| 15 December 2004 | Wednesday | 02 Ziqa'ad 1425 |
Success story of Morocco
Living a happy married life
United Nations ripe for change?
On December 13, negotiations began between Iran and the European Union on the curbs that the EU is seeking to place on Iran's nuclear programme in return for concessions in economic and security cooperation.
The EU participants include the foreign ministers of UK, France and Germany and the EU's foreign policy chief Xavier Solana. The Iranian side is led by Hasan Rouhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.
At the joint press conference, Hasan Rouhani spelt out the objective as being to "establish such confidence that there will be no concern left for anyone" while the UK foreign secretary, Jack Straw, leading the talks on behalf of the European group, maintained that a key aim of the talks would be to "to provide objective guarantees that Iran's nuclear programme can only be used for peaceful purposes".
The negotiators have agreed to set up three working groups on nuclear, security and economic cooperation. The first meeting of the groups commenced immediately after the conclusion of the ministerial meeting.
The objective is that these groups will reach agreements within the next three months on exactly how Iran's nuclear programme will be monitored to ensure that it is not moving towards nuclear weapon production, and exactly what security guarantees and trade and economic cooperation concessions the EU will make available to the Iranians in return.
Iranians are expecting and demanding quick progress on economic and security cooperation with the implicit threat that in the event that this is not forthcoming, the country will resume uranium enrichment.
The EU, on the other hand, is interested in a more leisurely pace, and is also intent on seeking more information on how Iran acquired its current uranium capability and how extensive this capability is.
The backdrop to the current negotiations is that ElBaradie had formally informed the IAEA board of governors that Iran's suspension of its uranium enrichment activity has been verified by the IAEA, and that Iran had placed under IAEA surveillance the 20 centrifuges for which it had earlier sought an exemption.
In a resolution adopted on November 29, the IAEA board of governors acknowledged that the suspension of the activity was voluntary and not legally binding. The resolution also dropped a clause that would have threatened implicitly to have the matter referred to the UN Security council in case Iran resumed uranium enrichment or other suspect nuclear activity.
This was a considerable move away from the American demand that the resolution should categorically call for a referral of the matter to the UN Security Council if uranium enrichment were resumed by Iran.
The resolution also dropped the demand made earlier that Iran permit unrestricted access to all its facilities - a demand that would have gone beyond the requirements of the additional protocol which Iran has signed but not ratified. Instead, the resolution confined itself to asking Iran to give the IAEA the inspection rights contained in the additional protocol.
Iran, of course has reason to be satisfied with the content of the IAEA resolution and the commencement of negotiations with the EU. The question is whether a successful conclusion of these negotiations can be expected without a change in the stance the Bush administration has adopted.
The EU shares America's concerns about the Iranian nuclear programme but not its hard line position that the only way to resolve the problem is to secure a change of regime in Tehran, and to accomplish this either by isolating Iran through UN Security Council imposed sanctions or through military action.
The EU policy of getting Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions through economic and security inducements clearly cannot work unless these inducements are endorsed and replicated by the Americans.
The Americans, however, have made it clear that they are not prepared at least at this stage to even talk to the Iranians, let alone offer such inducements. Even at the international level the Americans have made clear their opposition to any concessions to Iran.
They have vetoed the EU-supported Iranian application for admission to the WTO. They have shown no inclination to relax or modify the sanctions policy they have in effect against trade with Iran or of penalizing firms that do trade with Iran in the energy field.
The Europeans clearly feel, as do many security analysts, that the Americans and the Europeans are at cross-purposes on this as on other issues. In an article published by the Washington Post on the December 13, former secretary of state, Madeline Albright, along with seven former European and Canadian foreign ministers, voiced these misgivings and suggested measures to harmonize American and European policies on this issue.
In essence, their recommendations are that America and the EU must not permit Iran to exploit differences between the approaches of the two sides and that both must agree, therefore, that they will hold Iran to its commitments under the NPT while at the same time, foreswearing any effort to deny Iran the right to develop peaceful nuclear activity.
Second, they must guarantee the supply of fuel for Iran's nuclear plants. Third, the Americans must support the present EU effort and must consider engaging Iran directly. Fourth, if Iran continues down the path of developing nuclear weapons, the Europeans must be prepared to impose sanctions and to take the matter to the Security Council.
While commendable in themselves, it is clear that the recommendations made by these distinguished states persons have failed to address the important question of what has been the implicitly stated catalyst for Iran's nuclear ambitions.
