Keeping out Pakistan?

THAT the talks on trade collapsed at Cancun on September 14 should be a matter of great concern for Pakistan. The important point is not that Pakistan would have gained much immediately had the talks been successful and had the Doha round of negotiations proceeded at the promised pace.

Pakistan, like all other large developing economies, in particular those with a large agricultural sector, would benefit considerably if Europe, Japan and the United States were to reduce the subsidies they provide their farmers. I covered this subject at some length in an earlier article (Dawn, September 30). There is another reason why the unhappy conclusion of the deliberations at Cancun should be of great concern for Islamabad’s economic team.

With the progress towards a world trading regime that would bring tangible benefits to the developing world no longer ensured, there is now a palpable rush towards the strengthening of existing regional arrangements and the creation of new ones. Unfortunately, given some of the problems we have with our immediate neighbours — in particular India — there is a real possibility that we might be excluded from becoming part of the arrangements that would be of enormous benefit to us.

The Association of East Asian Nations, or the Asean, is one such organization from which India has been able to successfully exclude Pakistan. The Asean, as I will argue, will play an increasingly important role in the evolution of the global economy and the world trading system. It is important that Pakistan associates itself with it.

There is considerable irony in the fact that Pakistan is being kept out since the Asean was created as a successor organization to South-east Asia Treaty Organization (the SEATO), of which Pakistan was a founding member and a critical component. The two organizations had some common objectives. The SEATO was created to contain the forward march of Asian Communism into South-east Asia. Its main target was China much feared by John Foster Dulles, President Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state.

When the South-east nations became convinced that China was more of an economic threat than a military one, they decided to come together into an economic grouping that could provide some counter-balance to Beijing. The Asean was formed on August 8, 1967 by the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand to promote economic, social and cultural cooperation among nations in the region.

Later, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam joined the group. Cambodia, the tenth member, was admitted in 1999, bringing the combined population of the Asian-ten to 460 million in 2001 and its aggregate GDP to $445 billion. In other words, the per capita income of the Asean region is just below $1000. (The Asean GDP total does not include Myanmar since no formal accounting has been done of the size of its national economy.)

The Asean, meeting as a summit of its leaders in 1976, issued a declaration which has acquired the status of the organization’s foundation document since it elaborated the principles of cooperation among the member states. The declaration focused much on bringing about harmony among the dealings with the countries outside the region. It was clear that the Asean leaders still kept their eyes focused on China and were still anxious about that country’s intentions towards its neighbours to its south and south-east.

This is one reason why Wen Jiabao, the new Chinese prime minister, released what several analysts have called the Chinese “charm offensive” when he attended the recently concluded Asean summit at Bali, Indonesia. I will have more to say about this a little later.

In 1993, the organization took the first step towards strengthening trade and economic relations among the associated countries by agreeing to the eventual creation of an Asean Free Trade Area (AFTA). Asean’s leaders agreed to eliminate most tariffs on manufactured goods between members over the following ten years. It was clear that the Asean countries had developed sufficient confidence about China’s attention to begin to focus their attention on economic and trade cooperation among themselves. There was also some talk of getting China associated with the Asean group in some, still to be defined, way.

The Asian financial crisis that suddenly erupted in July 1997 with the collapse in the value of the Thai currency (the Baht) set back the progress towards AFTA. While some of the countries affected were willing to follow the IMF’s prescription of introducing severe cuts in their budgets to stabilize their currencies and economies, Malaysia, one of Asean ‘s founding members, took a different route, introducing capital controls to protect the Ringgit, its currency, from going the way of some other currencies in the region. But the Asian financial crisis is now history and the Asean countries are now prepared to resume their interrupted journey towards greater economic and trade integration. It was in this spirit of seeking renewal that the latest summit was held in Bali.

The Bali summit made some significant changes in the way the South-east Asian countries are proposing to move in the future. Before analyzing those, it would be useful to review how the association has treated the issue of expansion. As already noted, the organization, since its founding, has doubled its membership from five to ten countries. It doesn’t seem inclined to bring in new countries as members as the European Union has done continuously. Instead, its preference is to conclude side-agreements with the countries wanting to be associated with it.

It is also inclined to keep the United States at some distance, recognizing that by bringing Washington in would change the character of the association. Instead, it has agreed to form a sister organization — the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or the APEC, which now meets annually in summits attended by heads of state and government. Presidents from America, Chile and Mexico — the countries on the other side of the Pacific Ocean — attend these summits. Let me now get back to the conclusions arrived at Bali and why they should worry Islamabad.

