Of sheep and men

By KOïCHIRO MATSUURA

Humanity is shaped by education, science and culture, not by cloning. Dolly is dead. The most famous sheep in the world, also the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, was put down in February of this year. This happened shortly after the birth of a cloned baby was announced to the public, though never verified. Dolly’s death created less of a sensation than her birth. However, even if the exact causes of this death have yet to be ascertained, it clearly raises the question of the long-term effects of cloning on the cloned organism. And in a way it grants human beings some respite. The codes governing medical research forbid the experimentation on human beings of a process whose safety and efficiency have not yet been proved through animal testing. But what will be the outcome when the technical barrier has been lifted, and when the argument of sanitary precaution no longer applies? Before it even materializes, the perspective of human cloning confronts us and our social awareness with a major ethical, cultural, and political challenge. The organisation of which I am the Director-General, at the time of the tenth anniversary of the International Bioethics Committee (ICB) of UNESCO, will continue to take an active role in debates and initiatives concerning this question.

The complexity of the issue cannot be dismissed. As far as bioethics, and cloning in particular, are concerned, we need to make sure that the fears and fictions of fantasy do not interfere with relevant questions. Human cloning, in the present day, refers to two technical procedures which differ both in purpose and in practice. The aim of therapeutic cloning is not to arrive at the birth of an individual, but to retrieve stem cells from an embryo created by cell nuclear replacement. It is generally understood that the use of these stem cells could transform regenerative medicine. Then why hesitate? What we have at stake is the status of the embryo, and around this question hopes and reservations cluster and clash. Are we running the risk of turning human embryos into the supermarket stalls of future organ sales? Is it legitimate to create embryos whose development will never be brought to completion? And who will provide the countless ovules required by these manipulations? Would this not lead to a new form of commodification of the female body – particularly in the case of poorer women? These questions can only be solved through the creation of a strict legal framework for human embryo research, and in order to reach that point there is still a need for further debate.

The aim of reproductive cloning, on the other hand, is to enable the birth of a child who would be a chromosomic replica of another individual. But cloning an organism is not the same as copying a person. There is evidence of this in the mechanisms of natural sexual reproduction. Real twins, for instance, are unmistakeably different individuals, but still, they are more similar to each other than two clones would be. Those who associate cloning with the realization of age-old myths of immortality or resurrection, in an impossible search for copies of themselves or of others, are using representations of genetics which are both mistaken and dangerous. Once we are rid of the illusion of an all-encompassing genome, what is left us? Human clones would certainly not be monsters; they could, however, reject the normative project that commanded their birth. This is why we must investigate further upstream, and examine the motives which are behind such a project, and the underlying vision of the human race and of society. This type of manipulation would consider clones as carriers for a particular genome, chosen for its specific qualities. It would not be difficult to imagine the disastrous psychological and social consequences of such a form of eugenics.

Nature provides each individual with a unique genetic identity, the result of the interplay of fortune and necessity. Giving up this natural wealth could eventually lead us as far as an artificial genetic divide between humans with original genomes and humans with cloned ones. Doesn’t humanity already suffer from enough forms of discrimination? The idea of human cloning, at its best, rests on a series of misunderstandings and fantasies; at its worst, it hinges on the desire to utilize genetics for purposes that are decidedly questionable - whether they be commercial, ideological, or practical. The idea of a ban on human cloning is therefore justified on all levels, medical, legal and moral. This ban, first recommended in the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights adopted by UNESCO in 1997, and then endorsed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1998, is irrevocable.

In examining the stakes of bioethics we find ourselves confronted with a question that reaches deep into the cultural, philosophical and spiritual groundings of different human communities. Reconciling the respect of this cultural diversity with a pragmatic approach towards scientific progress is a preliminary condition for any joint research in the area of bioethics. This is the spirit in which we are currently working on a declaration on genetic data, since the use of such data - if not properly managed - could give rise to new forms of discrimination, and even terrifying denials of human rights. We are also asked - yet another challenge! - to devise a universal working tool for bioethics. This confirms that UNESCO can be the appropriate forum for cultures, worldviews, and religious beliefs to interact and reach an agreement on an ethical framework which may serve as a common point of reference.

