacting to the news, told The Nation yesterday that "the problem of [abusing] lese majeste law is now utterly messy". "The fact that leading world intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and others have petitioned to [PM] Abhisit [Vejjajiva to reform the law] is a testimony to it. If we let it goes on like this it will get even messier. It's time for the government to do something." A source within the FCCT, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was "surprised" at the latest allegation, which came after two years of the speech being made, adding that "it places Thailand in a very poor light". DVDs were set up largely for club members who missed interesting talks and sales are restricted solely for FCCT members. Few copies of the Jakrapob talk are understood to have been sold because a manuscript of his talk circulated in Bangkok shortly after he was charged, and the video can be downloaded free from some websites. In the comments' section on ASTV Manager's website, most posters expressed support for Laksana and praised her for the move. One said: "Put them in jail for 99 years." Another asked the site to post a picture of Jonathan Head so the person could attack him if he or she ran into him. |
Jul 1, 2009
Young Malay Malaysians Not Ready for Non-Malay, Non-Muslim or Woman PM
30 Jun 09 : 3.53PM
By Shanon Shah
shanonshah@thenutgraph.com
The prime minister's office in Putrajaya (Public domain; source: Wiki commons)
PETALING JAYA, 30 June 2009: Malay Malaysians are the group least ready to accept a non-male, non-Malay or non-Muslim as prime minister, a Merdeka Center for Opinion Research survey has found.
Of the 2,518 randomly selected Malaysian youths aged between 20 and 35 polled by the centre, only 32% of Malay Malaysians were ready to accept a woman prime minister.
More strikingly, only 7% were ready to accept a non-Malay, non-Muslim prime minister, while only 36% would accept a non-Malay but Muslim prime minister.
By contrast, more than 80% of Chinese, Indian and non-Muslim bumiputera Malaysians were ready to accept a woman, a non-Malay Muslim or a non-Malay, non-Muslim Malaysian as prime minister.
Merdeka Center program director Ibrahim Suffian said the poll was conducted between November and December 2008. He said the socio-political climate in Malaysia at that time was coloured by Barack Obama's election as US president, and the vacancy of the Kuala Terengganu parliamentary seat due to the death of the Umno incumbent.
"It is important to note that a survey is merely a snapshot, not a prediction of the future, even though a survey can pick up on certain trends," he said at a press conference today to launch the survey findings.
Survey question: How strongly would you accept a
Breakdown of 2,518 respondents. Click on image for bigger view (Source: Merderka Center)
Lower racial identification
The survey also found that 43% of its respondents identified themselves primarily as Malaysians first, while 38% identified themselves by religion first. Only 15% identified themselves by ethnic categories first.
The survey posed a question — "If you can only choose one identity, would you say that you are...?" — to all respondents.
More than 50% of East Malaysians identified themselves as Malaysian first, while only 34% of respondents in the peninsula identified similarly. From the ethnic breakdown, Malay Malaysians were the lowest number of respondents who identified as Malaysians first, at 29%.
"Young Malay [Malaysians] are moving away from ethnic identification, and Islam is playing an important role in supplanting this ethnic identification," Ibrahim said.
"More than 60% of Malay Malaysian respondents saw themselves as Muslim first, while only 10% saw themselves as Malay first," he added.
Ibrahim said, however, that with this increased identification with Islam came stronger demands for a clean government, better rule of law and democratic improvements.
Interestingly, among respondents who attended Chinese medium schools, 52% identified as Malaysians first. Conversely, only 39% of respondents who attended national schools identified as Malaysians first. Ibrahim said the lower percentage in national schools could be because more Malay Malaysians attend these schools, thus dragging the percentage down.
Survey question: If you could only choose one identity, would you say that you are...?
Breakdown of 1,083 respondents who provided "Malaysian" as their first choice.
Click on image for bigger view (Source: Merdeka Center)
Paradoxes in identity
Ibrahim also noted that younger Malay Malaysians seem to be more socially conservative.
"They might be more vocal about calling for the abolishment of the Internal Security Act, but they are also the same group that wants concerts to be gender segregated."
The paradox of this combination of political openness and religious conservatism could also be seen in young Malay Malaysians rejecting a woman as prime minister, Ibrahim explained.
"This [conservatism] could be the result of our education policies and political orientation over the past 20 to 30 years," Ibrahim said.
He added that their rejection of a non-Muslim Malay, or a non-Muslim non-Malay Malaysian as prime minister could also indicate that young Malay Malaysians have not entirely discarded ethnic identification.
Ibrahim said these findings would probably colour the agendas of the various political parties in getting Malay Malaysian support in the future, as young Malay Malaysians would set new standards of ethics in governance and public life.
The survey concluded that "ethnicity and religion [remain] an important factor in influencing views on whether women or minorities can hold top positions in the country".
It also polled respondents on other areas such as media consumption, lifestyle choices, political efficacy, electoral participation and general issues of interest.
The survey was conducted with funding support from the Asia Foundation**
Full report of survey available here.
New York Council Votes to Add Muslim Holy Days as School Holidays
Spurred by a broad coalition of religious, labor and immigrant groups, the City Council overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Tuesday to add two of the most important Muslim holy days to the public schools’ holiday calendar.
But the vote, which was nonbinding, put the Council in conflict with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has the final say to designate the days off and has said he is resolutely opposed to the idea.
The mayor told reporters before the vote that not all religions could be accommodated on the holiday schedule, only those with “a very large number of kids who practice.”