The decisions taken at this gathering hold special significance for Pakistan for a number of reasons. To begin with, on October 8, the Asean leaders signed agreements deepening economic cooperation with India and Japan. By making that move they set the stage that could lead to the development of an Asia-wide free trade area. Largely because of India’s insistence, Pakistan has been kept out of this arrangement. Before reaching out to India, the Asean nations had already done deals with a number of their major Asian countries.

Japan and the Asean nations decided in 2002 to begin negotiations in 2005 aimed at liberalizing trade in goods and services and investment flows. They felt that they needed a period of three years during which experts from both sides could begin to understand how they should approach the subject. A year later, in 2003, the Asean established a framework for creating a free trade area with China by the year 2010.

At the 2003 Bali summit, India and the Asean-ten agreed to forge an Indo-Asean free trade arrangement over a period of nine years. The Indians believe that this agreement would open a great opportunity for their country in several new industries — particularly in information technology, communications and health services. They also expect that with a large industrial base, India will find new markets for some of its engineering and chemical products. By 2012, the end of this nine year period of gestation, India expects to be well integrated into the rapidly growing economies of East Asia.

In addition to these various agreements with Asia’s large economies, the Asean members also agreed to proceed with the creation of their own community with full liberalization of trade in goods, services, investment and flow of skilled workers. The long-term vision that came out of the Bali summit is to create several concentric circles with the ten Asean members at the centre working with outer circles formed by Asia’s three largest economies — China, India and Japan. Unfortunately, Pakistan has not penetrated any of these circles.

Atal Behari Vajpayee, who attended the Bali summit on behalf of India, also met Wen Jiabao, China’s new prime minister. According to a member of the Indian delegation, the meeting between the two prime ministers was unusually warm. “I would characterize it as excellent and remarkable in terms of the cordiality and friendliness of its tone and conduct,” he told the reporters after the deliberations were concluded.

Wen Jiabao, attending his first large summit since taking office in March 2003, put on a new China face for the world to see, those who listened to him and saw him came away with the strong impression that the Chinese were now very deliberately presenting a very different approach towards international affairs and their dealing with other nations from the one Washington had pursued since 9/11.

The Chinese appear to be telling the world that they were not going to participate in any battle between different ideologies and different systems of economic and political governance. They were, instead, putting forward an approach that showed much greater respect and tolerance for the views and interests of other nations. This point could not be scored better than by reaching out to India — a country the US seems to be interested in cultivating as a counterpoint to China.

To give a signal that China’s new leaders were now prepared to settle outstanding disputes with India, Beijing tacitly accepted New Delhi’s sovereignty over the Himalayan State of Sikkim. This area had been annexed by India several years ago but China had refused to acknowledge New Delhi’s control. Not only did Beijing acquiesce to India’s control of Sikkim, it also agreed to open a border trading post at Nathu-La Pass in Sikkim. China was reciprocating to India’s decision of last year when it recognized Beijing’s sovereignty over Tibet, which the latter had occupied in 1959.

Add China, Japan and India to the original Asean group of ten countries and there cannot be any doubt that what we are witnessing is the gradual evolution of the world’s largest trading bloc with a population of over three billion people and combined GDP of $3.4 trillion. At this time the expanded region has about ten times more people than the European Union or the North America Free Trade Agreement between America, Canada and Mexico. Although at $11,000 per capita income of the Asian region, organized as described above through membership in various associations and agreements, is less than a third of the EU and NAFTA, it is by far the fastest growing economic region in the world.

The implications of all this for Pakistan should be clear. We should put considerable effort into finding a place for ourselves within Asean’s many concentric circles. We should seek China’s help to get into the Asean family, thus overcoming India’s resistance to having us there.

The new Great Game

NEARLY two years ago, I travelled to Kyrgyzstan, the mountainous ex-Soviet republic in Central Asia, to witness a historical event: the deployment of the first American combat troops on former Soviet soil.

As part of the Afghan campaign, the US air force set up a base near the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Brawny pioneers in desert camouflages were erecting hundreds of tents for nearly 3,000 soldiers. I asked their commander, a wiry brigadier general, if and when the troops would leave Kyrgyzstan (and its neighbour Uzbekistan, where Washington set up a second airbase). “There is no time limit,” he replied. “We will pull out only when all Al Qaeda cells have been eradicated.”

