Partner of killed SAS trooper says she may not accept MoD's £250,000
By Matthew Beard
31 October 2001
A woman who was denied a war widow's pension after her partner was killed on
an SAS mission in Sierra Leone has been offered compensation by the Ministry
of Defence.

Anna Homsi, 31, stands to receive a reported £250,000 to cover the cost of
raising the baby she had with SAS trooper Brad Tinnion. The 28-year-old was
shot dead in September last year on a mission to rescue 12 Royal Irish
Regiment soldiers taken hostage by rebels in the Sierra Leone jungle.

Ms Homsi, who lived with Mr Tinnion for eight years, said she would continue
to campaign for the rights of unmarried partners in the armed forces.

Her lawyer, Tom Reah, said she had not decided whether to accept the
payment, which he claimed was about half of what she would have received had
she been married. The cash was offered as an ex-gratia payment – where no
legal obligation exists – to support the couple's baby daughter until she
was 17. He told the BBC it would not set a precedent for the unmarried
partners of servicemen killed in action in future.

He said: "I can't confirm that she has accepted it as yet. We are looking at
the small print and after due consideration we will respond to the MoD."

He added: "Accepting this might be less than she might get under legislation
that might be brought in.

"She is very pleased with the progress that we have made to date. But there
is a big responsibility on her not only for herself, but for those in the
future. We are living in the 21st century and things have moved on so far as
the way people cohabit as partners."

An MoD spokeswoman was unable to confirm a newspaper report that Ms Homsi
had been offered £250,000. "I cannot confirm the exact amount because that
it is a private matter between the MoD and Anna Homsi," she said.

The issue of a financial settlement prompted intensive talks between the MoD
and the Treasury to obtain special dispensation. The couple's daughter,
Georgia, now aged 10 months, was granted a £2,000-a-year allowance until she
reaches 17.

Miss Homsi, who was named chief beneficiary in her former partner's will,
was given a one-off discretionary payment of £20,000. Two months ago she
said she intended to sue the MoD to get the same benefit as a married
partner.

Source:The Independent Newspaper 0f 31/10/01

Welcome the new imperialism

The US must make the transition from informal to formal empire

Niall Ferguson
Wednesday October 31, 2001
The Guardian

In my book, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, published
earlier this year, I wrote: "a terrorist campaign against American cities is
quite easy to imagine". I also argued that for this reason it was extremely
important that the United States and its allies take a more aggressive
attitude towards rogue states. My arguments were greeted with almost
complete incredulity. And now I am happy to say that they are being taken
more seriously. I wish they had been heeded earlier.
What we are witnessing is not in fact the beginning of world war three or a
clash of civilisations, but the extension of post-1968 terrorism tactics of
hijacking and the killing of civilians by urban explosions to the US. I
don't think the ideology of al-Qaida is a great deal more mysterious than
the Russian Narodnik nihilists in the late 19th century. Indeed the best way
to understand this is not as Islam or fascism, but as Islamo-Bolshevism.
What it represents is a challenge to a particular kind of power, namely the
informal imperialism that the US has preferred to rely on since 1945.

There are therefore some good parallels with the 19th-century period when
the UK was the global power and adopted a mix of formal and informal
imperialism. This was the political globalisation of the 19th century. What
tended to happen was that periodically there would be threats to the
stability of the market system and British security on the periphery beyond
the formal empire, in areas like the Sudan. And in many ways there is an
interesting resemblance between the Mahdi in the 1880s and Osama bin Laden,
both ideologically and in their appeal to poorer Arabs and Muslims. A
failure of political will on the part of the US and its allies could hugely
magnify the economic consequences of these attacks.

Could it all have economic causes? Lurking inside us all there is a little
Marxist who would like to believe that the complex political world around us
can be explained by simple economic realities. Somehow there must be a link
- I have heard this argument made repeatedly - between global inequality and
the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Is globalisation to blame? Compared with
the late 19th and 20th centuries, the world economy is not very global at
all. That is the main explanation for widening equalities. The real problem
has to do with political deglobalisation and fragmentation.

We have a choice. If we do nothing or falter, the economic cost of failure
could be extremely high. The possibility of losing control of Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia - nuclear weapons in one and the greater part of the future oil
reserves of the world in the other - is a truly terrifying prospect. Those
are some of the stakes in the current war.

We have to understand what the alternative to failure is. We have to call it
by its real name. Political globalisation is a fancy word for imperialism,
imposing your values and institutions on others. However you may dress it
up, whatever rhetoric you may use, it is not very different in practice to
what Great Britain did in the 18th and 19th centuries. We already have
precedents: the new imperialism is already in operation in Bosnia, Kosovo,
East Timor. Essentially it is the imperialism that evolved in the 1920s when
League of Nations mandates were the polite word for what were the
post-Versailles treaty colonies.