“If you close the schools for every single holiday, there won’t be any school,” he said. “Educating our kids requires time in the classroom, and that’s the most important thing to us.”
The current school calendar recognizes major Christian and Jewish holy days like Christmas and Yom Kippur, but no Muslim holy days.
Mr. Bloomberg’s stance has irritated advocates of the measure, and some said he risked alienating many in New York’s fast-growing Muslim population as he seeks re-election in the fall.
Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid, a leader of the campaign to add the holidays, said that if the mayor continued to oppose the move, the results for him at the voting booth could be “catastrophic” among the city’s roughly 600,000 Muslims.
“We really have confidence in the mayor’s intelligence,” said Imam Talib, head of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem. “It’s an election year.”
The proposal to add the two holy days — Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha — has not drawn much visible public opposition. Some council members have expressed reservations about subtracting more classroom days from the school calendar, though only one, G. Oliver Koppell of the Bronx, voted against it.
After the vote, Mr. Koppell said the existing schedule of religious holidays might have to be reviewed and trimmed, lest other growing religions in New York start demanding their own days off. “Where are we going to end with this?” he asked.
The resolution’s advocates said that since about 12 percent, or more than 100,000, of the city’s public school students are Muslim, they deserved recognition. The two holidays have already been adopted by school districts including Dearborn, Mich., and several municipalities in New Jersey.
Supporters also say that since the Ids (pronounced eeds) are floating holidays whose timing is set by the lunar calendar, they often fall on other religious holidays, on weekends or during the summer. During the next decade, for instance, at least one of the two Ids each year is expected to coincide with summer recess or an existing school holiday, according to a report by the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University.
It was unclear on Tuesday whether Mr. Bloomberg would continue to have final say on the issue, because the State Legislature still has not passed a bill to extend his control over the schools. But some officials said that even if the bill did not pass, he would be able to exert indirect control through appointments to the Board of Education.
The Council resolution also urged the Legislature to pass two pending bills that would amend state education law to require the holidays in the city’s school calendar. That could allow the move without the mayor’s approval, said Councilman Robert Jackson of Manhattan, a co-sponsor of the resolution and a Muslim.
Id al-Fitr celebrates the end of Ramadan, the sacred month of fasting, and Id al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, marks the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims traditionally observe these days by praying in the morning, then celebrating with family and friends, exchanging gifts and sharing a large meal.
The holy days have long posed a painful choice for Muslim students: Should they go to class in the interest of their grades and attendance record, or cut class to be with their families?
When Rebecca Chowdhury, 18, was young, she said, she generally skipped school. But as she grew older and faced more academic demands, she often had to forgo the celebrations.
“It created a great divide between myself and my family,” said Ms. Chowdhury, who graduated last week from Stuyvesant High School.
The campaign to recognize the two holy days has been coordinated by La Fuente, a grass-roots organizing group, and supported by a coalition; at its core are dozens of Muslim organizations.
Some leaders said the coalition’s successes reflected the political maturation of the city’s diverse Muslim population, which has at times seen its social and political ambitions hamstrung by schisms among competing groups.
“When there are issues of common concern and broad-based impact,” Imam Talib said, “the people put aside other differences and unite around a common cause.”
Members of the coalition said the current effort stems from a decision by the state in 2006 to schedule the Regents exam on Id al-Adha, which angered Muslims and spurred state legislators to pass a bill ordering the State Department of Education to make a “bona fide effort” to schedule mandated exams on days other than religious holidays.
While there have been scattered efforts for years to put the Id holy days on school calendars, the efforts finally coalesced into a formal campaign after the passage of the state bill.Malaysia Dilutes Its System of Ethnic Preferences
BANGKOK — Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, announced Tuesday a major rollback in the system of ethnic preferences that has defined the country’s political system for almost four decades.
The new policy would severely weaken a requirement that companies reserve 30 percent of their shares for ethnic Malays, the country’s dominant ethnic group.
The 30-percent rule was once considered politically untouchable, and Mr. Najib described the change in policy as a “tricky balancing act.”
Malaysia has long given ethnic Malays and members of other indigenous ethnic groups — known as bumiputra, or sons of the soil — political and economic privileges. But that system has come under strain amid growing resentment by minority groups and poorer Malays.
The government offers bumiputra discounts on houses, scholarships and other perks. But some benefits, like government contracts and stock-market allocations, have been beyond the reach of working-class Malays.
Anger among Chinese and Indians, the country’s main minority groups, over the ethnic preferences was perhaps the main reason that the opposition made large gains in elections last year that nearly dismantled the governing coalition led by Mr. Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organization.
“We want to be fair to all communities,” Mr. Najib said in a speech in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. “No one must feel marginalized.”
Mr. Najib’s success in rolling back the ethnic preferences will depend in large part on his ability to hold together his coalition and fend off a resurgent opposition led by Anwar Ibrahim, a former finance minister.
Mr. Anwar, who leads a diverse group of opposition parties, has promised to undo the system of ethnic preferences.
By positioning himself as a reformer, Mr. Najib, who came to power in April, appears to be calculating that he can stave off opposition advances and be seen as an agent of change.
“The world is changing quickly, and we must be ready to change with it or risk being left behind,” he said Tuesday.
The change would leave some ethnic preferences intact and come with caveats. But it would dilute one of the most important components of what is known as the New Economic Policy, introduced in 1971: the requirement that companies listing on the stock exchange sell 30 percent of their shares to ethnic Malays.