Humans cannot be made to order, be it an ideal genetic order. UNESCO has acknowledged the importance of a challenge that reaches further than any national frame of reference and requires an active involvement on the part of scientific, political and economic players. It was the first intergovernmental organisation to propose a consistent programme addressing these questions - with the creation of the IBC, followed a year later by that of the Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee. Ethics of science and technology is effectively one of the priorities of UNESCO, which is currently reinforcing its watch function and its foresight activity. One outcome of this is the choice of focus for the next session of the 21st Century Talks, which will be organised in Paris on the 10th of September 2003: the difficult and urgent question "Should human cloning be banned?". In the case of human cloning, for the first time, ethical reflection will have a chance to precede and guide technological development, providing there is a will to do so.

Man is not just any mammal. Animals can be reproduced through cloning. But humans are shaped by education, science and culture. Not by cloning.

(The writer is Director- General of UNESCO)

New York goes back to batteries

By MARUEEN DOWD

Icouldn’t help but flash on the 1950’s sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still," watching New York and other cities plunged into sweaty darkness when the 1950’s equipment on the power grid gave out. That’s the movie where Michael Rennie, as the superior alien, and his silver robot, Gort, land their spaceship on the Washington Mall. Rennie ends up shutting down electricity on earth - suspending elevators mid-skyscraper, turning off the TV mid-show - to get skeptical earthlings to listen to his message. Stop fighting among yourselves or we’ll destroy your puny little planet.

New York took on a retro tone Thursday, gamely going back to batteries, relying on ice blocks to cool food and transistor radios to hear news. TV reporters offered New Yorkers tips. Be careful that your candles don’t tip over. But unplugged Gothamites, busy using cigarette lighters to find their way out of subways, had no TVs on which to hear the tips - except the paranoid rich, who partied in Westchester with backup generators. Once, private jets were chic; now you must have private juice. Residents of Iraq and India, interviewed on television, seemed shocked to learn that the most technologically advanced nation had an electrical support system so rickety that it is "third world," as Bill Richardson put it.

Thursday reminded us of the tenuousness of our romance with technology; we spend our days using a thicket of high-tech equipment without a clue about how it actually works or what to do when it doesn’t. We have BlackBerrys that are also telephones and Palm Pilots that are also cameras and cell phones that also send text-message mash notes. We take it on faith that the power will come on when we switch on computers to send e-mail around the world instantaneously from our air-conditioned, well-lit, cable-TV-equipped, key-coded, ATM-financed worlds, without ever knowing that our power might be originating in Canada - eh? - or looping eerily around Lake Erie. .It was disturbing that the experts were having so much trouble figuring out what happened, resorting to mumbo jumbo about "forensic analyses" and "cascading outages" while lapsing into border bashing about which country’s lightning or power surges were to blame. Holy Enron! Who knew, until 21 plants shut down in three minutes, that they worked on the discredited domino theory? Who knew our grid was more stressed than we are?

When the blackout began, President George W Bush said he thought the grid needed to be modernized, "and have said so all along." The White House and Congress have been warned repeatedly by engineers that the tattered links needed to be fixed fast. But all Dick Cheney’s secret meetings with unnamed energy officials were, sadly, not about saving us from this day. The White House has been too busy ensuring that Halliburton has no competitors for rebuilding Iraq to worry about rebuilding our own threadbare grid. .Washington is a welter of blame. Democrats fingered the Republicans for catering to the oil industry; Republicans fingered the Democrats for being cowed by the environmentalists. The only illumination in the blackout was this: Pols have been holding the energy bill hostage to their special interests. Just when we’re feeling vulnerable to terrorists we learn we’re also vulnerable to the very system meant to protect us. This has got to be giving terrorists ideas as they watch from their caves. Osama may be plotting on his laptop right now, tapping into the cascading effect of an army of new terrorists signing up every time we kill or arrest a terrorist.

International Herald Tribune
Rebuilding Iraq, athlete by athlete

By ROBERT F WORTH

hen Ahmed al-Samarrai returned to the sports club where he once coached the Iraqi national basketball team, he did not recognize it.

The gym had been demolished. The grass on the soccer field was uncut, and some of the sandstone buildings were starting to crumble. That was the least of it. Virtually every athlete at the club has physical or mental scars inflicted by deposed President Saddam Hussein’s older son, Uday, who took control of Iraq’s Olympic Committee in 1984 and began a terrifying campaign of torture and humiliation. Many fled the country, including Samarrai. ."The fields you can rebuild and change," Samarrai said as he gazed out at the grounds of the club, known as Al Karkh. "But with human beings it’s a different matter."

