More sanctions on Iran?

ONCE again President George Bush, along with the European Union, has issued a stern warning to the Iranians to freeze their nuclear programme or else face the consequences in the form of harsh sanctions. In a joint communiqué earlier this week, the EU and the US said they would cooperate “to ensure Iranian banks cannot abuse the international banking system to support proliferation and terrorism”. Later, Mr Bush, who is nearing the end of his European farewell tour, did not rule out military force, saying that “all options are on the table”. Clearly, the US is not about to give up its uncompromising stance on Iran, even though three sets of UN sanctions have done little to cripple the oil-rich country. With Security Council members China and Russia, which have economic interests in Iran, opposed to a stronger punitive course, the US has no option but to reinforce its influence in other forums for tougher measures.

However, Iran has shown no signs of apprehension over the US-EU stance, or that of Israel where a senior minister recently said that his country would attack Iran if it continued with its nuclear programme. Even before the latest threat of sanctions, Iran — which is due to be offered a new set of incentives by the EU foreign policy chief for halting uranium enrichment — had begun withdrawing its bank assets from Europe. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a speech just before Mr Bush’s indirect threat of military intervention and in total conformity with his past statements, called Mr Bush ‘wicked’. He assured Iranians that America would not be able to harm ‘even one centimetre’ of their homeland. Similarly, Israel, which has routinely been warned of annihilation, was told by the Iranian defence minister that it would receive a ‘painful’ response to any negative move.

It is apparent that years of animosity and the lack of trust that exists between Iran and the western world will not be forgotten unless there is a sincere effort by both sides to bridge their differences. For its part, Iran will have to show that its nuclear programme is peaceful, even if this means delaying the upgradation of its assets. It must also give the International Atomic Energy Agency unfettered access to its nuclear facilities. Here its record has been far from satisfactory, and the IAEA, in a recent report, has failed to certify that Iran is pursuing a strictly civilian nuclear programme. The US, too, has to be blamed for its inflexible attitude and its vengeful interest in seeing Iran being brought to its knees. With the Iranian star rising in the region, a spirit of greater accommodation might also be advisable for reasons of realpolitik. Iran must be made to feel a useful member of the world community before its perceived nuclear ambitions can be tamed.

Why children shouldn’t work

WORLD Day against Child Labour passed by relatively quietly in Islamabad this week, overshadowed by the presentation of the federal budget the day before and the culmination of the lawyers’ long march in the capital the day after. However, a couple of non-governmental organisations concerned with child welfare managed to remind us of the grim fact that over 10 million children below the age of 14 in Pakistan are working, often in hazardous conditions, to support their families when they are supposed to be in school. Article 11-3 of Pakistan’s constitution prohibits employment of children below the age of 14 in any factory, mine or other ‘hazardous’ employment. The Employment of Children’s Act 1991 prohibits child labour in certain occupations, and the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1992 made bonded labour illegal. Furthermore in 2001, a National Policy and Plan of Action for the Abolition of Bonded Labour and Rehabilitation of Freed Bonded Labourers was announced. But despite all these national initiatives against child labour, plus our signing and ratification of international instruments like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 and the ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour in 2001, child labour remains a persistently pervasive problem.

This has been attributed not only to ineffective enforcement of child labour laws but to the general acceptance in society of this practice, justified in the name of poverty. An effective strategy towards reducing if not ending child labour must necessarily take a multifaceted approach. This includes the simultaneous implementation of an anti-poverty plan that compensates poor families for lost income from working children. Moreover, simply making schooling mandatory is unlikely to reduce the number of working children unless the education system is made attractive and relevant to the needs and aspirations of these children and their families. Finally, our child labour law also leaves much to be desired, mainly because the three major sectors in which child labourers are mostly employed — agriculture, domestic work and self-employment — are excluded from its purview. This needs to be gradually corrected while the minimum age of employment ought also to be raised from the current 14 years to at least 16 years, although the international standard is 18. If poverty is a major cause of child labour, impoverishment is also caused by child labour. Neither can we eradicate poverty by child labour, nor can any family be able to rid itself of destitution through child labour.