In the agreement reached with the EU on October 21, the Iranians insisted on including in the statement a clause calling for "security and stability in the region including the establishment of a zone free from weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East."
They made no mention of the dangers Iran sees from not only Israeli nuclear weapons but from the nuclear capability that one Iranian has claimed Pakistan has transferred to Saudi Arabia. (This has been denied by Pakistan and nothing further has been said on the subject but it is a fair indication of the attention Dr. A.Q. Khan's activities are likely to receive as further details of Iran's nuclear programme are investigated by the IAEA in Iran).
There is no mention of the justified fears engendered by the American military presence on two sides of Iran's borders in Iraq, and Afghanistan and the capability this gives the Americans to effect the regime change in Iran that the neo conservatives in Washington have frequently advocated.
The Washington Post revealed in a recent article that the Americans had been eavesdropping on ElBaradei's conversations with the Iranians looking for proof that he had withheld vital information from the IAEA board of governors on the Iranian nuclear programme. According to the news report, no such evidence was found but gossip to this effect has been allowed to circulate.
The Americans have also made it clear that they do not want ElBaradei to be given a third term as director-general, and have cited in this connection the agreement reached in what is called the Geneva Consensus among the 14 largest donors to the UN system that no agency head should serve more than two terms.
The opposition to ElBaradei of course flows in part from the fact that his reports on the Iraqi nuclear programme, on the eve of the American attack on Iraq, were also seen to be unhelpful even if they were completely accurate. It is also part of the pattern of American efforts to punish those international officials who opposed or voiced reservations about American policy in Iraq.
The campaign against Kofi Annan and his alleged involvement in the mismanagement of the oil-for-food programme administered by the UN in Iraq was allowed to gather force and was dropped only after it became clear that no other country was prepared to demand Kofi Annan's resignation.
In ElBaradei's case, too, it seems that no candidate can be found by the Americans to stand against him. Even the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who was tapped for the job by the Americans, has apparently refused the offer and his government has expressed full confidence in ElBaradei.
There is no doubt that the present situation is prompted by a genuine fear both in America and in the EU about the dangers that a nuclearized Iran could pose. The difference lies, however, in the fact that the EU and the rest of the world is prepared to recognize that Iran's efforts in this direction are prompted not merely by "big power" ambitions but by the very real threat of Israel's nuclear capability and its aggressive posture in the Middle East. Iran is not alone in feeling this way.
Secretary Colin Powell discovered at the conference in Morocco, where the promotion of democracy in the Arab countries was to be advocated as the antidote to terrorism, that the leaders of the Arab countries attributed terrorism to the policies of Israel and to the blind support such policies received from the US.
Will this realization finally begin to influence policy in Washington? Bush is in his second term. He does not have to consider his re-election prospects while framing policy in the Middle East.
But will he adopt a more judicious stand? Analysts say that not only do the neo conservative supporters of Israel continue to occupy prominent positions in the administration, but that Bush's reshuffle of his cabinet reflects the elevation to cabinet rank of persons who have little independent political standing, and therefore, little inclination to resist policies advocated by the coterie of hardliners that surround Bush. Under these circumstances, it appears unlikely that a more judicious policy will be adopted.
It seems unlikely, therefore, that the Americans will be prepared to offer genuine cooperation to the EU in the current negotiations with Iran. Israel wants a more confrontational approach towards Iran and the neo conservatives will want to oblige.
They may not be able to push for unilateral military action given the fact that American forces are already dangerously overextended in Iraq. But they will certainly not give up on efforts to bring the Iran issue to the UN Security Council, nor will they discourage the campaign Israel has launched to highlight the dangers posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Iran has to tread a careful path. On the one hand, popular sentiment in Iran, and this includes that of the opponents of the present regime, will not countenance any surrender of Iran's legal rights to develop a nuclear fuel cycle capability.
On the other hand, they have to contend with the fact that even if the Americans take no direct action against Iran, the Israelis to whom the Americans have supplied "bunker bombs" may be encouraged to launch the same sort of pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities as was carried out in the 80's against Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility.
Current rumblings to this effect may be dismissed as no more than psychological warfare. The global situation certainly militates against any such action. It can also be argued that the missile capability Iran has developed and demonstrated will give Israel reason to pause. Nevertheless, it would be prudent for Iranian leaders to bear this possibility in mind and to conduct the negotiations with the EU accordingly.
