| 09 April 2004 | Friday | 18 Safar 1425 |
Pesticide law
SAF: a grand finale
As was feared, the Bush administration seems to have been won over by Israel on Mr Ariel Sharon's new Gaza plan. Details of the plan have not be announced, but the broad outlines available to the press look sinister. A brainchild of the Israeli prime minister, the withdrawal plan is insidious.
It does not merely visualize a pullout of Jewish settlers and Israeli troops from the Gaza strip; it envisages the occupation of more Palestinian land by Israel. According to the plan, Jewish settlers will not only be pulled out of Gaza; they will be resettled on larger settlements in the West Bank.
This way, Israel will be able to retain more Palestinian territory if and when there is a final settlement. The US has, however, qualified its support to the plan by saying that it will be an interim step. In other words, Washington believes that this interim step will not interfere with the US-led roadmap.
Sponsored by the US, EU, UN and Russia, the roadmap visualizes a total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state by 2005.
It was immediately accepted by President Yasser Arafat, while Mr Sharon took time to do so and that too with several reservations. Yet even this peace plan remains in limbo, because Mr Sharon believes in murders more than in the negotiating process that the plan envisages.
The latest of the series of murders that Israel has committed was that of Hamas leader and founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin on March 22. The truth is that Israel does not believe in any peace process. It sabotaged the Oslo peace process, and a fanatic Jew murdered the man who signed it - the late Mr Yitzhak Rabin.
Then two successive prime ministers, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Ehud Barak, succeeded in derailing the peace process and having the Oslo treaties virtually renegotiated. Finally even this disappeared as the second intifada began, following Mr Sharon's ill-advised visit to the Islamic holy places in Al Quds in September 2000.
Since then nearly 3,000 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed, and there is no progress on the roadmap unveiled by President Bush last April. Left to himself, Mr Sharon would want to annex the West Bank and Gaza the way Israel has annexed the Golan Heights; it is demography that stands in the way.
Israel already has 1.2 million Arab citizens. If to that are added the three million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, Jews will be reduced to a thin majority in their own country.
Given the higher Arab birth rate, a "Greater Israel" will in about a decade's time have an Arab majority. This will destroy what the Israelis like to call their country's "Jewish character." Demography or no demography, the simple issue is the continued occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel.
What can bring peace to the holy land is neither the "resettlement" of Gaza Jews nor the targeted assassinations which are Mr Sharon's recipe for peace. If Mr Bush wants to go down in history as an American president who solved the Arab-Israeli conflict, then he must see to it that the roadmap is faithfully implemented; that Israel withdraws from the occupied territories and a sovereign Palestinian state comes into being in 2005.
Pesticide law
The cabinet decision to set up a committee to draft a law against adulteration of pesticides is a step in the right direction. In the past year, a severe pest attack on the standing cotton crop in Punjab affected the overall output, which in turn drove up local cotton prices.
One of the major factors for this attack was the sale and use of spurious pesticides that proved ineffective in checking the growth of various pests that infest the cotton crop at different stages of its growth.
As a result of the rising cost of pesticides, the temptation for the poor among the farmers to use cheaper varieties of pesticides was too great to resist. This invariably led to serious and widespread damage to crops.
The government needs to step in, so that those responsible for this practice are caught and punished. The ready and widespread availability of adulterated pesticides needs to be checked with firm preventive and punitive action.
The damage to the cotton crop has far-reaching implications as the bulk of the country's exports are made up of cotton and cotton-based products.
While Pakistan has been producing a good cotton crop over the past few years and plan to boost production to 15 million bales by 2010, the government has to take serious note of the complaints by cotton growers of problems which are affecting their output and economic interests.
One hopes that the proposed law to regulate pesticides does not stop at checking adulteration only. There has been a call to evolve a comprehensive pesticides policy so that there is some regulation in the import, production, sale and distribution of these products.
This needs to be done to ensure that the farmer gets the most effective product at a reasonable price. At the same time, local alternatives of pesticides need to be considered as well, like those derived from the Neem tree, to cut down on costs. One hopes that with such measures in place, the cotton crop will no longer be as vulnerable to pest attacks as it has been in the recent past.
SAF: a grand finale
Wednesday's colourful closing ceremony marking the end of the ninth SAF games should bring smiles on the faces of most Pakistanis. Pakistan proved to be an excellent host to hundreds of athletes from the South Asian region for ten days and, better still, its own sportswomen and sportsmen managed to do quite well in the games.
Pakistan won 42 gold medals, 40 more than it had done the last time the games were held in Nepal. As expected, given its sheer size India came out on top by winning 101 golds.
However, Pakistan's performance is something the general public and local sporting enthusiasts and associations should definitely be proud of. Particularly noteworthy were outstanding performances by our boxers and the football team.
The boxers virtually swept the medal tables while the footballers defeated the arch-rival and favourite, India, in the final to win the gold medal. Indeed, Pakistan's remarkable overall performance could be a shot in the arm for some of the more neglected sporting disciplines, particularly football.
The SAF games were actually supposed to be held a couple of years ago but tensions between India and Pakistan and the fallout of 9/11 delayed them till 2004. In that context, their smooth and incident-free passage and the participation by so many athletes from the region, including Afghanistan, is a particularly significant achievement.
Completion of the games, the response from the participating nations, the crowd turnout, and the gala closing ceremony complete with fireworks display and popular musicians accompanied by traditionally-attired male and female dancers added colour and gaiety to the grand finale.
All this is good for Pakistan's image, and far removed from what a section of the foreign media depicts it to be - what with gun-toting religious fanatics roaming all over, etc.
The games are also proof of the fact that sport can be an excellent binding as well as a promoter of goodwill and friendship among regional countries which are otherwise prone to bickering and tension on political and other grounds.