The future of Afghanistan must, if the war is successfully prosecuted, be
very similar indeed to those states currently under this kind of
international colonial rule. Nothing else will do. Contrary to popular
arguments made in the 1980s, imperialism is affordable for the richest
economy in the world. You could argue that the cost of isolationism could be
much higher in the long run than the cost of confident intervention in rogue
states. When the British empire controlled 25% of the world's surface and
population, the British defence budget averaged around 3% of GNP. Currently
the US defence budget accounts for slightly less than that. It would not be
beyond the bounds of possibility that by increasing the defence budget to 5%
of GNP, still below the levels of height of the cold war, more effective
military intervention could be undertaken.

There is no excuse for the relative weakness of the US as a quasi-imperial
power. The transition to formal empire from informal empire is an affordable
one. But it does not come very naturally to the US - partly because of its
history and partly because of Vietnam - to act as a self-confident imperial
power. The US has the resources: but does it have the guts to act as a
global hegemon and make the world a more stable place?

· Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Oxford University. This is an
edited version of his contribution to yesterday's joint Guardian-RUSI
conference on New Policies for a New World.




Al-Qaida is winning war, allies warned

Tania Branigan
Wednesday October 31, 2001
The Guardian

The eminent military historian Professor Sir Michael Howard launched a
scathing attack yesterday on the continued bombardment of Afghanistan,
comparing it to "trying to eradicate cancer cells with a blow torch".
It had put the al-Qaida network in a "win-win situation", he told the
conference, and could escalate into an ongoing confrontation that would
shatter our own multicultural societies.

The longer it went on, he added, the worse the consequences would be.

"Even more disastrous would be its extension... through other rogue states,
beginning with Iraq, to eradicate terrorism for good and all," he said. "I
can think of no policy more likely, not only to indefinitely prolong the
war, but to ensure that we can never win it."

While praising President George Bush for moving away from the unilateralism
and isolationism that had characterised recent US policy, Sir Michael said
the administration had made a "terrible and irreversible" mistake in calling
its anti-terrorism campaign a war.

It had granted al-Qaida a status it did not deserve and created overwhelming
public demand for military action.

"Many people would have preferred a police operation conducted under the
auspices of the UN on behalf of the international community as a whole,
against a criminal conspiracy, whose members should be hunted down and
brought before an international court," Sir Michael said.

"Terrorists can be successfully destroyed only if public opinion supports
the authorities in regarding them as criminals rather than heroes.

"As we discovered in both Palestine and Ireland, the terrorists have already
won an important battle if they can provoke the authorities into using overt
armed force."

Sir Michael, who was for many years regius professor of modern history at
Oxford University, scorned the idea that al-Qaida could be defeated by the
removal of the "evil genius" Osama bin Laden.

He warned: "It is hard to believe that a global network apparently
consisting of people as intelligent and well-educated as they are dedicated
and ruthless will not continue to function effectively until they are traced
and dug out by patient operations of police and intelligence forces."


There is blood on our hands but the Taliban are worse

Blair is taking the political risk of his life in supporting the bombing

Polly Toynbee
Wednesday October 31, 2001
The Guardian

It was not the speech that was billed. Mercifully, there was no nonsense
about superior British morality much trailed in advance but wisely cut at
the last moment. He was to have declared: "Britain is a very moral nation
with a strong sense of right and wrong. That moral fibre will defeat the
fanaticism of terrorists and their supporters."
That would have profoundly mistaken the present uncertain mood, partly
because our own moral fibre is barely on the line, risking just 200
soldiers. Yet moralists abound on both sides because everyone feels morally
implicated in the war.

Mercifully, there was no prime ministerial rubbish about "appeasers" either.
Indeed he went out of his way to say: "No one who raises doubts is an
appeaser," recognising the legitimate anxiety about civilian casualties and
a winter refugee crisis. Mercifully again, the threatened heart-tugging
reminders of the twin tower horrors were "proportionate" and delivered with
no lumps in the throat. In words well-calibrated for this wobbly time, the
prime minister displayed feet firmly planted on British soil and an ear
finely tuned to his own voters - despite dizzying US approval ratings that
top the president himself.

For the first time, a month into the bombing, he spelled out the war aims:
close down al-Qaida, bring Bin Laden to justice and remove the Taliban. This
last has been hedged around until now, although transparently obvious. The
Taliban, he said, are virtually a merged organisation with Bin Laden.
Yesterday it was revealed that US officials had met repeatedly with the
Taliban to negotiate handing over Bin Laden over the last three years, talks
continuing until days before September 11: those attacks were the only
outcome. The speech gave a firm reminder of the sequence of events: America
was brutally attacked, the Taliban still refused to hand over the culprit,
Bin Laden called for more murder of infidels. "They can't be negotiated
with." But of course they still could hand him over any day and make peace.