Lahore’s pollution curse

POLLUTION is the bane of urban living. The environment, before it became urban, never knew the noxious fumes that pervade it now — something true of any city in our part of the world as it is of Lahore. With a population increasing much faster than the national average, the Punjab capital is expanding economically, demographically as well as geographically. So the report that the city is experiencing its highest ever levels of pollution should be expected, if not accepted as a fait accompli. Measurements by Punjab’s Environment Protection Agency show that Lahore’s atmosphere is full of toxic pollutants such as ozone, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. At one of the agency’s two measuring stations, ozone stood at a level 25 per cent higher than what the World Health Organisation (WHO) deems acceptable. Other readings were even more frightening: the presence of sulphur dioxide was recorded at about three times the level permitted by WHO and nitrous oxides at more than four times the acceptable level.

The agency blames this dangerously high level of pollution mainly on traffic and hot and sunny weather and recommends an efficient public transport system for the city to reduce traffic on roads and consequently pull down the emission of pollutants. Environment officials also say that old, rickety and smoke-spewing vehicles should be taken off the roads without wasting any more time and new vehicles should be produced in compliance with minimum emission standards. Opinions can’t differ much on the benign environmental impact of a public transport system. But it needs busloads of money that Lahore does not have and management expertise that is unheard of in the public sector. Also, a public transport system cannot materialise overnight. The best short-term solution, therefore, is to implement strict emission rules on existing and new vehicles — not allowing anything that runs on wheels to ply without a credible fitness certificate. It does not need big money either: only administrative firmness will do. With political resolve behind it, the measure may make the city’s atmosphere a little less baneful.

Saying farewell to Mr Bush

IT’S been a long goodbye, complete with ceremonial smiles and handshakes, long speeches and even longer communiqués hailing transatlantic friendship.

But as he toured across key European states last week for a last hurrah, it was clear: European Union (EU) leaders are waiting impatiently for the end-year departure of President George W. Bush and the election of a new US leader who can implement fresh policies on issues as diverse as Iran, Iraq and the Middle East, climate change and the Doha round of talks on global trade liberalisation.

While Senator Barack Obama is the undisputed favourite among ordinary Europeans, EU policymakers are still undecided on whether they prefer the young and charismatic Democrat presidential hopeful or his Republican rival John McCain.

But although they may disagree on the merits of the two candidates, there is almost universal agreement among EU policy pundits that the next occupant of the White House will inevitably be a better president — and world leader — than the discredited Mr. Bush.

Europe’s relief at the end of the Bush era is not difficult to explain. The last eight years have been especially difficult for the transatlantic relationship, with America and Europe often at loggerheads on an array of vitally important global questions.

The US-led war on Iraq, vociferously opposed by Germany and France but endorsed by Britain, Italy and Spain, created a deep rift not only in EU-US relations but also triggered difficult-to-heal divisions among EU states.

While many EU countries have sent troops to Iraq, officials in Brussels and other EU capitals remain concerned at continuing instability in the country, fearing that the US presence in Iraq is fuelling the rise of religious extremism in many parts of the Muslim world.

EU policymakers are dismayed at Washington’s failure to deliver on efforts to end Middle East violence and fear that American policies in Afghanistan are further aggravating an already messy and increasingly bloody conflict in the country.

While worried about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, EU governments are uneasy about President Bush’s anti-Tehran rhetoric and insist that there can be no military option to end the crisis. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana will in fact be in Iran on June 14 -15 to urge a resumption of negotiations on nuclear issues.

Europeans are also rattled by Mr. Bush’s demand at a Nato summit in Bucharest in April for Ukraine and Georgia to be put immediately on the path to membership. Many EU governments fear this will needlessly anger Russia which opposes Nato entry for the two states.

Although both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are much more pro-American than their predecessors, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, their attention is increasingly focused on the man who will succeed Mr. Bush in January 2009.

There are strong hopes the next US president will end years of ‘cowboy diplomacy’ and formulate a more nuanced, mature, reasoned and reasonable view of the world.

Obama, who would be the first black US president, seems the favourite among Europeans. A recent poll in London’s Daily Telegraph showed him with 52 per cent support across five major countries, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia, while McCain received only 15 per cent.

Many Europeans admire Obama’s stated willingness to talk to Iran and other US foes largely shunned by Mr. Bush and also like his promise to wind down US military involvement in Iraq. Obama and McCain both win high marks in Europe for calling for the closing of the Guantanamo military prison where terrorism suspects are held.

Obama and McCain are also both dedicated to the need for American leadership on climate change. They have each accepted some form of limiting greenhouse gas emissions through a cap-and-trade system similar to what Europe has adopted. In addition, the next US Congress will almost certainly pass new legislation requiring greater fuel efficiency — something that the Europeans, through high gasoline taxes, accepted long ago.