Success story of Morocco
Morocco won the country award for 2004 given by the Population Institute, Washington, annually to the country whose population programme has shown good results in the preceding year.
Morocco was adjudged the best, and if any proof of this were needed, it is expected to show in the report of the census held recently in that country. The report will be released shortly.
The census commissioner stated that he had the preliminary findings of the census. The comprehensive results will come in several months later. The results indicate that Morocco's population growth rate is down to 1.6 per cent. It was 1.9 per cent previously.
Even the total fertility rate (the average number of children a woman in the reproductive age-group is expected to have) is down to 2.1 in the urban areas as compared to 2.5 in the rural areas.
This was 6.9 in the seventies. Urbanization is taking place rapidly and today 60 per cent of Morocco's population now lives in towns and cities. In that case, the population growth rate will fall further.
The moot question is: how Morocco, a North African Muslim country of 32 million, has managed to achieve this miracle? A visit to this beautiful country which touches the Mediterranean in the north and the Atlantic Ocean in the west was a learning experience. If only our policymakers demonstrated the same political will as the Moroccans have displayed, many of our problems would have been resolved.
The two key characteristics of the Moroccan programme are its holistic approach to the socio-economic sectors and its explicit and candid style in promoting information, communication and education about birth control, HIV, AIDS and reproductive health.
Both have helped, and it is not possible to address only one of these dimensions and produce results. They are so inter-related and inter-connected. Take the case of the status of women, literacy and poverty in this country. By focusing on these primarily, the government has managed to give a remarkable boost to the quality of life as well as the population programme.
Dr Fatima Mernissi, Morocco's most well known feminist writer and sociologist, who wrote her famous book Beyond the Veil in 1975, now confirms that women have come a long way since then.
True, there is still violence against women but the Moroccan woman of the 1940s, whose life Mernissi captured so vividly in Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Childhood is not the norm today.
Nearly 39.4 per cent of women over 15 are literate and the female literacy rate will jump further in another six years as the girls who are nine today become adolescents of 15. The primary school enrolment is nearly hundred per cent.
Moreover, two significant measures have been taken in the last two years which will, in due course, change the status of women in the country. King Mohammad VI, the young ruler of Morocco, has taken measures to integrate women in the policymaking machinery of the government. By introducing a law reserving seats for women in the parliament, he has ensured the entry of 35 women in the Assembly in 2002, when there were only two women MPs before.
Nouzha Skalli, a dynamic parliamentarian who won the Global Leader's award, and her colleagues have certainly taken up their responsibilities with great commitment. Last year, the Moroccan parliament adopted a law on women which should, if implemented in earnest, transform their situation radically. It fixes the minimum marriage age for women at 18, prohibits polygamy, and gives the woman the right to ask for a divorce and keep the custody of the child.
Concurrently, primary education for girls is being promoted in a big way. Nearly 85 per cent of primary educational institutions are in the public sector and are mostly co-ed. The one I visited on the outskirts of Marrakesh in a low income area was a girls school that enrols students till the high school level.
It was a pleasure to meet the students and the staff. The standards appeared to be pretty good - at least to me as I can only visualize the ramshackle government schools with rundown furniture which I have seen in Pakistan.
It is not just the education of women that is having an impact on the demographic scene of Morocco. The students attending schools are exposed to health education and the hazards of Aids, drugs and smoking while they are familiarized with small family norms. Encouraged to do research on these subjects in their school health clubs under the guidance of their counsellors the mental horizons of these young ladies are being dramatically widened.
The raised status of women and education when combined with poverty alleviation have created an impact on population indicators. With less than two per cent of the people living on less than a dollar a day and 82 per cent having access to improved water supply, the population programme doesn't face the hurdle of poverty as it does in many other impoverished societies.
A key factor in the success of any population programme is the strategy adopted. The Moroccan Family Planning Association is bold and candid in creating awareness among the people and this campaign is underpinned with a wide network for contraceptive services.
Adolescents and women are the key targets and culture is fully used to spread the message. Street theatres, songs and dances are freely used to educate people about sexually transmitted diseases and the importance of spacing deliveries and limiting family size.
The contraceptive services are so widely dispersed (the main methods being the pills, condoms, and in jectibles) that the contraceptive prevalence rate is nearly 50 per cent and the unmet need (that is women who want to limit their children but do not have access to contraceptives) is less than 20 per cent.