That requirement was scrapped for companies already listed on the stock exchange and reduced to 12.5 percent for initial public offerings. The requirement will remain in place for “strategic industries” like telecommunications, water, ports and energy.
Mr. Najib also said he would lower barriers for foreign investors. The government would eliminate a special vetting process for foreign companies wanting to invest in, merge or take over a Malaysian company, he said.
“The global economic crisis is amplifying the need to be a preferred investment destination,” he added.
Malaysia’s trade-dependent economy is expected to contract by 5 percent this year.China Delays Order for Green Dam Web-Censoring Software
BEIJING — Facing strong resistance at home and abroad, China on Tuesday delayed enforcement of a new rule requiring manufacturers to install Internet filtering software on all new computers.
The delay by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was announced through Xinhua, the official news agency, one day before the July 1 deadline for the software to be installed on all computers sold in China.
The software, called Green Dam-Youth Escort, has caused a torrent of protests from both Chinese computer users and global computer makers, including many in the United States, since the government order became public in early June.
The Obama administration has officially warned China that the requirement could violate free-trade agreements, and sent trade officials to Beijing recently to press the government to rescind the decision. In Beijing on Tuesday, a United States Embassy spokesman said Washington welcomed the announcement.
China has said the software is designed to filter out pornography and violence to protect minors, but many experts say it can also block any other content that the authorities deem subversive.
The ministry said the mandatory installation would be delayed for an indefinite period to give computer producers more time to put the order into effect.
As a practical matter, the abrupt postponement bows to reality because most of China’s computer retailers have large stocks of machines, manufactured months before the decree was announced, that have yet to be sold. Many global computer makers have declined to say how they would comply with the requirement, apparently hoping that the government would delay or reverse its decision under international pressure.
The filtering software has been the object of furious online debate since the requirement to install it was disclosed. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which licensed the technology from two Chinese developers, says the software automatically blocks Web surfers from seeing “unhealthy Internet content.” Updated lists of banned content are automatically downloaded onto users’ computers from the developers’ servers.
But the software’s current list of banned words, posted online by Chinese hackers, is laced with political topics. Businesses have complained that the software is so poorly designed that it opens computers not just to government snooping, but also to hacker attacks by vandals and criminals.
On Friday, the leaders of 22 international business organizations delivered a letter to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao arguing that Green Dam flouted China’s professed goal of building an information-based society, and that it threatened security, privacy and free speech. A day earlier, the European Union protested that the software was clearly designed to limit free speech.
Global computer makers have contended that they are being forced to install untested software for purposes that they may regard as objectionable.
In Washington, the Business Software Alliance, a group representing software makers worldwide, said Tuesday that it was encouraged by the government’s delay and hoped for “a thorough examination of the related technology issues.”
Green Dam works only on computers that use Microsoft’s Windows operating system. So far, no version has been released for Linux and Apple’s Macintosh systems. Nor would the software be required in Hong Kong or Macao, said one expert familiar with the government’s requirement.
The Chinese government has said little about the requirement. Zhang Chenmin, the founder of one Green Dam developer, Jinhui Computer System Engineering, has frequently described the software order as voluntary and innocuous, but he did not respond Tuesday to telephone calls and text messages seeking comment.
It appeared that many computer makers had yet to comply with the directive, not only in the hope that the government would alter its plans, but also because the order gave them scant time to test Green Dam with their machines.
Some did comply. Acer, a Taiwan manufacturer that assembles many of its products in China, has said that it will install Green Dam on its machines. A spokesman for Lenovo, China’s best-selling computer brand, did not respond to a question about its Green Dam policies, although some Beijing vendors said the software had been installed on some Lenovo models.
Hewlett-Packard — the No. 2 computer brand in China, according to IDC, a market-intelligence company — has been silent on its plans, as has Dell, the third-best-selling brand. According to the Web site Rconversation, which has published leaked documents regarding Green Dam, Sony has packaged a Green Dam software CD with some of its computers, along with a warning that it is not responsible for any problems the program may cause.
Major Beijing computer retailers said most computers being sold lacked the software. One of China’s biggest electronics chains, Suning, insisted Tuesday that the order applied only to computers made after July 1, not to those manufactured before that date but sold later at retail.
“Suning is an outlet, so we’re also playing the role of monitor” to ensure that the computers have the required software, said a company spokesman, Min Juanqing. “If the computer doesn’t meet the requirement, we won’t purchase it.”
Several other vendors said Tuesday that their existing stocks of computers were manufactured in April or May, and that computers with Green Dam were unlikely to reach their shelves for several weeks.
One vendor, identifying himself only as Mr. Wu, said some buyers saw little but trouble in the government’s order. “Some of our clients are concerned about the security of the software,” he said. “I myself haven’t tried it yet, but we’ve been paying attention to it. I personally don’t want to install this software, but the government has asked us to install it for our kids’ good.
“But we can help you uninstall it if you want,” he said. “It could be easy to erase it completely from your computer.”
Huang Yuanxi and Zhang Jing contributed research. Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.Hello from Havana
by Jorge I. Dominguez
President Raúl Castro’s principal contribution thus far to the lives of ordinary Cubans has been that television soap operas now start on time. He often reminds his fellow citizens of this seemingly impossible accomplishment, after decades during which his elder brother commanded the airwaves and disrupted all public and personal schedules. But he alluded to this achievement most cleverly last December, prompting laughter with the opening sentence of his remarks before a summit meeting of the presidents of the Latin American countries in Bahia, Brazil, hosted by Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. According to Cuba’s official press reports, Castro began, “I hope that our colleague and dear friend Lula will not complain because I give shorter speeches than Chávez’s.”