Instead of the draft moral Britain riff there was a far better thought.
"They have one hope: that we are decadent, that we lack the moral fibre or
will or courage to take them on... we will lose our nerve... They mistake
our desire for a comfortable life, living in peace, benign towards different
races and cultures for decadence. It is not decadence. It is progress and we
will fight to maintain it." That is the heart of the matter - liberal
democracy and its pursuit of happiness (and pleasure) versus an ascetic
nihilism that seeks happiness only in heaven.

What did he mean by decadence? Had he been less scrupulously tactful to the
peace party he might have added that decadence is when liberal democracy is
so squeamish about keeping its own hands clean that it fails to defend its
fundamental principles. Worse still, it lacks the will to spread the same
freedoms to others for fear of trespassing on cultural sensitivities.
Decadence dallies with ideas that basic freedoms are western - as if these
rights are only for us, not for "them", a coy form of cultural imperialism.

John Pilger, fulminating all across the front of the Mirror this week,
writes of the horrific effects elsewhere of the bombing of civilians. "Be
assured," he accuses, "this is now happening in Afghanistan, in your name."

Who does not flinch from the pictures of burned babies he displays? Everyone
recoils and some call for it to stop or pause, which comes to the same
thing. People do not want to be responsible for things they could not abide
to see on their front doorstep. Anyone who supports the war is by
implication complicit in this slaughter. And so we are, there is blood on
our hands. It would be easier to step back, send in more food, (much of it
diverted to Taliban use) and salve our consciences that we personally did
nothing bad. On Judgment Day we could say: "I never harmed anyone." But sins
of omission can leave hands yet bloody. Squeamishness turns into moral
dereliction, as if wincing at a surgeon's curing knife.

This week Saira Shah's harrowing film Behind the Burqa was shown again on
Channel 4. Last year she travelled to Afghanistan undercover with contacts
from the Revolutionary Afghan Women's Association where she secretly filmed
life and death under the Taliban. At great personal risk, she obtained
scenes of massacres to match anything in Kosovo or Bosnia - villages
slaughtered, very young girls raped, adultresses shot in front of a stadium
of men baying for blood. The hospitals had nothing, women doctors were sent
home, male doctors had long fled along with most professionals. As religious
police roam the streets beating and terrorising, as women are left begging
and starving, their children dying on the street because they cannot work,
there can rarely have been a more graphic depiction of a society in hell.

But if the war were stopped and the Taliban left to slaughter their own
people in numbers greater than the likely casualities of this war, if many
more hundreds of thousands starve not just now but in perpetuity and even
more join the 4m refugees already fled before September 11, at least it
would not be our fault. It would be the Taliban's fault: we can sleep easy
in our beds.

Ah, say the peace people, where was the west's sympathy for Afghanistan
until September 11? Fair jibe. But where, also, was theirs? There were no
great demos for freedom from the Taliban. Soft liberals just want the
bombing stopped, but some protesters are of the school that automatically
opposes anything the Americans do - even when this time they are doubly in
the right: in law they have been attacked and may respond to the certain
continuing threat. In decency, this is a chance to free the Afghans from a
monstrous regime of terror.

Some protesters are less worried by the Taliban than by the Americans: the
Taliban are the ideological problem of the Islamic world, but the Americans
are ours. Hardly pausing to consider the long-term plight of the Afghans,
the peace people are imperialists in their own way, putting their western
interests first. The old Pilger left might rather see America humiliated
than Afghans liberated, while the soft liberals put personal peace of mind
above peace for Afghanistan. Hard liberals who support the government on the
war will indeed have blood on their hands if all ends with millions of
civilians dead, the Taliban insufficiently removed, a new government barely
better than the old and a domino of disasters across the Islamic world.

Tony Blair has all but staked his political career on this, with no get out.
It may be foolhardy, since success will bring him few political dividends
while a Vietnam will finish him. And success is not even in his own hands.
Good motives will not be enough: only good outcomes count. While we bandy
around much moral talk, this speech was a reminder that leaders have to make
the call and take the consequences.

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Wrong tool for the job

Bombing Afghanistan is not the way to defeat al-Qaida - instead, we must use
all the creativity we can muster

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday October 31, 2001
The Guardian

I remember September 11. The short attention span of the modern,
round-the-clock media has not made me forget. I remember the slow-motion
pictures of the second plane. I remember the plaintive voices on the
answering machines. I remember that vast dust cloud chasing people through
the Manhattan streets. Of course I remember September 11. We all do.
It is not forgetfulness which explains the current wobble in public support
for the war on Afghanistan, despite Tony Blair's plea yesterday for us to
recall the anger we felt that day. The problem is not amnesia.