The main question that came to my mind was how the religious leaders had responded to family planning. Even before I could ask, I had the answer. As I reached the office of the Family Planning Association in the old city of Marrakesh, I noticed a signboard in close proximity to the FPA's office entrance announcing that next door were the premises of a Quran school.
I could hear the children chanting the verses of the Holy Book. Later, our hosts informed us that they engage the ulema in discourses on the subject and there are many religious leaders now speaking in favour of family planning in their sermons.
The fact is that religious scholars all over the Islamic world have categorically stated that Islam does not ban family planning. Even in Iran which is a theocratic state, the family size has been drastically reduced under the patronage of the government.
In Morocco, with its liberal and moderate perception of Islam, it is not surprising that the family planning programme has faced no serious challenge from the clergy.
Living a happy married life
The pace at which marriages are going on the rocks these days must be a matter of grave concern for many. It is not that many marriages have actually broken up; it is the couples' growing dissatisfaction with each other that is visibly on the rise.
In most such cases were it not the thought of the children these unions would end in divorce, though a certain class tends to take divorce in its stride and even revels in it.
What is it that makes a marriage successful and what is it that makes it a failure? In either case, it is not just one thing that matters. A reasonably happy marriage requires compatibility, first of all, then the urge to please each other, patience with the other party's failings and foibles, readiness to forgive and forget, happy influence of elders if they are themselves leading contented married lives, and most of all the will to overcome hurdles that arise in the way.
Similarly, the things that bring about discord can be cursorily mentioned. They are pure and simple selfishness of the wife or the husband, refusal (or inability) to see the other's point of view, persistence in argumentation, intolerance of each other's relatives, quarrels over money matters and the way children should be brought up, and, if nothing else, extreme differences in tastes, ideas and ideals, education and social background.
In my opinion the biggest enemy of a satisfactory union is perhaps the tendency to take each other for granted and to stop giving the partner the importance and attention that he or she expects.
I think nothing hurts more than this, particularly when one party, or both the parties, are educated and possess sensibilities. The drifting into a state where they no longer take notice of each other positively kills whatever affection there is between them.
In the context of the factors that contribute to the success or failure of a marriage, it is interesting to see to what extent they are born of the category of the union.
Was it an arranged match or one in which the man's personal choice played the dominant role? Was it what is commonly known as a love marriage? This interest led me over a long period to look closely at marriages around me: of friends, relations, acquaintances and even neighbours.
What I found was sufficient enough to explode many pet notions, sported by the not-so-experienced young, as well as the very experienced elders claiming to know everything.
My observation is that for a marriage to be a success or a failure, or just a plain bore, it hardly matters whether it was arranged by the parents or by a marriage bureau or was the result of an emotional understanding between the parties.
A very common variation is a one-sided choice; that is, a young man falling in love with a girl who has never seen him and whom he perceived at a social gathering.
We all know, of course, the views of conservative elderly people. They firmly believe that an arranged match is the best bet, a fair guarantee of a reasonably successful married life, because they are sitting on the sidelines and will come down on the husband or the wife if their mutual disagreement threatens the union.
This mediation results in saving a large number of marriages but remaining intact purposelessly, with both man and woman unhappy and dissatisfied, and, as I have often said, for the sake of the children.
The votaries of love marriage, or marriage by personal choice, believe that it imposes certain responsibilities on the two people and they are thus obliged to behave like sensible adults and sort out their problems themselves.
Outside help, they insist, is of no avail except sometimes to the girl who may derive satisfaction from the assurance that she has some defenders - and even aggressors in some cases - if the need arises.
These broadly are the two schools of thought. If you ask the advocates of one school they will have nothing but outright contempt for the other. I am really surprised how strongly and dogmatically people believe in either of the two systems without conceding even a little to the opposite view. But this attitude, you will see, prevails in all spheres of life in Pakistan. That is why there is no tolerance or spirit of accommodation among us, especially when religion or politics are under discussion.
I referred in the beginning to the people taking their marital partner for granted. It is sad to see this even in many love marriages which were originally based on passion for each other, and were sometimes the talk of the town when they got going.
I always caution young couples against this tendency. "Please never let your partner feel that you are taking him/her for a piece of handsome furniture that has always been there.
Even if you have to make an effort and it does not come spontaneously, do it," I say. "Pay studied attention through small gestures just to let the other party feel that he/she means something in your life. The fruits are sweet."