A heavy-set man with large dark eyes and an air of quiet gravity, Samarrai now has the assignment of restoring both fields and athletes as chairman of the Interim Iraqi Committee to Administer Sports, which was created by American occupation officials in April. The committee has already cleared out all of Iraq’s sports clubs, from neighborhood teams to the Olympic committee, and begun replacing them with democratically elected groups. "The system of the regime started in primary school," said Samarrai, who defected on a trip to Switzerland in 1983 and returned here after the war. "It was exactly like the Nazis in the ‘30’s."

Uday, killed last month in a firefight with US troops, was atop the system, though largely independent of it. By many accounts, he transformed the Olympic Committee into a front for extortion and shady business deals. ."Uday played hell with sports," said Immanuel Baba Dano, who was coach of the national soccer team for most of the past three decades. Dano, who is 68 and known throughout the country as Amu Baba, worked closely with Uday for many years, but not by choice.

Some athletes were humiliated, he said. Others were smeared with feces and jailed. Some were placed in a sarcophagus with nails pointed inward so that they would be punctured and suffocated, he said. At least a few were set in front of wild dogs to be torn to pieces. How many were executed is still not clear. "Nobody knew what was in his mind," Dano said. "But there was no pity."

When the Americans arrived in April, they quickly identified sports as an important element in reconstruction - one of few unifying forces in a country fiercely divided by region and religion. Donald Eberly, the American official in charge of the effort, created the 26-member committee of Iraqi coaches and other sports figures that would carry out the changes, and Samarrai was elected chairman.

Since April, Eberly and his committee have imported more than 80,000 soccer balls, distributing most to youth clubs and children. They have supervised more than 200 elections in athletic organizations, removing those close to Saddam’s government and making sure to set aside positions for women. By September, they hope to have a national assembly capable of electing an Olympic committee, in accordance with Olympic bylaws. They are also documenting Uday’s abuses of athletes. But as in every part of the reconstruction effort here, some Iraqis resent the Americans’ reliance on dissidents like Samarrai, who escaped abroad while others stayed and suffered.

Some also say the Americans have left too many members of the old leadership in place. "I am back to sports, but nothing has changed," said Hayder Abed al-Jabarah, a former national swimming champion who was banned from the sport and jailed for almost a decade after he accidentally offended Uday. "The head of the swimmers’ union is the same man who has been there since 1982. And the same people are benefiting."

As for Dano, he said he believed that Eberly and his committee were well intentioned and had done some good. But they are moving far too slowly, he said. The country’s soccer fields are still in terrible condition, and young people need an outlet. ."They want only fields and balls, to play, to forget their problems," Dano said. "But if you don’t help them, they have nothing else, they will want to fight and kill Americans."

The New York Times
Coconut juice will do

By DR SABIN RANABHAT

Iopened the refrigerator to find two litres of the disgraced fizz in the rack. I could see through the veil of glamour and glitter of advertisement the deadly solution of pesticides inside them. I disposed the liquid in my garden, as pesticides are salubrious to the growth of vegetation. Furthermore, following in the footsteps of the Indian Parliament Canteen, I have deleted Cola drinks from my menu.

Bottled water doesn’t fare any better. Brands are numerous. But underlying problem with most brands is the same: bacteriological and mineral contents are above safe limits. Ironically, most have secured the mark of quality from the department concerned, although its mechanism of monitoring quality is dubious in itself. It may be the first time that we are learning something good from our neighbour big brother. Our quality control department has started testing Cola drinks after they were found to contain lethal pesticides in India but when they will get ‘inspiration’ to check bottled water is anybody’s guess.

Doctors say 80 percent of the diseases in developing countries are waterborne. They can be prevented simply by boiling water. Thus, I carry a bottle of boiled water in my already crammed bag. As an office-goer on a two-wheeler, I have my bag stuffed with raincoat and a pair of slippers among other things. Although rational, the obsession against not boiled water has caused me considerable inconvenience every day. During a hot day, excessive sweating makes me thirsty. My small bottle of water gets empty in one gulp. To quench the thirst, I have no alternatives left. I can’t carry a stove everywhere to boil water. Nor it is possible to carry water that lasts a whole day. In a party, I make it sure not to drink water at all. If beer is available, that is okay, as I have heard alcohol kills bacteria. Nonetheless, beer can contain unduly high level of arsenic and other minerals. Such things haunt me wherever I go. On one Saturday, I went to a relative’s house on invitation. They served me a glass of Cola, which I couldn’t drink for obvious reasons. It may seem rude to be choosy in someone else’s home, but then, I have the courage to break the convention for the sake of good health. I asked for plain fully boiled water. Later, at dinner, I avoided eating the salad of uncooked vegetables. Understandably, they have not invited me again.