Nor is it complacency. Fear of al-Qaida remains paranoically high,
especially in the United States, where anthrax-in-the-mail has brought the
country to the verge of a nervous breakdown. Here, too, people are jittery,
weighed down by the fear that we could be next. Lack of resolve is not the
problem: people are desperate to stop the terrorists from striking again.

Nor can the slide in public backing for the bombing - confirmed in our poll
yesterday -be put down easily to a collective yellow belly, a national loss
of nerve at the first sight of blood. Ministers may hint at that, but
Britons know wars exact a heavy cost and bring few immediate results; they
are not put off that easily.

Instead the explanation might be one which reflects rather better on our
country. Perhaps Britons have simply decided that bombing is not an
effective way to defeat al-Qaida. Maybe some of them accept that aerial
assault can only boost Osama bin Laden's standing in the Muslim world,
spectacularly confirming his claim that this is a clash of the west against
Islam - pitting the richest country in the world against the poorest.
Perhaps they now accept that killing Bin Laden would merely make a martyr of
him, and that his chosen hideaway was the worst possible place to pick a
fight. Maybe they have heard the Afghan national epigram: "When God wants to
punish a nation, he makes them invade Afghanistan."

Or they might be beginning to worry, like me, that our leaders do not
understand the threat facing us. Both Blair and George Bush keep pretending
this is a traditional, familiar conflict - one between states, against an
enemy you can name, see and hit - when, in fact, it is a clash pitting us
against an invisible network, dispersed across the globe. Our leaders want
us to believe Kabul is the power behind al-Qaida, making Afghanistan a
sensible target. Unfortunately the truth seems to be the other way around,
with the Taliban taking its orders from Bin Laden. With his enormous fortune
and international following, he is stronger than they are. This is a wholly
new kind of enemy: not so much state-sponsored terrorism as a
terrorism-sponsored state.

Given all that, bombing is just not going to do the trick. Bin Laden's reach
goes far beyond a mere country; even obliterating it (and killing many of
its civilians) would not remove the threat he poses. Remember, the men
behind September 11 did their crucial training not in Kandahar, but in
Florida.

So far, the best response the governments can fire back at those opposed to
the bombing is, "All right - but what would you do?" Until we have a
powerful answer to that, they and their policy will probably remain on just
the right side of that crucial 50% approval mark.

So we need to have our own, alternative strategy for countering al-Qaida.
Most in the peace camp have confined their thinking so far to the long term,
demanding the western powers tackle the underlying causes of terrorism. It's
suddenly become fashionable to quote Chairman Mao's axiom that, if you can't
catch the fish, you can at least drain the sea in which they swim. In Bin
Laden's case, that means the sea of grievances he's so adroitly exploited -
chief among them, western support for the raft of vile regimes across the
Arab and Muslim world which deny their peoples opportunity, free expression
and basic human rights.

That makes good sense and, in Britain at least, has become government
policy. Blair's "Let's reorder this world" speech at Brighton showed he had
understood that ultimately the best way to defeat terrorism is to soothe the
rage which fuels it.

That process will take years and cost billions. It will be worth it, because
every time an injustice is remedied another recruiting sergeant for Osama
bin Laden is slain. But it will not deal with the immediate threat - the
young men already recruited to Bin Laden's cause. One estimate has al-Qaida
counting on 50,000 sympathisers around the world, another 10,000 activists,
including 2,000 who would be ready to kill and be killed and 800 who qualify
as leaders. That is a huge network consisting of people already won over to
Bin Laden's Islamist nihilism. They might never go anywhere near Afghanistan
- and yet they pose a clear danger to us all.

It is in combating this threat, rather than the familiar enemy of a
nation-state, that London and Washington are left scratching their heads.
The Pentagon has even launched a public competition seeking ideas for
fighting terror - with a lucrative defence contract offered to the best one.
That's how desperate things have got.

Luckily, others are doing some fast thinking. At yesterday's day-long
conference on the crisis, hosted jointly by the Guardian and the Royal
United Ser vices Institute, Air Marshal Sir Tim Garden said Britain should
at least realise that if this war is going to be fought on our home soil we
ought to start protecting that turf properly. He wants a British equivalent
of America's new chief of homeland security, as well as a new role for the
Territorial Army and extensive retraining of the police - so they can
protect us against an enemy that strikes not on a foreign battlefield, but
on our planes, in our cities and even via our morning post.

Others say that since the terrorists are waging "asymmetrical warfare" - a
superpower laid low by a few Stanley knives - we have to learn to fight
asymmetrically, too. More than one analyst has suggested this conflict is
more Don Corleone than D-Day, forcing us to learn the techniques of the
Mafia - finding individuals bent on mayhem and getting them before they get
us.

