Bush's ME initiative

Now that two major powers of the region have denounced President George Bush's "Greater Middle East initiative," one wonders what chances the plan has of success. Returning from Riyadh after a meeting with Saudi leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak "forcefully" rejected "written prescriptions" for the region and said there was no room for reforms decreed from outside.

Reforms were "necessary and inevitable", he elaborated, but they must come from within. His rejection of the plan followed a joint Saudi-Egyptian statement which denounced the plan equally forcefully and said the Arab states must develop, modernize and reform in keeping with their peoples' "interests and values."

The Bush initiative, to be formally presented to the G-8 summit in June, seeks to create a new Middle East in the American image. The plan is wide-ranging: in addition to its emphasis on democracy and human rights, it dwells on such matters as economic reforms, trade, and women's empowerment.

Modelled on the Helsinki plan that aimed at promoting democracy in Eastern European countries, the Bush initiative is meant to turn the Middle East into a haven of peace, democracy and development with the US as the patron.

While there is no doubt that all Middle Eastern countries must break loose of the shackles of ignorance, authoritarianism and religious bigotry, it would be naive to believe that there can be a rough-and-ready formula that can do the trick.

The Middle East might have fallen on bad times, and it has the misfortune now of being governed by self-serving dictators and potentates, but there is no reason to believe that the peoples there have to look elsewhere for ideas.

Human civilization began in the Middle East - in Babylon to be specific - and the region has given mankind three great religions. The area is marked by great diversity in terms of geography, economic potentials and problems, ethnicity, culture and traditions.

A Saudi and Algerian may be both Arabs, but there is a world of difference in their mental outlook, historical experience, and even racial origins, for every Arabic-speaking person does not belong to the Semitic race. To lump all Middle Eastern people together and expect them to fall in line is absurd.

Ignoring these historical differences, the Bush plan's principal defect is its neglect of the Palestinian problem. The great issue of the day is the Arab-Israel conflict. In specific terms, it revolves round the continued occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel.

What can restore peace in the Middle East is an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Arab lands and the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state with Al Quds as its capital. Unfortunately, President Bush's "Greater Middle East Initiative" is silent on the issue.

That the plan should have been rejected by two of America's major allies in the region should make the Bush administration realize its impracticality. The initiative makes no mention of the roadmap which President Bush unveiled last April. Prepared by the Quartet - the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN - the plan visualizes the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state by 2005.

The new initiative would have made some sense if it had incorporated the roadmap in it. This would have made Israel party to the scheme and obliged it to implement the roadmap by putting a halt to the construction of the so-called "security" barrier and ending settlement activity. By ignoring the roadmap, the Bush initiative has virtually scuttled the peace process and reduced the initiative to a farce.

Marginal improvement

The news that both the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) and the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) have reduced their line losses for the first time in over a decade is welcome.

Official data released on Friday by the finance ministry indicates that Wapda reduced its line losses by 1.7 per cent and the KESC by 2.8 per cent. This is a marginal improvement as overall line losses stand at 25 per cent for Wapda and 40 per cent for the KESC, when the internationally accepted level is less than 10 per cent.

The power utilities need to reduce line losses further in order to eliminate the need for tariff increases every now and then to reduce financial deficits. Besides providing relief to common consumers, lower tariffs are vital for economic industrial production and for our exports to be cost-competitive in the world market.

If losses are substantially reduced, the utilities can start investing more in the infrastructure so that power distribution can become more efficient and fault-free than at present.

The long-standing need is for the largely wornout power distribution systems of the two utilities to be repaired and replaced. Another fault-line in the power system is the widespread theft.

The scale of this phenomenon makes it obvious that this is done with the connivance of the corrupt field staff of the KESC and Wapda. Despite a number of highly publicized drives to check power theft, very little has been done to contain it and bring those involved to book.

It is here that much more needs to be done so that the benefits can be passed on to consumers who pay their bills regularly. Attention must also be given to the problem of default by bulk consumers, including government departments and other institutions.

Re-examining fishing policy

The fishing communities living along Sindh and Balochistan's coast are justified in asking the federal government to review its existing policy of allowing deep-sea fishing in the country's territorial waters.

Instituted back in 1995, the policy opened Pakistan's maritime exclusive economic zone to foreign fishing companies. The small rickety boats and cotton nets of the local fishermen are no match for the big automated trawlers and nylon or plastic nets that the foreigners use in catching fish.

The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, a representative body of the local community, has said that the result of years of unfettered deep-sea fishing is a significant depletion in the quantity and variety of fish stocks in the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). However, this government and the one before it which introduced the policy have defended the permission given to foreign trawlers as a success story, claiming that this is one reason why export earnings from this sector have increased.

While developing the fisheries sector is a no doubt a good way of tapping into the vast export potential of Pakistan's maritime resources, the fact is that the policies which seek to do that must be balanced and sustainable.

The interests of the local fishing industry, which employs close to 300,000 people, should be taken into account. The local fishermen accuse the deep-sea trawlers of foraying into the fishing areas set aside for the local fishermen.

The government should ask the Maritime Security Agency, the Coast Guard and the navy to patrol the boundaries of the fishing zones to ensure that such violations do not taken place and that the fishing zone set aside for the local fishing boats are not encroached upon.

A limit on the catch of the deep-sea trawlers should also be set so that fish stock is not seriously depleted. Fishing round-the-year should not be allowed since that might endanger hatcheries and cause species to die out, at least from the EEZ. Also, the government should ask the trawler operators to stop using finely woven nylon or plastic nets because they pick up small fry along with the intended catch.