Today, the Americans are still there and many of the tents have been replaced by concrete buildings. Bush has used his massive military build-up in Central Asia to seal the cold war victory against Russia, to contain Chinese influence and to tighten the noose around Iran. Most importantly, however, Washington — supported by the Blair government — is exploiting the “war on terror” to further American oil interests in the Caspian region. But this geopolitical gamble involving dictators and oil sheiks is only likely to produce more terrorists.

For much of the past two years, I have researched the links between the conflict in Central Asia and US oil interests. I travelled thousands of kilometres, meeting generals, oil bosses, warlords and diplomats. They are all players in a geostrategic struggle — the new Great Game.

In this rerun of the first great game — the 19th century imperial rivalry between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russia — players once again position themselves to control the heart of the Eurasian landmass. Today, the US has taken over the leading role from the British. Along with the Russians, new regional powers, such as China, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, have entered the arena, and transnational oil corporations are also pursuing their own interests.

The main spoils in today’s Great Game are Caspian oil and gas. On its shores, and at the bottom of the Caspian Sea, lie the world’s biggest untapped fossil fuel resources. Estimates range from 110 to 243bn barrels of crude, worth up to $4 trillion. According to the US department of energy, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan alone could sit on more than 130bn barrels, more than three times the US’s reserves. Oil giants such as ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and BP have already invested more than $30bn in new production facilities.

“I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian,” said Dick Cheney in a speech to oil industrialists in 1998. In May 2001, the US vice-president recommended in the national energy policy report that “the president makes energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy”, singling out the Caspian basin as a “rapidly growing new area of supply”.

With a potential oil production of up to 6m barrels per day by 2015, the Caspian region has become crucial to the US policy of “diversifying energy supply”. It is designed to wean the US off its dependence on the Arab-dominated Opec cartel, which is using its near-monopoly position as pawn and leverage against industrialized countries. As global oil consumption keeps surging and many oil wells outside the Middle East are nearing depletion, Opec is expanding its share of the world market. At the same time, the US will have to import more than two-thirds of its total energy demand by 2020, mostly from the Middle East.

Many people in Washington are particularly uncomfortable with the growing power of Saudi Arabia. There is a fear that radical Islamist groups could topple the Saud dynasty and stop the flow of oil to “infidels”. To stave off political turmoil, the regime in Riyadh funds the radical Islamic Wahhabi sect that foments terror against Americans around the world.

In a desperate effort to decrease its dependence on Saudi oil sheikhs, the US seeks to control the Caspian oil resources. However, fierce conflicts have broken out over pipeline routes. Russia, still regarding itself as imperial overlord of its former colonies, promotes pipeline routes across its territory, including Chechnya, in the north Caucasus. China, the increasingly oil-dependent waking giant in the region, wants to build eastbound pipelines from Kazakhstan. Iran is offering its pipeline network via the Persian Gulf.

By contrast, Washington champions two pipelines that would circumvent both Russia and Iran. One would run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. Construction has already begun for a $3.8bn pipeline from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, via neighbouring Georgia to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. BP, its main operator, has invested billions in oil-rich Azerbaijan, and can count on support from the Bush administration, which recently stationed about 500 elite troops in war-torn Georgia.

Washington’s Great Game opponents, particularly in Moscow and Beijing, resent what they perceive as arrogant imperialism. Worried that the US presence might encourage internal unrest in its Central Asian province of Xingjiang, China has recently held joint military exercises with Kyrgyzstan. The Russian government initially tolerated the intrusion into its former empire, hoping Washington would in turn ignore the atrocities in Chechnya. However, the much-hyped “new strategic partnership” against terror between the Kremlin and the White House has turned out to be more of a temporary tactical teaming-up. For the majority of the Russian establishment it is unthinkable to permanently cede its hegemonic claims on Central Asia.

Two weeks ago, Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, demanded publicly that the Americans pull out within two years. Ominously, President Putin has signed new security pacts with the Central Asian rulers, allowing Russian troops to set up a new military base in Kyrgyzstan, which lies only 35 miles away from the US airbase.

Besides raising the spectre of inter-state conflict, the Bush administration is wooing some of the region’s most tyrannical dictators. One of them is Islam Karimov, the ex-communist ruler of Uzbekistan, whose regime brutally suppresses any opposition and Islamic groups. “Such people must be shot in the head. If necessary, I will shoot them myself,” Karimov once told his rubber-stamp parliament.