That notion will send chills down liberal spines, especially for anyone with
memories of the shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland or the CIA's
bungled assassination sprees. There are practical problems, too. Finding the
enemy requires first-class human intelligence, but one former mandarin says
reliable agents can take a decade or more to cultivate. A veteran of US
counter-terrorism admits al-Qaida cells are particularly impervious to
infiltration.

Maybe there is no quick fix that passes both the ethics and efficiency
tests. But we have to start looking. We need to get going, recruiting the
very best brains to get inside the minds of this new enemy, unlocking their
modus operandi and finding their weak spots - a Bletchley Park for the 21st
century. It will require all the smart creativity we can muster. For this
enemy will not be beaten by flattening Afghanistan. He lives right here
among us, and it will take more than moral fibre to defeat him.

[log in to unmask]

Jail all men who beat women, says top judge
By Robert Verkaik Legal Affairs Correspondent
30 October 2001
Men who hit women should be given immediate custodial sentences, one of the
country's most senior female judges said yesterday. Valerie Pearlman said
the time had come to stop making excuses for crimes of domestic violence.

She told the annual conference of magistrates in London: "The best way of
dealing with it is an immediate custodial sentence. It may have an impact on
the family, but it seems to me this is the only way to bring home to the
defendants what they have done.''

Magistrates were told that 25 per cent of violent crime was domestic
violence but only one in three attacks resulting in injury was reported.
Home Office research shows that on average victims are assaulted 35 times
before they seek help.

Judge Pearlman, a circuit judge in the Family Division, said: "No court
should have the unspoken view that it's 'only a domestic'.'' The judge said
the judiciary or the magistracy should not make the sort of excuses she said
she had heard so many times. These had included she said, "It's a case of
50/50", "It's only a slap", and "'It was only a grab''. But she said a worse
excuse was where judges said they did not know whether to "blame him or
her''.

Judge Pearlman said more use should be made of video link evidence and other
procedural measures which excused witnesses from attending court. She urged
magistrates to use wider bail conditions to stop defendants interfering with
victims before the conclusion of a trial and said magistrates should make
sure defendants were not using contact orders with their children to gain
access to the victim

"The worst case is the withdrawal of a complaint,'' she said. The judge also
urged the courts to treat the offence more seriously. "I regard domestic
violence as an aggravating feature of an offence of assault.''

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said courts would impose a custodial
sentence where the offence was "so serious that no other form of disposal
was justified'' but the substantive offence of assault or wounding would
determine what kind of punishment was given. In the past few years some
courts have been reluctant to send fathers to prison for domestic violence
offences, knowing they will be depriving a family of its only breadwinner.

* A motion to call on the Government to review the laws of prostitution was
overwhelmingly carried by the magistrates. Roger Farrington, who proposed
the motion, said he was in favour of a liberalisation of laws which he said
were "ineffective and unenforceable''.

The Government is expected to respond through the Home Office's criminal
justice council. The recommendation could lead to licensed brothels.

Source:The Independent Newspaper of 31/10/01

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 31 2001

Norway sued by Himmler survivors

FROM ROGER BOYES IN BERLIN

THE blond-haired, blue-eyed orphans of SS and German Army wartime soldiers
in Norway are demanding compensation from the Oslo Government for alleged
abuse and discrimination.
The victims of the so-called Lebensborn (Source of Life) project — Himmler’s
scheme to create a “master race” — are determined that Norway should admit
its guilt and acknowledge the scope of its collaboration with the Nazis.
From 1940 until the end of the war Norway was occupied by the Nazis, who in
1942 let the local Fascist Vidkun Quisling set up a puppet regime.

As the court case opened this week, Norway’s Government rejected the claims
from 170 survivors, arguing that the crimes, if such they were, were
committed too long ago.

The crimes alleged by the survivors range from sexual abuse against them to
forced lobotomies on their mothers, constituting a devastating indictment of
the Government as it struggled after the war to create an image of a nation
populated only by Resistance heroes.

Lebensborn homes — three orphanages and six maternity homes in Norway alone
— are frequently referred to as having been stud farms for SS troopers
encouraged to create a nucleus of Aryans for the new world order. In fact,
most were simply shelters for illegitimate children.

In Eastern Europe, pregnant slave labourers were forced to have abortions or
their babies were left to die through neglect. If the child could be shown,
however, to be of “racially superior” stock, he or she was brought up in a
Lebensborn home and well fed in hygienic conditions.

Norwegian Lebensborn children were the offspring of prostitutes and lovers
of the 400,000 German soldiers stationed in the country. Some 50,000
Norwegian women are believed to have had affairs with Germans and more than
12,000 babies were born.