Water is the lifeblood of life. The importance of safe and wholesome water for good health can’t be overemphasized. In 1980, the United Nations General assembly launched the International drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, 1981-1990; its aim was to provide all people with adequate supplies of safe water and sanitation by 1990. This now appears as a great joke. I don’t see any possibility of safe water for all Nepalis even in the next century. The United Nations had better not set any deadline in this century or it will have to be embarrassed.

At present one big worry is gnawing me: I am going to Bhairahawa for a health camp. Availability of safe water has become the main concern. I don’t have faith in bottled water, Cola drinks and badly maintained water purifiers, and the boiling process can’t bring high mineral contents down. In our Terai region, underground water is in use due to lack of other options. Studies have shown that it contains high arsenic levels. And pesticides used in the crop fields must have permeated to underground water sources like in India. Only one option seems to be there: I will drink water straight from coconut shell.

Maoists’anti-revisionism

AMEET DHAKAL

"My main thrust is that I hate revisionism. I seriously hate revisionism, and I never
compromise with revisionism. I fought and fought with revisionism, and the party’s correct line is based on the process of fighting revisionism. I hate revisionism; I seriously hate revisionism."

(Maoist’s Supreme Commander Prachanda in an interview with the Revolutionary Worker, February 2000.)

In legal as well as psychological discourse, consistency in the choice of any word is taken seriously as coming from the person’s belief or his/her perception of truth. Thus, when Prachanda used the word revisionism eight times in a paragraph, he meant it. Throughout his political career, Prachanda has believed in a revolutionary overthrow of a capitalist government. Krishna Bahadur Mahara, Maoist Politburo member, once told this columnist that he became a Maoist communist after being impressed with Prachand’s interpretation that ‘revisionism and compromise failed the communist revolution in Nepal."

Prachanda, surely, has made small compromises but has, so far, stood firm in his conviction that only revolution can undo the injustice of Nepali society.

His latest assertion that the present peace talks should be construed as failure unless the government revised its political agenda should be seen in this context. Additionally, the Maoists’ adamant stance on the ongoing peace process should be taken seriously and not just as their bargaining posture.

Revolution, for the Maoists, is not a strategic choice but something unavoidable. It is based on a deep, though erroneous, Marxist-Maoist belief that societal progress and prosperity is possible only through radical detachment of the present and future from the past. It is because of this belief that the Maoist thought process is highly romanticized with the fantasy of creating a rupture, separating the present from the past. This belief in radicalism makes the Maoists die-hard anti-evolutionists. Prachand himself once said, "We condemn all the revisionist cliques as vulgar evolutionarists. We are revolutionary, and revolution means breaking with the continuation and making leaps."

Despite the Maoists’ lip-service to the ongoing peace process, this underscores the
difficulty in striking a compromise through peaceful negotiations.

The Maoists are "negotiating" with the government appointed by the King, yet they are repeatedly urging the King, even from the negotiating venue, to abdicate.

There is no dearth of people who believe that the Maoists would eventually (or have already) compromise with the King. The issue of abolishing monarchy is, however, central to the Maoist struggle since they see it as the relic of the past obstructing social progress, prosperity and justice. Monarchy, in their eyes, is the central institution that gives continuity to the past, and radical detachment from it is possible only by establishing a republic. Therefore, accepting the reformed monarchy, whatever it means, would be only a "vulgar evolutionism," and that would be possible only through revisionism that Prachanda, according to his own assertions, has hated all his life.

The Maoists are, however, wrong to believe that monarchy is necessarily an obstacle to progress, prosperity and social justice. If it limits itself within a constitutional boundary, monarchy and prosperity can coexist as is amplified England, Japan, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, to name some of the most advanced countries of the 21st century.

"Feudal" monarchy of Nepal is not comparable with the constitutional and liberal monarchies of the developed countries, some argue. May be yes. But, history is a witness to the fact that progressive democracy can, in due course of time, pacify ambitious monarchs and show them their limits. In our society too, with around 235 years of Monarchist history and a very short democratic past, the tensions between monarchists (read: those who favour the King’s rule) and democrats is normal.