Although the US state department acknowledges that Uzbek security forces use “torture as a routine investigation technique”, Washington last year gave the Karimov regime $500m in aid and rent payments for the US airbase in Chanabad. The state department also quietly removed Uzbekistan from its annual list of countries where freedom of religion is under threat.

The British government seems to support Washington’s policy, as Whitehall recently recalled its ambassador Craig Murray from Tashkent after he openly decried Uzbekistan’s abysmal human rights record. Worse is to come: disgusted with the US’s cynical alliances with their corrupt and despotic rulers, the region’s impoverished populaces increasingly embrace virulent anti-Americanism and militant Islam.

As in Iraq, America’s brazen energy imperialism in Central Asia jeopardizes the few successes in the war on terror because the resentment it causes makes it ever easier for terrorist groups to recruit angry young men. It is all very well to pursue oil interests, but is it worth mortgaging our security to do so? —Dawn/Guardian Service.

Judicial candidates

Still, Democrats have drawn the line on three hard-right nominees, filibustering and blocking a vote on their confirmations. By narrowly approving US District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. of Mississippi last week for a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals seat, the Senate Judiciary Committee has all but ensured that Democrats will add his name to the list.

Pickering is an unacceptable choice for the nation’s second-highest court. As a law student, he argued for changes in Mississippi’s anti-miscegenation law that would have strengthened the interracial marriage ban.

As a state legislator, he co-sponsored a resolution calling on Congress to repeal part of the Voting Rights Act and backed a federal amendment banning abortion.

His judicial record displays strong hostility to the claims of minorities and workers. He has made some disturbing ethical calls. After a jury in 1994 convicted a man of burning a cross on the lawn of a mixed-race couple, Pickering, who presided over the trial, privately lobbied prosecutors and Justice Department officials to reduce the defendant’s sentence.

These are among the reasons the Democratic-led Judiciary Committee narrowly rejected him in March 2002. —Los Angeles Times

Humans as zoo animals

TOPPING the agenda of the OIC meeting in Kuala Lumpur should have been Guantanamo, a ringing denunciation of the inhumanity and religious bigotry that it represents. Every detainee is a Muslim who was abducted at random it would appear and taken to a hell-hole.

Certainly, in modern times, there is no parallel for this kind of state lawlessness. No criminal charges have been brought against the ‘ enemy combatants’, a classification that is unique for it does not exist in international law and could have been coined by a copy-writer in any of the advertising agencies on Madison Avenue in New York City.

Enemy Combatant could be the name of an insecticide or of an anti-perspiration spray. It is hard to believe that it refers to human beings who are made to live in cages. Even worse, there is about this incarceration a certain, triumphant self-righteousness as one of the US marines told BBC’s Panorama team that he was protecting his country from its enemies and apparently felt patriotic about doing so.

No qualms of conscience for him just as there were none for the guards of the Nazi gas-chambers who after all were carrying out orders to cleanse the Fatherland of impurities that were defiling the Aryan race.

The BBC programme Panorama was severely restricted because it was not allowed to film the conditions at Guantanamo and it had to make do by interviewing a taxi driver who had been picked up in Afghanistan and taken to the US naval base in Cuba and, miraculously, released. He still appeared to be in a daze. He said that he had been given an injection that knocked him out and when he came to senses, he found himself thousands of miles away from his home. He was at a loss to explain the unexpected twist that fate had taken and robbed him of his humanity.

We learnt from the BBC programme that the inmates of Guantanamo came not just from Afghanistan but were picked up in swoops in other countries including Gambia, presumably with the consent of the Gambian government. Because Guantanamo is not considered legally to be a part of the United States, American laws are not applicable.

Under what law are the enemy combatants held? Not the Geneva Convention because they are not prisoners of war. They have not been charged with committing any crime. What budget-head does Guantanamo come under? Do financial provisions exist for the contingency of Purgatory? It is true that any collective concern shown by the OIC is not likely to make any sort of impression on the United States whose own people, possibly, have no idea of what is being done, in their name to fellow-humans. But some resolute condemnation by the OIC would at least play well at home where there is the perception that Muslim governments are out of step with the aspirations and sentiments of the people. Some voice should be raised at what is a horrendous violation of human rights and a religious dimension has been given to Guantanamo and this makes it very much the business of the OIC.

There is a conspiracy of silence about Guantanamo in the mainstream media though the BBC is beginning to show interest primarily because a few of the enemy combatants are British citizens. Tony Blair who gets purple with rage whenever he mentions the name of Saddam Hussein, “brutal dictator” being the tamest of the expletives he uses, has chosen to say nothing at all about Guantanamo.