After the war the children were seen as Tyskerungen — German brats — by
Norwegians intent on revenge. The mothers were deemed to be mentally
subnormal and were confined to asylums; some underwent lobotomies.

Harriet von Nickel, born to a German father and Norwegian woman in Oslo,
said: “I was treated like an outcast. When I was small, drunken fishermen
grabbed me and carved a swastika on my forehead with a rusty nail, while
other Norwegians watched.”

In 1946 Paul Hansen was sent from the Godthaab Lebensborn home to a hospital
for the mentally subnormal, without diagnosis. For years he slept in a bed
soaked with others’ urine. He had just two years of formal education, was
ignored by relatives ashamed of his German father and was taunted when he
found a factory job.

“We were a shame, a black spot on Norwegian society,” Mr Hansen, 59, said.

One of the organisers of the action is Tor Brandacher, who said that the
children were sexually abused by Norwegians. “People queued to have sex with
five-year-olds in one of the children’s homes — they paid the guards with
liquor.” He said that the court case was not so much about money — although
the claims amount to £150,000 each — as about forcing Norway to break its
silence.

The lawsuit was filed by seven of the children in 1999 and is based on the
charge that Norway has violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

Randi Hagen Spydevold, the lawyer representing many of the Lebensborn cases,
said:

“Every society has its abusers, but this was systematic and the Government
didn’t do anything about it.”

The Government admits that some children suffered, but says that no official
policy advocating abuse or discrimination can be established. The Ministry
of Social Affairs and Health is funding research into the fate of the
children.

Zimbabwe draws line at EU monitors for its elections

Foreign Staff

ZIMBABWE yesterday rejected EU demands for European monitors to observe next
year’s critical presidential elections.

The elections, which must be held before April, are regarded as a critical
test for the country’s 77-year-old president, Robert Mugabe.

Parliamentary elections last year, in which Mr Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party
suffered substantial losses, saw violent intimidation and the killing of 30
opposition figures.

Next year’s elections could present an even more direct threat to Mr
Mugabe’s 20-year grasp on power.

EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg this week, set in motion
procedures that could bring sanctions against Zimbabwe if it fails to show
respect for democratic procedures and the rule of law. They invoked an EU
agreement with African nations, which requires talks with any state that has
failed to respect democratic principles and the rule of law.

Zimbabwe’s foreign affairs minister, Stan Mudenge, told state media outlets
that his country was ready for talks with the EU on his country’s human
rights record.

He said Zimbabwe was ready to engage the EU with an open mind, though he
played down talks as "procedural".

However, he drew the line at EU monitors, saying: "It is important that the
international community understands that we are not going to accept the kind
of ultimatums like the one we got on the subject of election observers."

He added: "We are a sovereign country, and we are entitled to some respect
and we must be treated with respect."

EU diplomats said this week that they would raise, in particular, the
violent occupation of white-owned farms.

Aside from deaths and beatings, critics say, the seizures has sent the
Zimbabwean economy into a downward spiral that threatens a serious food
crisis. But there is also a growing focus on the coming election.

Under Article 96 of the EU’s Cotonou Agreement with African, Caribbean and
Pacific nations, Zimbabwe will be sent a formal letter giving it 15 days to
arrange a meeting with EU representatives over their concerns.

Consultations must then be completed within 60 days.

Failure to rectify the alleged abuses within that period could trigger a
"reduction or redirection" of EU economic aid to the southern African
country, EU diplomats say.

The EU has been exasperated by what it sees as Mr Mugabe’s failure to keep
promises made in Nigeria last month to end the farm invasions. The
government has set about seizing 5,000 farms - nearly all the farms owned by
whites - without paying compensation.

A team of mediators from the Commonwealth was in Zimbabwe last week, to hear
the government insist that it had taken steps to restore law and order after
what it called "isolated incidents" of violence.

The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, stressed on Monday that EU ministers had
decided unanimously on the action with Finland and the Netherlands taking
the lead.

"We’ve moved from a benign position with Zimbabwe to one of active
engagement," he said. "We’re saying to them: ‘We’re very concerned about
these problems, and we want to have really serious discussions with you’."
However, Britain does not regard sanctions as inevitable.

British aid to Zimbabwe, funnelled to AIDS suffers and the worst-off via
organisations independent of the Zimbabwean government, amounts to about £10
million a year.

Precise figures for aid from other EU countries was not available yesterday.

But economic sanctions not seen as the best option for a country whose
economy is already hurting badly.

Closely targeted penalties - such as a travel ban on Zimbabwe’s leaders -
would be more likely.

Yesterday Mr Mudenge said the Zimbabwean government - which accuses Western
powers of seeking Mr Mugabe’s election defeat as punishment for his land
policy - did not see EU sanctions as coming soon.