The presidential summit was one stop on Raúl Castro’s first international trip since becoming Cuba’s acting president in August 2006 (when Fidel Castro was rushed to the hospital), and in that one sentence, he made several points. To most of the Latin American presidents, who did not know him well, and indeed to his fellow Cubans, he demonstrated that even a 78-year-old General of the Army could have a sense of humor. To the same audiences, but also to the incoming Obama administration, he demonstrated some distance and independence from Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, notwithstanding the tight economic and political bonds between their two countries. This was only the most recent and most public instance of Raúl Castro’s reiterated mocking comparison between Chávez’s propensity to speak forever and his own much shorter and self-disciplined speeches. (Of course, all those in the audience also knew that he was poking fun not just at Chávez but at his brother, who never met a time limit he did not despise.) And, finally, he highlighted, especially for his own people, that he honors and respects the time of others.
Raúl Castro’s military style of life cherishes punctuality and efficiency. Schedules, all schedules, even those for TV telenovelas, should be observed. Even during the waning moments of Fidel Castro’s rule, the time of Cubans was frequently occupied by marches, mobilizations, and the need to listen to the logorrheic Maximum Leader. There was even a cabinet minister in charge of what Fidel Castro called the “Battle of Ideas.” Now, marches occur on designated public holidays. And the minister in charge of the Battle of Ideas lost his job in March--and his ministry was disbanded.
Economic Evolution
The nuances in Cuban public life since Raúl became president in his own right in February 2008 are evident as well in the enactment of economic-policy reforms that were rolled out immediately following his formal installation. Consider some examples. Previously, Cubans had not been able to stay at hotels or eat at restaurants designed for international tourists, even if they had the funds to pay, unless they were on official business; now they were given access to all these facilities, so long as they could pay. Cubans had also been prohibited from purchasing cell phones and subscribing to such services unless officially authorized to do so. They were not allowed to purchase computers or DVD players. Now they were able to purchase such products so long as they had the funds.
How the Cuban government adopted these changes is important. It could simply have announced a general deregulation of prohibitions regarding purchases of consumer durables, for example. Instead, the government made each of these announcements separately: one week you could stay at tourist hotels, the next week you could purchase a computer, the following week you could obtain cell-phone services, and so forth. The government even announced that some products would be deregulated for purchase in 2009 (air conditioners) or 2010 (toasters).
This method of deregulating implied a desire to win political support over time, not all at once. It communicated that the government retained the right to micromanage the economy, deregulating product by product and service by service. The government also signaled that it expected to remain in office for years to come, behaving in the same way. Finally, most Cubans knew that they could have been purchasing these same consumer durables all along, albeit only on the black market. Thus the policy of postponed deregulation implied an official tolerance of some current criminality (knowing that some Cubans would buy toasters illegally in 2008, instead of waiting for 2010), because the government valued its economic micromanagement more.
Whom the government sought to benefit was equally newsworthy. In its most revolutionary phase, during the 1960s, the Cuban government adopted strongly egalitarian policies. Many Cubans came to believe in egalitarian values and resented the widening of inequalities in the 1990s. Consider, then, Raúl’s reforms. Hotels and restaurants designed for international tourist markets are expensive; so, too, are computers and DVD players. When these economic changes were announced in 2008, the median monthly salary of Cubans amounted to about $17: that is, the average monthly salary was below the World Bank’s worldwide standard for poverty, which is one dollar per day. To be sure, Cubans had free access to education and healthcare and subsidized access to some other goods and services. Nevertheless, only a small fraction of Cubans could take advantage of these new economic policies, because the purchases of such consumer durables and the access to such tourist services had to be paid for in dollar-equivalent Cuban currency at dollar-equivalent international prices. (Cuba has two currencies; the peso convertible is a close equivalent to the dollar, whereas the peso is worth about $0.04.) Raúl’s government was appealing to the upper-middle-class professionals.
Making Difficult Decisions
I have emphasized Raúl’s penchant for humor and nuance because Washington and Miami have not taken much notice of these traits. At the same time, no one should underestimate his capacity for decisiveness. A salient feature in his biography is his long-standing role as Cuba’s equivalent of a chief operating officer. President Fidel Castro made the decision to dispatch some 300,000 Cuban troops to two wars in Angola and one in Ethiopia from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, but it was Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and General of the Army Raúl Castro whose officers recruited, trained, promoted, equipped, and steeled these armies for battle. The United States lost the war in Vietnam. The Soviet Union lost the war in Afghanistan. Cuban troops won the three African wars in which they fought. Cuba’s was the only communist government during the entire Cold War that successfully deployed its armed forces across the oceans. And the “worker bee” for those victories was Raúl.
Within the first calendar year of his presidency, Raúl gave another example of this decisiveness: the reform of Cuba’s pension laws. Cuban law authorized and funded the retirement of women at age 55 and of men at age 60. In December 2008, the retirement ages were raised to 60 and 65 respectively. The speed of the change signaled as well a key difference between the Castro brothers.
It had long been a matter of public record that Cuban life expectancy had lengthened to reach the levels of the North Atlantic countries. Cuban demographers had also faithfully recorded that Cuba has been below the population replacement rate since 1978. They had developed various forecasts that showed that its population would age rapidly, creating a vast problem of pension liabilities, and then decline. The demographers committed only one error: they expected the demographic decline to set in near the year 2020, but the population has already declined (net of emigration) in two of the last three years.