The Maoists are also wrong in believing that progress is impossible through social evolution and a rupture between the present and the past is needed to effect radical social change. If the past world experience is any guide, the course of a sustainable social change is necessarily evolutionary. Any attempt to radically change the society overnight, especially with the use of force, will only backfire in the long-run. Former Soviet Union, Cambodia and Vietnam are but few examples.

The Maoists may also continue to live with the fantasy of creating a rupture, but they lack any success story to emulate. They say, they have learnt previous lessons from the failed Maoist guerrilla warfare in Peru, the Philippines, Turkey, Iran and Sri Lanka but they don’t have a single success-example. The post-World War II period is so much littered with failed Maoists revolutions, our comrades, in reading the history have perhaps subconsciously developed defeatist mentality.

The state of insurgency

PURAN P BISTA

T he Naga National Council (NNC), a separatist organisation of India’s Nagaland state, signed the ‘Shillong Accord’ with Delhi in the mid-1970s. However, Isak Chisi Swu, Thuingaleng Muivah and S S Khaplang within the Naga outfit opposed the accord and formed the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) only to breed ‘insurgency’ in northeast India later.

NSCN trained the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of Manipur before breeding the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), a new outfit that has wrecked Assam state since the early 1980s. China had been supporting NSCN until Atal Behari Vajpayee paid a visit to Beijing. Vajpayee was then foreign minister of Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s Janata government. Besides China, the US and former East Pakistan were the major providers of arms, finance and intelligence to both NSCN and PLA.

Naturally, Delhi had signed a military pact with Moscow. Arming Indian separatist groups was not any big deal. For any foreign power, it was also a measure to contain Delhi, if not to disintegrate India then. Perhaps, Indira Gandhi must have learnt a lesson of containing a growing neighbour before she extended her support to the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, still fighting for a separate homeland. Stephen P Cohen says "Indira’s policy was ‘assertive’ and still a section of Indian foreign policy experts believe in her".

Bishewor, who led the PLA outfit of Manipur for almost a decade, entered China via Nepal in order to seek China’s support. China armed PLA and extended its support until Vajpayee’s visit. Manipur had never witnessed any violence except sporadic incidents in Naga-dominated Manipur. The problem bred by insurgency, in an otherwise peaceful state that was making an economic stride, multiplied in no time.

Manipur has a large number of Nepalese population, especially those migrated from Taplejung and its peripheral districts. The Nepali settlement began soon after the 1950 Peace and Friendship Treaty between Nepal and India, though it had sheltered a few Nepali families before the World War-I. Five percent of the state’s total population is composed of the people of Nepali origin.

However, things changed after 1980 when Bishewor’s PLA cadres unleashed ‘terror’ similar to that of the Maoists. Incidents of brutal killings and subsequent strikes became a regular feature. The Nepalese, who were in minority, became victims of PLA’s atrocities. Of course, PLA did not spare the native Maities either. But the migrant Nepalese felt more victimized when they saw themselves being sandwiched between the army and the insurgents. The army sought information from the local Nepalese on the movement of insurgents, and the latter began shooting down those who leaked information to the former. The Nepalese, working in the Indian army, did not find it difficult to extract information from the local Nepalese populace. This led to the killing of several Nepalese.

Whatever the infrastructures the state had built over the decades were destroyed in less than one year. The insurgency not only reduced the state’s economy to ashes, but also crippled the state education sector, pushing the state back to where it was after India’s independence. The state has been still reeling under the insurgency. Bishewor was killed by his own cadre soon after he signed a peace agreement in 1985 with the state government. The 1980s was also a decade which Rajiv Gandhi signed a series of peace agreements with India’s several state insurgent groups. And Mizoram is the only state, which has become economically prosperous after the peace agreement. Besides, Mizoram is the only state in northeast India, which treats Nepali migrants as equally as native Mizos.

Currently, there are over a dozen extremist groups operating in Manipur state. They extort money, kill innocent people and cripple economic activity. The only objective of these separatist groups is to defy Delhi’s imperialism, as they say, rather than take initiative for the state development.

That a conflict-ridden country has returned to normalcy after decades of armed-struggle cannot be overemphasized here. The Maoists may agree to lay down arms and join the mainstream politics as they implicitly reiterate so. The lower rung of Maoist leaders may not agree to them if any peaceful agreement between the government and the Maoists is reached. It seems there are some factions within the Maoists. Such disgruntled groups, showing their ethnic colour, are likely to resume the armed-struggle only to create havoc, making unrealistic demands.