Source:The Scotsman 0f 31/10/01

O'Neill could find attack is best form of defence
EWING GRAHAME
If Celtic are as defensive against Juventus tonight as manager Martin
O'Neill was at his pre-match conference yesterday afternoon, then their
chances of gaining the three points they need will be slim indeed.

The manager was responding to the criticism he has been on the receiving end
of over the past few weeks, as he was perfectly entitled to do, but it
seemed somewhat excessive given the fact that he had been in danger of being
drowned in a sea of praise from a compliant media until the dismal defeats
from Porto and Rosenborg torpedoed their Champions League hopes.

He denied accusations that his three-man defensive formation, formidable at
home but exposed on several occasions by continental opposition this season,
was inflexible.

It was pointed out, for the umpteenth time, that Celtic had switched to four
at the back after 25 minutes against Porto, which O'Neill is convinced has
not been noted anywhere. He claimed that Leicester City, under his
stewardship, won two League Cups with a flat back four and that Celtic had
switched to that formation in a third of their domestic matches during the
last campaign.

There was no wild-eyed gesticulating and his voice was never raised, yet he
made sure every point he wanted addressed would be covered. He denied being
belligerent or playing favourites with certain journalists, while stressing
that he did not consider himself to be above criticism. Well, at least
that's cleared that up then. He also, thankfully, spoke about the problems
posed by Juventus.

O'Neill poured scorn on the suggestion that the visitors fielding a slightly
less than full-strength side might automatically work in Celtic's favour.

"It won't make any difference who they put out," he said. "I'm sure every
one of their players will be worthy of wearing a Juventus shirt. They've
earned the right to be able to do whatever they want with their team,
because they have enough points on the board."

Of course, having fielded what amounted to a reserve side in the 1-0 defeat
by Kilmarnock in May which allowed the Ayrshire side to edge out Hearts for
a UEFA Cup place, he could hardly say otherwise.

Depending on tonight's results in Glasgow and Oporto, a place in that
maligned competition may be considered an insignificant bauble, a decent
consolation prize, or the one that got away, by O'Neill.

It certainly maintains the interest level for the home fans, and 60,000 will
pack Parkhead to see if they can pull off a historic, some would say
miraculous, achievement and qualify for the second phase.

"I don't think the players have lost belief in themselves," said the
manager. "They've been aware from the start that not every experience would
be a beautiful moment.

"For my part, I've never said our side were good enough to do the things
we've been castigated for not doing, but these have been great games to be
involved in and I'd like to think I've learned something from each of them
which will stand both me and the club in good stead."

Meanwhile, midfielder Lubomir Moravcik appears to have resigned himself to
missing out on a starting place in what could be his last Champions League
match. He said: "We beat Porto and Rosenborg here without me in the team and
we're capable of doing the same again against Juventus.

"The situation would be much more complicated for Juventus if they hadn't
been given that unjust last-minute penalty against us but we need to forget
about that."

O'Neill added: "Lubo is a gifted player with fantastic ability who's capable
of turning European matches. He has as good a chance of anybody of playing
but it doesn't mean we'll automatically win if he does. However, this is a
match where we need to take a few risks."

Which, in this case, might make attack the best form of defence for the
Celtic manager.

Source:The Herald of Oct 31st.

Argentina seeks support for debt restructuring
By Thomas Catán in Buenos Aires
Published: October 29 2001 19:36 | Last Updated: October 30 2001 12:10



Argentina was on Monday scrambling to build international support for its
planned debt restructuring, details of which are expected in the coming
days.

A flurry of activity over the weekend heightened worries among investors
that a default on at least part of Argentina's $132bn in debt could be in
the works.

Argentine bonds and stocks plunged on Monday, as investors feared that the
operation may not be "voluntary" and "market-friendly" as the government has
claimed. Stocks fell more than 5 per cent, while the interest premium on
Argentine bonds surged past the 19 percentage point-mark - its highest level
since Mexico's "tequila crisis" in 1995.

An International Monetary Fund mission was in Buenos Aires over the weekend
for secret consultations. Officials confirmed that Daniel Marx, the finance
secretary crafting the debt restructuring, also spoke by telephone to
several international financial officials, including John Taylor, US
Treasury under-secretary, and officials from the US Federal Reserve.

Domingo Cavallo, the economy minister, met William McDonough, president of
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last week. Mr McDonough was responsible
for organising the bailout in 1998 of Long-Term Capital Management, the
highly leveraged hedge fund that threatened to collapse following Russia's
debt default that year.

Also arriving in Buenos Aires over the weekend were Argentina's lawyers from
Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, a firm specialising in advising
governments on the intricacies of renegotiating their foreign debt.

The Argentine government has also hired Jacob Frenkel, chairman of Merrill
Lynch International, to advise on the debt operation. Mr Frenkel is a former
governor of the Bank of Israel.