Notwithstanding this abundance of information, Fidel chose not to act. The fiscal crisis of the state was much less fun than leading street marches to denounce U.S. imperialism. But Raúl’s prompt and effective change of the pension laws, making use of information supplied by social scientists, is yet another illustration of the difference between the brothers as rulers. And, of course, the one obvious change that was not made to the pension laws demonstrates as well that even a powerful government senses some limits to its power: although the life expectancy of women is longer, the pension reform retained the lower retirement age for them. Raúl Castro doesn’t dare take a perk like early retirement away from Cuban women.
Political Authoritarianism
The Castro brothers’ styles of rule of course show important similarities on matters that do and should matter in assessing their political regime. Cuba remains a single-party state that bans opposition political parties and independent associations that may advance political causes. The government owns and operates all television and radio stations, daily newspapers, and publishing houses. The number of candidates equals the number of seats to be filled in elections for the National Assembly. The constraints on civil society remain severe, even if there has been since the early 1990s a somewhat greater margin of autonomy for communities of faith, some of which (including Roman Catholic archdioceses) are permitted to publish magazines.
The two brothers have also demonstrated a strong preference for ruling with a small number of associates whom they have known for many years. For example, when Raúl became president formally in February 2008, he had the right to make wholesale changes in the top leadership. Instead, the president and his seven vice presidents had a median birth year of 1936. Raúl went a step further. He created a small steering committee within the larger Political Bureau of the Communist Party--and the members of the new committee were the exact same seven. Raúl’s buddies are the gerontocrats with whom he chooses to govern.
Yet there are stirrings of change. Although National Assembly elections are uncompetitive, they provide a means to express some opposition to the government. The official candidates are presented in party lists; each voting district elects two to five deputies from those lists and the number of candidates equals the number of posts to be filled in that district. The government urges voters to vote for the entire list, but voters have been free to vote for some but not all candidates on the list, thereby expressing some displeasure. The number of nonconforming voters (voted blank, null, or selectively) exceeded 13.4 percent of the votes cast in the most recent (January 2008) National Assembly elections--1.1 million voters. Both the percentage and the number of nonconforming voters were slightly larger than in the 2003 election, with the largest expression of nonconformity recorded in the province named City of Havana.
Yet another sign of change arises from Raúl’s own family. His daughter, Mariela Castro, has been for some years the director of Cuba’s center for the study of sexuality. This center has been principally known, however, for its advocacy for, and defense of, the rights of homosexuals, including special training for Cuban police officers, formulating changes in regulations, and disseminating information designed to create safer spaces for homosexuals.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Cuban government pursued very harsh policies toward homosexuals. In the early stages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, those who tested HIV-positive were automatically compelled to enter a quarantined facility at the cost of their jobs and family lives. At the time of the Mariel emigration crisis in 1980, the government activated its affiliated mass organizations to make life impossible for homosexuals, fostering their emigration under duress. And in the mid 1960s, the government had established the “military units to aid production” (UMAP). These were concentration camps to which “social deviants,” mainly but not exclusively male homosexuals, were sent to be turned, somehow, into “real men.” The commander in chief of the UMAP was, of course, Armed Forces Minister Raúl Castro.
It is unlikely that Raúl is a closet liberal, though there is evidence that he has been a loving father. It is not impossible, however, that he regrets having served as an architect of repression over the lives of many Cubans--not just homosexuals--especially in the 1960s, but also at other times. His daughter’s work during the current decade may be an instrument for elements of social liberalism.
U.S.-Cuban Relations
Raúl Castro understood earlier than his brother that the collapse of the Soviet Union and European communist regimes implied that Cuba had to change more and faster than Fidel wanted. In 1994, in the most public difference yet between the brothers, Raúl favored liberalizing agricultural markets, allowing producers to sell at market prices, even though Fidel remained opposed. Raúl showed more sustained interest in the economic reforms of China and Vietnam than did Fidel. And by the late 1990s, Raúl began to give the speech that he has now repeated many times, most notably this April in response to the Obama administration’s beginning of changes in U.S.-Cuba policies (authorizing Cuban Americans to travel and send remittances to Cuba): his government is ready to discuss anything on the U.S. government agenda.
In January 2002, Raúl even praised the Bush administration for having given advance notice of the incarceration of Taliban prisoners at the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay. He also praised the professional military-to-military cooperation between the two countries’ officers along the U.S. base’s boundary perimeter, as well as between the coast guards in the Straits of Florida. In August 2006, his first public remarks upon becoming acting president made just two points: he did not much like to speak in public, and he was ready to negotiate with the United States. And this April, he took the time to make it clear that negotiating with the United States about any topic did, indeed, include discussion about political prisoners in Cuban jails. He made a specific proposal to exchange such political prisoners (estimated by Cuban human-rights groups as between 200 and 300 people) for five Cuban spies in U.S. prisons.
The Context for Change
The pace of political and economic change in Cuba has been slow by world standards. But the pace of social change has been very fast. Cuba’s people live long lives, thanks in part to good, albeit frayed, healthcare services--free of charge. Cuban children go to school and many become professionals. Indeed, Cuba’s principal area of export growth is the provision of healthcare services to the people of other countries. Until this most recent development, however, Cuba had exemplified how a half-century of investment in human capital could generate very poor economic-growth returns. Yet Cubans since the early 1990s have demonstrated entrepreneurial capacities in creating small businesses, whenever the government has permitted them, suggesting that with better economic incentives there could be a productive combination that would lead to economic growth. Cubans can talk seemingly endlessly at officially sponsored meetings, yet they demonstrate in other settings a capacity for insight, criticism, and imagination that could readily contribute as well to much faster political transformation.