Both also realise that the US needs to demonstrate renewed leadership among Western democracies in building a more productive and more equitable partnership with an increasingly assertive and oil-rich Russia.

McCain, however, has aroused criticism in many EU capitals by advocating the creation of a so-called ‘League of Democracies’ that many Europeans fear could cast a fatal blow to the United Nations and also create problems in relations with China and Russia who would be outside the club.

Europeans are especially uneasy at the Republican candidate’s call to punish Russia’s authoritarian tendencies under Vladimir Putin by expelling it from the Group of 8 industrial democracies.

Still, McCain has also won applause in European capitals with his call for a new round of negotiations that could lead to dramatic cuts in US and Russian nuclear arsenals. Europeans are hoping a new strategic arms reduction deal could also help fortify the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Obama, meanwhile, has raised some concerns by saying he would seek to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, covering Canada and Mexico as well as the US, in order to introduce tougher labour standards. Europeans fear that Obama will be similarly restrictive on global trade issues.

Fears of a resurgence of protectionism in the US if Obama becomes president have in fact prompted the EU — and other members of the World Trade Organisation — to try and clinch a long-elusive Doha trade deal by end-July.

Even as they say farewell to Mr. Bush, therefore, EU leaders will be looking ahead to the next US presidential visit — when President Obama or President McCain — will come to Strasbourg in April 2009 to celebrate Nato’s 60th anniversary summit and, hopefully, inject new vitality and warmth into transatlantic relations.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.

Marianne’s latest blues!

MANY western nations have an animal figure on their coat of arms to symbolize what they consider the primeval values of their culture and their history. While a number of Eastern European countries still use the old Byzantine empire escutcheon of a double-headed eagle, Great Britain goes for a lion and a unicorn to express its might and savvy.

President Theodore Roosevelt was never too happy with the bald eagle being the emblem of all that the United States stands for and had wanted the mighty American grizzly to replace the angry-looking bird as the US icon. But Roosevelt did not succeed any further than lending his own first-name diminutive to the grizzly’s toy replica — the Teddy bear!

The French, because they are French, pride themselves for the singular distinction of having a bare-topped lady as their national symbol. She is called Marianne and her bust can be found in town halls through the length and breadth of France. She nevertheless wears a Phrygian bonnet with the words Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité inscribed on the bottom — of the pedestal that is!

In our own times, while the rest of the statuette below the neck has remained pretty much unchanged, Marianne’s face has successively borne the likenesses of many a well-known French beauty, such as Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve and, currently, former TV star Evelyne Thomas. According to a recent poll by a Parisian weekly magazine a great number of the French go for Carla Sarkozy, the President’s pretty wife, as a suitable candidate for the next Marianne incarnation.

This year, as the French are reminiscing over what had happened on their capital’s streets forty years ago and are re-evaluating the probity of lessons learnt from the cultural revolution, Marianne suddenly finds herself in trouble. Behind her blues is the verdict by a judge in the northern city of Lille granting the annulment of marriage to a man who found out on his wedding night that his bride was not as much of a virgin as she had claimed to be.

“One would have thought that question was settled four decades ago!” says Fabienne Demongeot, a Parisian journalist who works for the France television network. As an angry young woman in May 1968, she hadn’t chickened out while prying loose a cobblestone or two with her own bare hands in a Latin Quarter street to hurl them at the advancing police vans. “All this boils down now to worrying about whether Marianne herself hasn’t lost her virginity!” Fabienne despairs.

But Fabienne is not alone in her despondency. Both Fadela Amara, the French minister for suburbs, and Valérie Létard, the minister for women’s affairs, called the ruling, in turns, “a decree against the emancipation of women” and “a regression of the status of women”. On the other hand, to Alexis Brézet, the editorialist for Le Figaro magazine, “it is as if a shopper was not happy with the article he bought at the supermarket and sent it back complaining that the merchandise was defective.”

But, more significantly, the French are today divided into two distinct camps after law minister Rachida Dati initially defended the verdict. A daughter of North African immigrants, the minister herself has a history of an annulled marriage, though it has nothing to do with virginity or the absence of it.

The Lille affair came to public attention only recently, but the French are far from taking as a joke the judgement which was actually made on the first of April. The court based its verdict on the notion of “breach of contract” between the plaintiff and his bride who was presented to him as “single and chaste”.