I have started to sound like the counsellors in women's magazines. "Tell your troubles to Auntie," they say, and then indulge in the most blatant commonplaces. The trouble is the subject lends itself to that kind of advice.
So I will end after saying a few words on what is perhaps the most important part of my thesis. I have seen that of all the misunderstandings that bedevil marriages these days the most lethal is expecting too much from the partner. Maybe it is human nature, but everyone begins with expecting too much, and as time passes, disillusionment sets in.
Maybe it is natural for a man of my age to talk of old times which were basically different. Most marriages were between first cousins, and expectations were not high; neither about accomplishments nor good looks.
The parties were too well known. But nowadays men and women want their marriage to serve as a springboard for success, and if that is denied to them, disappointment, even bitterness, takes over.
In the stress and strain of modern ways married life is not becoming any easier. It is a paradox that instead of helping in marriage, education and enlightenment accentuate the differences. That, I suppose, is because the days of implicit obedience and patient suffering on the part of wives are coming to an end.
As the stronger of the two, and certainly always more aware and educated, it is for the husband to make the effort to hold the marriage together. Luck plays a big part, but ultimately it is his initiative and good sense that will help.
United Nations ripe for change?
For weeks on end it appeared as if the United States was bent upon meting out to Kofi Annan the sort of treatment Boutros Boutros-Ghali received eight years ago, when he became the first secretary general of the United Nations to be denied a second term in office.
At the time, Annan was Washington's choice for a substitute from the same region as Egypt's Boutros-Ghali. It would, therefore, be fairly ironic were Annan's second term to be cut short on account of American recalcitrance.
Last Thursday, Washington's UN ambassador John Dan forth feigned surprise at the perception that his nation was being singularly un supportive of the secretary general, and assured reporters that the US was not seeking Annan's resignation.
He has done, and continues to do, "a good job", Danforth said, offering - intentionally or otherwise - a copybook demonstration of how to damn someone with faint praise. And, he added, "we anticipate working with him in the future".
Anticipate is an interesting choice of verb, and although Danforth claimed to be speaking on behalf of George W. Bush and Colin Powell, it is unlikely that the crusade against Annan by senior US politicians will suddenly cease.
Meanwhile, at the start of this week it was confirmed that Annan isn't the only international diplomat in Washington's sights. The Bush administration is also gunning for the International Atomic Energy Agency's Mohammed ElBaradei.
As in the case of Hans Blix before him, ElBaradei's fault is insufficient kow towing to the hyper power. Relative independence and fairness aren't virtues in the world according to George W. Bush.
The idea, apparently, is to replace him with Australia's fatuous foreign minister Alexander Downer. Nothing in Downer's unimpressive past qualifies him to fill ElBaradei's shoes, but he can be guaranteed to toe the line. Perhaps we should be grateful, though, that Downer isn't (thus far) a candidate for the highest UN post.
The anti-Annan campaign is ostensibly a reaction to revelations that up to $21 billion may have been skimmed off the Iraqi oil-for-food programme. In fact, it looks more like revenge for the UN's failure to endorse American aggression against Iraq, and more specifically for Annan's audacity in belatedly describing the invasion as a violation of international law.
Oil-for-food transgressions do, of course, need to be probed - and that's exactly what is happening: apart from an internal UN inquiry, there are several ongoing investigations in the US as well as one in Iraq.
However, there is little evidence that Senator Norm Coleman, who heads one of the American inquiries, is motivated by anything other than bile in leading what the Financial Times has described as a "lynch mob" against Annan.
Potentially, the most personally damaging complaint is that the secretary general's son, Kojo Annan, was for five years on the payroll of a Swiss firm responsible for monitoring goods imported by Iraq. That hardly seems like a hanging offence, even if any wrongdoing can be proved.
After all, Halliburton's former CEO continued to receive payments from the US multinational well into his first term as the nation's vice-president, and the firm was awarded the plummiest contracts in occupied Iraq, but you don't hear anyone calling for Dick Cheney's head.
Of course, US corruption does not in any way excuse UN corruption, and evidence of misdeeds under his watch would reflect poorly on the senior Annan. It's worth remembering, though, that the UN wasn't the only agency involved in administering the oil-for-food scheme.
Nor is there any justification for the impression that the pilfered funds came exclusively from US taxpayers. Besides, as The New York Times pointed out earlier this month, "Iraq accumulated far more illicit money through trade agreements (with neighbouring countries) that the US and other Security Council members knew about for years."