U.S. policy toward Cuba for the bulk of this past decade has assisted the Castro government’s state security in shutting out information from the outside world: the United States banned the shipment of information-technology products, instead of facilitating Cuban electronic access to the world, and allowed Cuban Americans to visit their relatives only once every three years, instead of enabling cousins from both sides of the Straits of Florida to speak face to face about how a different, better Cuba might be constructed. (The United States has even protected ordinary Cubans from the Harvard Alumni Association, which could not lead tour groups there.) Perhaps the United States will stop being an obstacle to change in Cuba during the century’s second decade.
Iran Crisis: Can Obama and U.S. Deal with a Divided Iran?
"The most treacherous government is Britain," Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, intoned at Friday prayers on June 19, and I had to laugh. The Supreme Leader, in the midst of announcing a crackdown on the Green Revolution demonstrators, was sounding like the lead character in the most famous contemporary Iranian novel, My Uncle Napoleon, a huge hit as a television series in the 1970s. Uncle Napoleon is a beloved paranoid curmudgeon, the Iranian Archie Bunker. He blames everything — the weather, the economy, the moral vagaries of his family — on the British. This has been a constant theme in Iranian public life for at least 100 years, although the U.S. has supplanted Britain as the Great Satan, the source of all Iranian miseries, since the revolution of 1979. (See pictures of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose death has rallied the opposition.)
Suddenly, now, the Brits were back, and you had to wonder why. Certainly the BBC's Persian service, the most popular source of news for better-educated Iranians, was a real problem for the regime. Khamenei and various flunkies also blamed the U.S., especially the CIA, for the unrest, but the attacks on the Great Satan were muted — a curious development. Was it due to Barack Obama's initial, temperate response to the rigged election results? Was it a recognition that Obama's Cairo speech and New Year's greeting to the Iranian people had made him popular across the Persian political spectrum, a less convincing Satan than George W. Bush had been? Was it a pragmatic recognition that one way for the regime to regain credibility with its own people would be to open negotiations with the Obama Administration, thereby demonstrating that it had credibility with the most powerful country in the world? These questions, which roiled Obama's foreign policy team and the international community as the Iranian crisis ended its second week, reflected a growing sense that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime would prevail against the demonstrators, but had seriously wounded itself in the process. (See the top 10 players in Iran's power struggle.)
Of course, Uncle Napoleon had a point. Iran has been a long-standing target of foreign meddling. It was not just the CIA-assisted coup in 1953 against the popular democratic Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, which Obama mentioned in his Cairo speech. It was also the Western support for the Shah and, worst of all in the minds of Iranians, the U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, including the provision of chemicals that Saddam used to concoct poison gas. This remains an open wound in Iran. (See "In Tehran, Terror in Plain Clothes.")
On election day, I interviewed a woman in southern Tehran whose husband was a chemical victim of the war. There are thousands and thousands of such people among the estimated 1 million Iranian casualties of the conflict. Indeed, the war defines the current division at the top of the Iranian establishment: the breach is between the generation that made the revolution of 1979 — leaders like Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the former Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami, among others — and the generation that fought the Iran-Iraq war, led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his cohort among the battle-hardened leadership of the Revolutionary Guards Corps. The war led to a significant militarization of Iranian society, and the Supreme Leader, a member of the 1970s generation, has drifted away from his contemporaries toward the military. Among the rumors and major questions emerging from the election was whether the rigging was a quiet coup, staged by the Ahmadinejad generation against its revolutionary elders. "It is an open question whether the Supreme Leader is really in charge or is just a front for the military, led by Ahmadinejad," an Iranian analyst speculated. But the point is moot: Khamenei, who had attempted to stand above the Iranian factions, is now yoked to Ahmadinejad. (Read "The Turbulent Aftermath of Iran's Election.")
Khamenei's old colleagues consider this a perversion of the role of Supreme Leader — and perhaps the last best hope of the Green Revolution demonstrators was that Rafsanjani, the most powerful of the dissidents, could persuade the Assembly of Experts, which appoints and can dismiss Supreme Leaders, to take action against Khamenei. Various U.S. government sources told me they believe that the Experts are divided: one-third supporting Rafsanjani, one-third supporting the Supreme Leader, one-third undecided. It is likely that the Experts will follow the wind, unwilling to challenge the government unless the situation in the streets becomes decisively more brutal and chaotic. Rafsanjani's fate — whether he is able to hold on to his posts as chairman of the Assembly of Experts and of the Expediency Council, or perhaps get himself named the next Supreme Leader — may be the clearest barometer of the Green Revolution's success.
It seems clear that Obama's carefully calibrated remarks about the events in Iran were intended to address the Uncle Napoleon factor, and also to keep the door open for negotiations with the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime. It seems equally clear that the criticism from Senator John McCain and other neoconservatives was, in part, an emotional response to the events in the streets, but also an effort to score political points against a popular President and, long term, an attempt to prevent any negotiations with Iran from taking place. McCain won and lost during the course of the battle: the terrible events in the streets — especially the public death of young Neda Agha-Soltan, recorded on a cell-phone video — made it necessary, and appropriate, for the President to move in McCain's direction and use tougher language condemning the Iranian security forces, even if Obama continued to refuse to question the legitimacy of the Iranian government.