What I foresee in Nepal is a similar situation to that of northeast India that continues to claim human lives until today.

Nuclear threats

RALPH A COSSA

O n August 6, peace activists from around the world flocked to Hiroshima to remember those who died when the first atomic bomb was dropped there 58 years ago. More subdued ceremonies marked the anniversary of the second and, we all hope, last use of nuclear weapons in anger three days later in Nagasaki.

Sandwiched between these two dates was a "secret" conference in Omaha, Nebraska, where senior Defence Department officials reportedly met with nuclear weapons specialists to discuss ways of upgrading America’s ageing nuclear arsenal. The Pentagon’s timing of this event will reinforce the impression around the world of US callousness toward the views and feelings
of others.

Washington sees itself as a leading proponent of nuclear non-proliferation. Its current stand-off with North Korea is aimed primarily at stemming the development and potential use or export of weapons of mass destruction. Along with the international community in general, Washington demands that Pyongyang honour its commitment to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Yet Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima says that the treaty is "on the verge of collapse," and not because of North Korean actions. "The chief cause is US nuclear policy," he says. .Mayor Akiba described US policy as "openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear first strike." To my knowledge, the United States does not have, and has never professed to support a "pre-emptive nuclear first strike" strategy.

Nonetheless, this accusation has increasingly been accepted as fact. After all, the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy endorses a strategy of pre-emption against the use of weapons of mass destruction and the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review reportedly lays out contingencies under which nuclear weapons may be used. While neither talks about "first use," they don’t rule it out either. The latest "proof," as cited by Mayor Akiba, is the Bush administration’s "resumed research into mini-nukes and other so-called ‘useable nuclear weapons.’" He is referring to recent Congressional legislation approving research on the potential development of smaller nuclear weapons, reversing a 10-year ban on research into weapons with a yield of less than 5 kilotons.

Critics at home and abroad are quick to point out that such actions run contrary to the Bush administration’s professed counter-proliferation goals, since they emphasise rather than play down the potential future importance of nuclear weapons and thus could encourage others to also seek this edge. It’s no wonder, critics argue, that North Korea feels compelled to pursue its own nuclear deterrent in the face of this increased US nuclear threat.

International Herald Tribune
Idi Amin dies alone in exile

MICHAEL T KAUFMAN

Idi Amin, whose eight-year reign of terror in Uganda encompassed widescale killing, torture and dispossession of multitudes and left the country pauperised, died Saturday at a hospital in Jidda, Saudi Arabia. He was believed to be 80.

Amin died at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, where he had been on life-support systems since July 18, a hospital official said Saturday morning. He was in a coma and suffering from high blood pressure when he was admitted to the hospital. Later, hospital staff said, he suffered kidney failure. He was buried in Jidda’s Ruwais cemetery after sunset prayers Saturday.

For much of the 1970’s, the beefy, sadistic and telegenic despot had reveled in the spotlight of world attention as he flaunted his tyrannical powers, hurled outlandish insults at world leaders and staged pompous displays of majesty.

By contrast, his last 24 years were spent in enforced isolation as Saudi Arabian authorities made sure he maintained a low profile after he, his four wives and more than 30 children fled to their country just ahead of an invading force of Ugandan exiles and Tanzanian troops that overthrew his regime.

Amin, a convert to Islam, had first fled to Libya, then Iraq, before finding haven in Saudi Arabia in 1979. From time to time foreign visitors would see him shopping in supermarkets in Jidda.

By the time Amin had escaped with his life, the devastation he had wreaked lay fully exposed in the scarred ruins of Uganda, a rich and lush land that Winston Churchill once had called the pearl of Africa.

If the exact numbers of those killed at Amin’s behest remained elusive, the toll tabulated by exiles and international human rights groups is usually cited as close to 300,000 victims out of a total population of 12 million.

Those murdered were mostly anonymous people; farmers, students, clerks, and shopkeepers who were shot or forced to bludgeon each other to death. A special vocabulary of killing and torture was developed and used by Amin, according to his former associates who managed to escape. Giving "the VIP treatment" to someone meant to kill, as did the instruction, "Go with him to where he sleeps." "Giving tea" meant whipping and dismemberment.