His is a voice that might have been heeded in Washington DC. His close friendship with George Bush demanded that he advised him that a democracy rests on the foundation of the rule of law, that it does not trash due process and civil liberties, that the presumption of innocence is a core value. Democracy cannot be saved by destroying it.

There is some talk about a few, chosen enemy combatants being tried by military tribunals. This is to further make a mockery of justice. How can the captors be expected to be fair? Does anyone imagine even in his wildest dreams that there will be any other verdict other than guilty? This will be a show trial so that the fiction of due process is maintained. George Bush has already given his verdict and has called those held at Guantanamo as “bad people.” How does he know? This is not a rush to judgment but a stampede.

But it is the silence of the American people that is deafening. They are not being told about the physical and psychological torture that is being applied. Instead, they are being told that some of the enemy combatants are getting better medical facilities than they would ever have got and some of them have actually put on weight, as if Guantanamo was a health-resort. Why not allow an independent team of doctors to make their investigations?

No one knows how long the war on terror will last. There is no end in sight. We would do well to ponder over the words of German Pastor Martin Neimoller who was imprisoned by the Nazis: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”

These are haunting words. Guantanamo should not be given even a shred of respectability and certainly no legal cover lest a terrible and horrifying precedent is set. Guantanamo has become a human zoo. There ought to be some collective shame. It should bother our conscience. The world had mourned 9/11, showed its solidarity. Strange how so much goodwill should have evaporated so quickly. September 11 struck at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon but an aftermath should not have been revenge. It should have been the bolstering of human rights, not their demolition.

Who runs US foreign policy?

THE recent decision by President Bush to create an Iraq Stabilization Group seems to be part of an effort by the White House to revamp US foreign efforts and assume more direct control over events. The creation of the group is an indirect admission that American plans for nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved insufficient and US planners were unprepared for the guerilla war that has ensued.

The decision comes at a time when the presidential election is about a year away and Mr Bush is trying to shore up his declining domestic support for the occupation of Iraq. With Washington facing a deepening crisis in Iraq and a surge of fresh attacks on US force — 101 American troops have been killed since May 1 when President Bush triumphantly announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq — recriminations are dividing the Bush administration.

The neo-conservatives, who had hailed Secretary for Defence Donald Rumsfeld as an architect of military victory in Iraq, are now savaging him for his failure to plan for the complexities in post-war Iraq. The public shock at the cost of Iraq war, in human and financial terms, seems to have created cracks in the conservative ranks.

The Bush team appears to be unusually fractious. Congressmen and foreign diplomats, according to media reports, complain that Secretary of State Powell and Defence Secretary Rumsfeld are always contradicting each other. This has created a good deal of confusion about the future course of US foreign policy. A senior Democrat on foreign relations committee, Joseph Biden, recently referred, on NBC television, to internal battles between the White House and the Pentagon over who should be in charge of Iraqi reconstruction.

The way the creation of Iraq Stabilization Group was announced has also brought differences in the Bush team to the fore. In an interview with the Financial Times and three European news organizations on October 7, Mr Rumsfeld admitted that he had not been told by President Bush or the National Security Council (NSC) that the White House was to restructure the handling of post-war Iraq before the media was briefed on the plan by NSC officials. Mr Rumsfeld declined to comment on the impression that the move was an attempt by the White House to strip control of the rebuilding of Iraq from the tight grip of the Pentagon. But if Mr Rumsfeld was not consulted on the creation of the Iraq group, it can be safely assumed that his ideas did not figure prominently in the make-up of the new structure.

In his interview, Mr Rumsfeld sought to portray the decision to be in conformity with the existing policy; but he seemed perturbed that Ms Rice had decided to draw attention to the memo by “backgrounding” the media. Before the creation of the Iraq group, it may be recalled, Ms Rice had been criticized for giving the Pentagon too much control over Iraq which, traditionally, should have been shared by the NSC and the State Department.

Many analysts believe the mess in Iraq has stemmed indirectly from a decision Ms Rice took soon after coming to the White House as head of the NSC. She thought President Clinton had concentrated too much power in the relatively small NSC and decided to delegate more of the responsibility for implementation of the policy back to the departments such as the State Department and the Pentagon. Though the decision seemed sensible, perhaps she delegated too much to the departments as, in actual practice, she allowed policy to be formulated as well as implemented elsewhere, with hardly any role for the NSC.