But McCain also lost, because of the bluster and false analogies of his comments. He compared Obama's diffidence to Ronald Reagan's forcefulness in proclaiming the Soviet Union an "evil empire" in the 1980s — but even the most pro-American Iranians were infuriated by George W. Bush's attempt to lash their country into an "axis of evil" with their mortal enemy Iraq and North Korea. The situations in Iran and the Soviet Union were nowhere near analogous. Iranians in the streets were looking for greater freedom, not the overthrow of the regime. The neocon effort to turn the Iranians into East European rebels against the Soviet Union was as crudely misleading as Benjamin Netanyahu's fantasy that the Iranian government is a "messianic apocalyptic cult" led by mad mullahs likely to nuke Israel. The truth is, Iran's government is a conservative, defensive, rational military dictatorship that manages to subdue its working-class majority softly, by distributing oil revenues downward. (On June 23, Ahmadinejad announced that doctors' salaries would be doubled, for example.)
"The Iranian government has been weakened and tainted by the events," an Arab diplomat told me. The international implications of that weakness are unknowable, for now. "I could give you very convincing arguments either way," an Obama Administration official told me, speaking of the prospects for negotiations with the regime. The prevailing view was that the Iranians would withdraw for a time and attempt to get their house in order. But it is also possible that the regime will move aggressively toward negotiations with the U.S., in order to convey the impression of stability and international legitimacy to its people. If that happens, the Obama Administration may be in position to gain concessions from the Iranians in the area where the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad forces were least willing to negotiate — Iran's nuclear program. "Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, they have to reveal all their nuclear activities, which they haven't done," a senior Administration official told me.
It is not impossible that a weakened Iranian regime might be willing to engage on these issues — especially if, as the Iranians insist, they are not attempting to weaponize the uranium they are enriching. Such negotiations would be a diplomatic risk worth taking. They would be a significant political risk, however — with McCain and others screaming appeasement. Whether or not to negotiate, now that the Iranian government has disgraced itself in the eyes of the world, is sure to be a defining moment for the Obama Administration.
Price Squabbles, Security Concerns Lead Oil Giants to Pass On Iraq Fields
By Ernesto Londoño, K.I. Ibrahim and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
BAGHDAD, June 29 -- Iraq's effort to woo foreign energy companies to help resurrect its ailing oil fields fell flat Tuesday, as most companies balked at the financial terms offered by the government despite the lure of the country's vast reserves.
The impasse on deals for all but one field was a setback for the oil firms eager to gain access to the largest reserves in the world outside Saudi Arabia, and for Iraq, for which oil revenue could hold the key to prosperity. The impasse was also a setback for the United States, which has encouraged Iraq to make use of foreign investment and expertise to help bring stability to the most important sector of the country's economy.
During a day-long live auction for eight 20-year service contracts, the Iraqi Oil Ministry was able to nail down just one deal -- for the giant Rumaila field in southern Iraq. The Iraqi Oil Ministry reached an agreement with British Petroleum and China National Petroleum Corp. only after BP and CNPC accepted a much lower fee than they originally sought in return for raising the field's output beyond current levels. Rumaila, Iraq's biggest oil field, has an estimated 17 billion barrels of oil reserves, an amount equivalent to more than half the reserves of the entire United States.
"It's tough to walk away from the opportunity to get your foot in the door in Iraq," said Robert E. Ebel, an expert on Iraqi oil at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "When you look at all the oil in the ground, you figure 'I better be here.' But when you think about all the above-ground problems, you might think that 'I better strike a better deal.' "
In the current bidding round, Iraq said it would reimburse companies for costs and pay them a per-barrel fee for increases in production from the country's abundant but long-neglected fields. But it did not offer the companies an ownership stake in the crude, which would have been a more attractive type of contract. It also demanded nearly $3 billion in "signing bonus" loans for the six oil fields, which are active but underproducing, and two largely undeveloped gas fields.
BP and China's national oil company submitted a joint bid to raise output at Rumaila from about 1 million barrels a day to 2.85 million barrels a day for a $3.99-per-barrel fee. The ministry said it would pay a maximum of $2 a barrel. In the end, the companies agreed to that price. "We're pleased with the process so far and look forward to concluding the contract in due course," said BP spokesman Toby Odone.
But the bids on other fields came nowhere close to the government's offers. The televised session at the al-Rasheed Hotel, near Baghdad's Green Zone, ended shortly before the clock struck 5 p.m. in the Iraqi capital.
Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad said the ministry was satisfied with the outcome of the auction. He said that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's cabinet would review the bids and that further negotiations with the companies were not out of the question. Oil industry sources yesterday said the situation remained "fluid." A major European company said it expected further word today.
"This is an important step to develop the oil industry, and it's a good sign that this type of event took place in Iraq," Jihad said. "It was transparent and it sent a good message about stability in Iraq."
But some oil experts said it would be hard to bridge the large gap between oil company bids and the Iraqi oil ministry's expectations. In recent days, several Iraqi lawmakers and some veterans of its oil sector criticized the service contracts as giveaways to Big Oil. For Maliki, the controversy became a political liability just as he was proudly proclaiming Iraq to be sovereign. Awkwardly, the auction coincided with a national holiday declared to mark that sovereignty.
Iraq not only possesses huge proven reserves, it also holds the world's best oil prospects. Because its reservoirs are large and tend to be relatively shallow, drilling is relatively easy and cheap. Little exploration has been done since 1980 and much of the western part of the country remains unexplored. Moreover, many other oil-rich countries have nationalized or otherwise maintained tight control of their energy sectors.