To quote from the ruling: “Married life began with a lie which was in contradiction with the reciprocal confidence between the two parties.”

Actually the judge had based the verdict on Article 180 of the French Civil Code that allows a marriage to be declared null and void on account of “error about a person or about the essential qualities of a person.”

Maître Roland Davos, a Parisian lawyer who specialises in marriage and divorce cases, says contrary to the otherwise perfectly understandable feminist outrage, the application by the judge of Article 180 should not be construed as a 180-degree turn by the French judicial system itself. He says in the past two centuries that the legal provision has been applied in court cases; there have been many precedents of marriages being annulled on the grounds of the bridegroom’s impotence, of hiding a previous marriage by either of the parties, or of a past linked to prostitution in the case of a bride.

During a noisy parliamentary session the law minister reminded her critics that following the Lille verdict the annulment was accepted by the bride and the bridegroom both. She warned at the same time: “Tomorrow, we may have more such cases, perhaps even without the agreement of one or both the partners.” She insisted that the ruling needed to be re-examined in a higher court so that there remains no ambiguity in the application of the law. She has the full backing of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon on his part says he would like to take the case to France's highest court of appeal if necessary to prevent creating a legal precedent for annulling a marriage on the grounds of virginity alone.

But then, the detractors of Article 180 would like the legal text itself to be readapted to modern-day realities according to which, they say, neither divorce nor absence of virginity can be stigmatised any longer.

If the term ‘modern-day realities’ signifies fast-changing social mores, it can also betoken scientific progress. According to an Italian newspaper report, hymenoplasty, an operation that serves to restore virginity, is increasingly in vogue among the immigrant females in Europe who fear they may face a situation akin to the bride’s in the Lille case.

Cheer up, Marianne, there is still hope!

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.

OTHER VOICES – Bangladesh Press

Little vision in new budget

IT was a second budget for as many fiscal years of the caretaker government: an outlay of Tk 99,992 crores with a huge deficit. Many risks abound and analysts questioned the implementation of the proposed budget. Finance and Planning Adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam who rolled out the new budget on June 9 set a target to cut double-digit inflation to a tolerable point. For government employees and pensioners, the government has announced a 20 per cent ‘dearness allowance’ to help them match rising inflation.

The budget set aside Tk2,000 crores for rural jobs as part of the social safety net in a project meant for 20 lakh people…. The social safety net widened to a large swathe of the poor population, but there is no clear initiative in the budget to help the rural poor to tide through the rest of the year. The budget arrived amid soaring prices of food and other essential commodities and in the aftermath of natural disasters with tropical cyclone Sidr being the latest.

The government’s flawed policy has pushed…people under the poverty line and the finance adviser seems to be unaware of it. The budget did not mention the multitudes that are educated but unemployed nor was it indicative of any efforts being made to provide them with employment.

A political government aligns the budget towards popular sentiments, keeping the elections in mind. Winning votes remains the only target. Any election-year budget designed by the political government addresses the immediate need — a sure victory in the polls — and loses vision for future development.

There is no reason for the caretaker government to do so. But it seems that the budget proposed for fiscal year 2008-09 is aimed at pleasing a large number of people simultaneously. The scope for economic development and further long-term investments is missing. The government slashed the annual development programme, apparently because of the deceleration in the implementation of the projects in the outgoing fiscal year. It was in all probability unnecessary. In the wake of price spirals in the international market, the government should not have chased people’s trivial satisfactions. It should have focused more on development spending and infrastructure development.

In the revenue budget, loan-interest financing received the largest allocation — more than 13 per cent. But the budget for education in fiscal 2008-09 came down to Tk12,258 crores from Tk12,370 crores in the outgoing fiscal year, which shows signs of the fading emphasis on the sector.

We have always alerted the government about the setbacks. A budget with a deficit of Tk30,580 crores is not a good idea. Huge bank borrowings are expected to finance the shortfalls. The government has to borrow from local banks as options to take loans from foreign banks are limited. Hefty borrowings from local banks will narrow the scope for private investors to obtain loans, meaning investment will slowdown in the days to come.

Slowing investment means a dearth of new jobs and the unemployment rate will increase. Worse to come: shadows of political uncertainty are looming on the horizon. — (June12)
Naya Diganta

— Selected and translated by Arun Devnath