Mr Cavallo said late on Sunday that the operation was aimed at lowering the
country's onerous interest payments but he insisted the plan would not
adversely affect investors or local bank depositors. "The plan is ready and
has consensus," he said. "But before announcing it, we need to reach some
agreements with the IMF and the banks."

As part of its latest $8bn loan to the country in August, the IMF set aside
$3bn for use in a "voluntary and market-based operation to increase the
viability of Argentina's debt profile".

Argentina is seeking to increase that amount with extra funds from the World
Bank and Inter-American Development Bank to coax investors to trade in
high-yielding bonds for new ones bearing lower interest rates. The
government hopes to save between $3bn-$4bn in interest payments, giving the
country much-needed breathing space.

Cut off from borrowing for more than a year, the country has implemented tax
increases and spending cuts to keep up payments on its debt. It pays more
than $10bn in interest payments a year, or a fifth of the entire government
budget.

Source:The Financial Times 0f 31/10/01




Blunkett's measures cut Straw legacy into shreds
By Rosemary Bennett

From next spring, possession of cannabis will no longer be an arrestable
offence in the UK following this week's surprise shake-up of the 30-year-old
drugs law. David Blunkett, home secretary, has said the move will free up
police resources to tackle harder drugs. Cannabis has been reclassified as a
class C rather than class B drug, and the penalties for supply and
possession will be the same as for antidepressants.





David Blunkett and Jack Straw are often seen at Westminster as rivals for
the "stop Gordon Brown" ticket when Tony Blair decides to step down as
Labour leader.

On the evidence of the last two weeks, Mr Blunkett has got the upper hand as
he junks some of Mr Straw's most controversial policies from his time at the
Home Office.

Last week Mr Blunkett, often seen as an illiberal home secretary, won many
Labour admirers by softening the law on cannabis - something Mr Straw
refused to countenance.

On Monday Mr Blunkett took Mr Straw's Immigration and Asylum Act, passed
only two years ago, and effectively ripped it to shreds.

His ditching of the voucher system, hated by Labour MPs, won him even more
admirers. And despite the praise Mr Blunkett lavished on some of Mr Straw's
asylum reforms, it was clear he thought the policy in general had failed.

Indeed, Mr Blunkett, who succeeded Mr Straw as home secretary after the
general election, was in the job just three months when he called the system
"a mess from beginning to end".

Some parts of Mr Straw's legislation have proved a success and will remain,
such as fines for truck drivers caught bringing illegal immigrants into the
country. Mr Straw also pioneered new centres to house asylum seekers while
their claims were processed.

Mr Straw's allies have defended his bill, saying it was a response to
problems left by bills passed by the Conservative government.

Relieving pressure on local councils in London and Kent to house and care
for this group was the driving force behind vouchers and compulsory
dispersal around the country.

Reception centres were briefly considered, but rejected, according to one
government official. "A full programme of reception or accommodation centres
was discussed in government but rejected on grounds of cost, and also fear
that the centres could be targeted, like hostels were in Germany," he said.

But it was not long before the plans hit trouble. Mr Straw was inundated by
complaints from Labour MPs alarmed at the vouchers' stigma. They were
concerned, too, about the social implications of integrating large groups of
refugees into council estates or housing them in bed and breakfasts.

Mr Straw averted a rebellion by increasing the cash element that accompanied
the vouchers and the bill was passed. But it was not long before it emerged
that the new system was riddled with problems.

An audit of the voucher system showed it cost three times as much to
administer as cash benefits. It also became clear that asylum seekers, who
are forced to shop in supermarkets and are unable to get change from the
food stamps, were not getting the full value from their vouchers.

Opposition grew from pressure groups and unions with Bill Morris, general
secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, leading the charge.
Threatened with a possible defeat at the 2000 Labour party conference, Mr
Straw agreed to a review and promised to report back at this year's
conference.

Further pressure came when the British Medical Association joined the
campaign. Doctors reported that children's health was deteriorating rapidly
when they arrived in Britain as parents skimped on baby food to make ends
meet. One GP even came across a toddler who had never learned to walk
because there was no space in the one room the family shared.

Shortly after the election a Kurdish refugee was murdered in Glasgow,
dealing an enormous blow to the dispersal policy. Mr Blunkett, who had been
passed the poisoned chalice, soon made clear the "review" of the system
would be fundamental.

Additional reporting by Jessica Carsen

Source:The financial times of 31/10/01


With the very best of good wishes,
Musa Amadu Pembo
Glasgow,
Scotland
UK.
[log in to unmask]
May Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,guide us all to His Sirat Al-Mustaqim (Righteous
Path).May He protect us from the evils of this life and the hereafter.May
Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,grant us entrance to paradise .. Ameen


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