Coleman and his ilk are playing to an audience that has always regarded the UN with hostility and suspicion. At one extreme, this includes those Americans who see the world body as part of an international communist conspiracy to subjugate the "land of the free".
The more dangerous category, however, includes a substantial section of the new Republican mainstream: those who look upon the UN as an annoying and unnecessary hurdle to the US having its way in the world.
This prejudice was obviously reinforced by the failure to obtain Security Council endorsement for the invasion of Iraq. Annan's post hoc condemnation must have felt like salt in the wound.
It does not, of course, follow that the UN is an impeccable institution or that Annan is a paragon of virtue. The world body has been plagued with problems since its inception. On occasion, these problems have taken on the guise of existential crises.
The organization was helpless in the face of the rape of Vietnam, for instance. It couldn't do much about the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Its record on issues such as Palestine epitomizes its impotence. Within the past decade or so, its ineffectiveness has been demonstrated in the context of Rwanda and Bosnia.
This year, alarming reports from Sudan's Darfur region have prompted a great deal of hand-wringing, but not much more. And in the case of Iraq, although the UN did not lend its imprimatur to the aggression, it also failed to prevent the war.
The UN is the sum of its parts, and perhaps its most debilitating handicap is the fact that a few of its members are much more equal than the rest. All too often, this inherent inequality promotes spine less ness. And, although it isn't conceptually inevitable, the imbalance of power is unlikely to undergo dramatic adjustments in the foreseeable future.
For all its flaws, however, the organization cannot be dismissed as useless. Given that the world cannot do without some sort of overarching structure that covers the conduct of international affairs, as an alternative to global anarchy, the UN hasn't by any means been an unmitigated disaster. In terms of universality and longevity, it has fared considerably better than its predecessors.
True, its role has on occasion boiled down to that of a handmaiden to imperialism. But that certainly isn't why conservative forces in the US are bent upon the organization's destruction.
Nor do the UN's most vociferous opponents offer any coherent argument for an alternative structure, beyond the ridiculous implication that the world would be better off if its affairs were handled by Washington.
It's equally absurd to imagine, however, that a structure cobbled together six decades ago, reflecting the political contours of an era defined by the Second World War, could retain its effectiveness in the light of 21st century realities.
In the wake of the Iraq debacle, the UN last year charged a blue-ribbon committee consisting mostly of former politicians to come up with proposals for change. Last month, the committee went public with 101 recommendations, the most intriguing of which involve a clearer definition of circumstances in which the impetus for humanitarian intervention can override a nation's sovereign rights, as well as the first expansion of the Security Council in 40 years.
A dose of democracy via empowerment of the General Assembly is evidently not an option. A marginally less unrepresentative Security Council is the best one can hope for, with two choices on the table: six new permanent and three more non-permanent members, or a second tier of eight semi-permanent members plus one additional non-permanent member.
In neither case is any extension of veto rights envisaged, which effectively means that the imbalance of power will remain unaltered. Removal or restriction of the veto did not apparently bear contemplation, any more than the possibility of a mechanism whereby a veto could be overridden - say by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly.
If either of the proposals gets past the existing Security Council, the next step will be to determine how many of the contenders for permanent or semi-permanent seats are willing to accept the status of second-class members.
The names that crop up most frequently in this context include those of India, Brazil, Japan, Germany, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa. There are pros and cons in each case, but arguably the nation with the strongest claim is our eastern neighbour.
And it is singularly unfortunate that, despite what looks like a sustained thaw in Indo-Pakistan relations, Islamabad has deemed it opportune to spearhead the drive against Indian membership in particular and Security Council expansion in general.
A couple of months ago, in a rare lapse into incoherence, General Pervez Musharraf was quoted as saying that "increasing the number of permanent members of the UN Security Council is against the democratic considerations of the sovereign equality of nations". What on earth could that possibly mean? That a more representative Council would somehow be less democratic?
It will be most unfortunate if Pakistan allows historical prejudices to prevent it from playing a constructive role in UN reform as the organization approaches its 60th year.
Were other nations to phlegmatically follow suit, it would only strengthen the hand of those who believe the United Nations should be put out to pasture, rather than reinvigorated at a time when the norms of international conduct it is meant to uphold are sorely being tested.
mahirali2@netscape.net.