It was under the delegated power that post-war reconstruction of Iraq was exclusively handled by the Pentagon, and Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator, and John Abizaid, the chief military commander, reported to Mr Rumsfeld. But with the creation of Iraq Stabilization Group, the policy of delegating too much power to departments seems to have been reversed and the NSC restored to its original position. The new structure will be run by Ms Rice as chief of the NSC, which, in effect, is the foreign policy team of the White House.

The reason that American foreign policy has so often appeared confused, and at times even chaotic, is that so many departments and agencies claim a role in its formulation as well as implementation. Unlike most countries, where foreign policy is run by the foreign minister, with the head of the government keeping an eye on it, in the United States it does not fall in the exclusive domain of the State Department. In Pakistan’s case, too, foreign policy is not formulated at the ministry of foreign affairs but at the GHQ, or to be more precise, at the corps commanders’ meetings.

With several arms or tentacles, the US foreign policy process looks somewhat like an octopus. The first arm is, of course, the State Department, whose head, the Secretary of State, is the country’s chief diplomat. Then comes the Pentagon where Secretary of Defence directs American soldiers around the world and manages the military muscle often a part of the implementation of US foreign policy. Central Intelligence Agency (and numerous small spy-shops) has also a say in both the formulation and implementation of the policy. That is not all. Both Houses of Congress too would like to wave their arms around and claim a role in their country’s foreign policy. The octopus has a hidden tentacle too. Vice-President Cheney not only attends meetings of the principal players — Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice — but has even recruited his own foreign policy staff, competing with other institutions. Under these conditions, it is not surprising if the US foreign policy process should appear perplexing to outsiders.

The unwieldy system is euphemistically called an ‘inter-agency process’. It is coordinated by the NSC head, Ms Rice. She, indeed, has a tough job — to mediate between warring departments and agencies, to present their views to the president and help develop a policy out of a mess of conflicting interests. It is up to the president to make up his mind and take the final decision and then the barons are expected to fall in line, as Rumsfeld has in the case of the Iraq Stabilization Group.

Though Ms Rice has gone out of her way not to be seen as equal of Messers Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell, she is the most important link in the ‘inter-agency process’. Ms Rice has an added advantage too; she has the most precious commodity in Washington — the president’s time. She often spends weekends at Camp David with the Bush family and is perhaps closer to Mr Bush than any NSC chief has been to a US president in recent years.

With the presidential election a year away, restoration of peace and stability in the chaotic and problem-ridden Iraq has become the most pressing priority of the Bush administration. As head of the newly-formed Iraq Group, Ms Rice will now coordinate stabilization efforts and assume more direct control over events in Iraq. She has a two-fold job to do: to tide over the deepening crisis in Iraq and control experienced players such as Rumsfeld, Cheney and Powell, as Henry Kissinger did in President Nixon’s administration. Will Ms Rice emerge victorious? Let us wait and see.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

No message for Asia

PRESIDENT Bush is to spend six days in Asia visiting vital US economic and political partners that haven’t gotten much of the administration’s attention during the past two years.

Yet Asians hoping for a revitalization of their relations with the United States will probably be disappointed: Though he will zip through six countries in six days, Mr Bush will not be guided by any coherent vision.

There is, of course, the war on terrorism: The governments of the Philippines and Indonesia will be rewarded with presidential stopovers of eight and three hours, respectively, in recognition of their efforts to stamp out alleged Asian affiliates of Al Qaeda. There is also the hunt for help in Iraq: Mr Bush is hoping to extract pledges of money, troops or both from Japan and South Korea.

But American engagement with Asia itself — its continuing struggle with globalization, its mix of developing democracies and dictatorships, its shifting security balance amid China’s military buildup — seems to have been all but squeezed off the agenda.

Mr Bush will probably spend some time discussing the region’s most pressing security problem, North Korea, with other leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit — the annual event that compels his visit. He will probably be asked, again, to explain just what his administration’s policy is: Is it the attempt to negotiate a settlement with Pyongyang favoured by his State Department, or the effort to trigger the regime collapse that the Pentagon favours?

Mr Bush’s failure to answer this question decisively has prevented either strategy from being aggressively pursued over the past 2 1/2 years, while roiling US relations with South Korea. But it’s hard to expect progress on this trip: The president’s itinerary includes Singapore and Canberra but not Seoul.

Nor is there much chance Mr Bush will follow the example of past administrations by articulating an energetic economic policy for Asia. —The Washington Post