The auction yesterday represented the first opportunity for major oil companies to return to Iraq since they were expelled in 1972 amid a regional move toward nationalization. For half a century before that, the Iraq Petroleum Co. was run by the precursors of Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Total. BP has information dating to the 1920s on Iraq's oil reservoirs.
Many of the companies have already been informally advising Iraq's government on how to keep up production in existing fields. Iraq is currently producing about 2.4 million barrels a day, well below its peak output. Many of the fields have been damaged or neglected during three decades of war and sanctions.
Oil Minister Hussain Shahristani has said that the goal of the bidding was to raise the country's output to 4 million barrels a day. Oil industry executives say that Iraq could eventually produce 6 million barrels a day.
While eager to tap into Iraq's fields, oil executives were apprehensive about injecting themselves into a country with volatile politics and an active insurgency.
"The security issue is a very serious question," said James Placke, a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "It introduces an uncertainty that is just irresolvable because you just don't know what the security situation is going to be like five years from now."
Another disincentive for oil firms has been Iraq's failure to enact a hydrocarbons law. But in the end, price was a key issue.
In the Kirkuk field, for example, which was discovered in 1927, a consortium led by Royal Dutch Shell said it could double current production to about 800,000 barrels a day for a fee of $7.90 a barrel. Iraq's Oil Ministry wanted to pay only $2 a barrel in that field.
A consortium led by Exxon Mobil said it could boost production in the West Qurna field alone to 2.35 million barrels a day for $4 a barrel. The Iraqi government wants to pay $1.90 a barrel there. No company bid on the Mansuriya field in the violent Diyala province.
The biggest gap between bid and Oil Ministry targets came from a Conoco Phillips-led consortium. The oil firms offered to develop the Bai Hassan field for a fee of $26.70 a barrel; Iraq's target was $4.
Other bids were closer to the Iraq government's targets.
Mufson reported from Washington.
U.N. General Assembly, OAS Back Honduran Zelaya
By Mary Beth Sheridan and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Scrambling to hold on to his presidency, deposed Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya pleaded his case in the United States yesterday, winning a rare unanimous vote of support from the U.N. General Assembly but failing to get an audience with top Obama administration officials.
Zelaya also gained crucial support at the Organization of American States, whose members debated into the night on launching a diplomatic initiative to resolve the crisis. They were also considering calling on the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank to cut off all loans to the Honduran government.
In New York, Zelaya told the General Assembly that Honduras was "reverting to the age of dictatorship. Repression has now been established in the country."
After the meeting, he vowed to return to Honduras on Thursday with a delegation of dignitaries, including the presidents of Argentina and Ecuador, the secretary general of the OAS and the president of the General Assembly.
Diplomats last night tried to persuade Zelaya not to make the trip. Some analysts worried that the crisis could be escalating.
"If he [Zelaya] goes back with no one laying the groundwork . . . it's going to be a huge clash," said Jennifer McCoy, director of the Carter Center's Americas program, who attended an urgent OAS general assembly last night on the matter.
Zelaya was detained by soldiers Sunday morning and expelled from the country. A close ally of populist President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Zelaya had clashed with the Honduran Congress, the military and the Supreme Court over his plans for a referendum that many alleged was an effort to change the constitution in order to gain another term as president.
The U.S. government continues to recognize Zelaya as president, rather than a replacement sworn in by the Honduran Congress, Roberto Micheletti. But the Obama administration did not grant Zelaya a high-level meeting at the White House or State Department.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton could not meet with Zelaya because she was away from work recuperating from a fractured elbow. "This is just something that came up today," he said of the Honduran's decision to fly to Washington.
But the low-key treatment of Zelaya appeared to reflect an effort by the Obama administration to preserve some room for diplomatic maneuver. The U.S. government is working with regional leaders to resolve the crisis, but it has outsize influence with the Honduran elite because of its close military ties and its economic clout.
Zelaya was expected to meet with the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Thomas A. Shannon Jr., and the top Latin America official on the National Security Council, Dan Restrepo, during his stay in Washington.
If Zelaya felt slighted, he didn't show it. Asked about allegations from some leftist politicians that the United States favored the coup, he said: "I have listened to President Obama. It is not only that he condemns the event, but he has demanded the restoration of the president. I have also heard the ambassador of the U.S. in Tegucigalpa. He has taken the same position against the coup powers."
The U.N. General Assembly unanimously condemned the coup yesterday afternoon and demanded the "immediate and unconditional restoration of the legitimate and constitutional government" of Zelaya.
The action, while not legally binding, provided a show of unity at the United Nations in responding to an international crisis, bringing the United States together with stridently anti-American governments in Latin America such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Zelaya took to the General Assembly podium to condemn the coup as an act of "barbarity" by a "small group of usurpers."
In a lengthy address, he portrayed himself as a champion of the poor who had been brought down by a clique of conservative military and economic elites who resented his attempts to improve the living standards for impoverished Hondurans.
He denied allegations that he had prepared the referendum to pave the way for another run for president, saying he planned to step down after his mandate ends in January.
He added that the new government's allegation that he had engaged in wrongdoing was unfounded. "I have been accused of being a populist. I've been accused of being a communist," he said, but added that he had not had an opportunity to defend himself.
"Nobody has told me what my crime is, what my error is," he said.
Zelaya presented a detailed account of the army raid on his home, saying he had been rousted from his sleep by gunfire and confronted by soldiers as he sought to alert a local reporter and others on his cellphone.
Lynch reported from the United Nations.
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