Before the killings reached their peak, Amin had already attained an international reputation for impulsive and draconian rule because of his expulsion in 1972 of 40,000 Ugandan residents of Asian origin. These people, most of them third-generation descendants of workers brought by the British from the Indian subcontinent to build a railroad, had played a dominant role in the country’s commercial and industrial life. "If they do not leave they will find themselves sitting on the fire," Amin warned, setting a three-month deadline by which Britain was forced to accept the so-called Ugandan Asians. They fled and left behind businesses, homes and personal possessions that were then doled out to the president’s favorites.

As an awareness of spreading horror and suffering filtered out of Uganda, Amin began to address the criticism, choosing words that intentionally added insult to injury. He declared that Hitler had been right to kill 6 million Jews. Having previously called Julius Nyerere, the president of Tanzania, a coward, an old woman and a prostitute, Amin announced that he loved Nyerere and "would have married him if he had been a woman." He called President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia an "imperialist puppet and bootlicker," termed the former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger "a murderer and a spy," and said he expected Queen Elizabeth II to send him "her 25-year-old knickers" in celebration of the silver anniversary of her coronation. He forced white residents of Kampala to carry him on a throne and kneel before him as photographers captured the moment and sent these images around the world.

New York Timess
A poisonous pact

Kevin Watkins

W hen a man knows he is to be hung," Samuel Johnson famously observed, "it concentrates his mind wonderfully." With just over two weeks to go before the next phase of global trade talks, the prospect of the world’s trading system collapsing might have been expected to concentrate the minds of negotiators from the rich countries. Judging by a pact announced on last week, however, American and European political leaders relish nothing more than the prospect of a good hanging.

Pascal Lamy, the EU trade commissioner, and Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, announced that they had reached a bilateral agreement on agriculture to take to the World Trade Organization talks in Cancún, Mexico. But the accord backtracks on the promise that industrial countries made in Doha, Qatar, in 2001, when they signed up for the current round of trade talks, to change policies that hurt poor countries.

The US-European pact fails to eliminate export subsidies, waters down commitments to improve market access and would leave intact billions of dollars in direct payments to farmers. This is an attempt to tailor WTO rules to EU and US policy, not a serious proposal of reform. A more effective strategy for poisoning the negotiations at Cancún is difficult to imagine.

Failure at Cancún would be a disaster on two counts. First, the current WTO talks, dubbed the "development round," provide an opportunity to reform the unfair trade rules that disadvantage poor countries and perpetuate the obscene inequalities at the heart of globalisation. This is a chance for the rich world to show that it is capable of backing promises to tackle world poverty with practical action.

Second, a successful "development round" could reverse the dangerous trend toward regionalism, bilateralism and unrestrained power politics in world trade, creating the foundations for a renewal of international cooperation. Conversely, failure would signal the end of multilateralism in world trade, stripping the WTO of its already threadbare credibility.

Responsibility for the fate of the Cancún talks resides overwhelmingly in the national capitals of the rich world.

Take the case of agriculture. Each year, rich countries spend in excess of $1 billion a day on subsidies that generate vast surpluses, which are then dumped overseas. The support lavished on America’s cotton farmers and Europe’s sugar barons is pushing small farmers in Africa and elsewhere out of markets, driving down prices and fueling poverty.

At Doha, the European Union and the United States pledged to make deep cuts in production subsidies and to eliminate export subsidies. Since then, the Bush administration has signed a farm bill that massively increases agricultural subsidies. Not to be outdone, Europe has embraced a so-called reform of its lamentable common agricultural policy that raises spending and leaves its vast export subsidies intact.

To avoid a total collapse of the world’s trading system, rich countries need to show that they are serious about acting on commitments to eliminate tariff systems that discriminate against imports from developing countries. When India exports manufactured goods to industrial countries, for example, it faces tariffs some five times higher than those applied to goods traded between rich countries. According to the International Monetary Fund, eliminating trade restrictions on textiles and garments alone would generate an additional 27 million jobs in poor countries.

The flagrant hypocrisy of rich countries that preach free-market values while practicing subsidized agricultural dumping and protectionism reflects the entrenched power of vested interests. President George W Bush may talk the talk on free trade. But faced with a choice between lavishing subsidies on Texan cotton barons on the one side, and helping cotton farmers in Burkina Faso on the other, there is only one outcome. In Europe, President Jacques Chirac’s commitment to reducing poverty overseas appears to come a distant second to his commitment to maintaining the common agricultural policy.

The refusal of rich countries to listen to developing countries is deeply damaging to the credibility and legitimacy of the WTO. This is supposed to be a consensus-based, one member-one vote institution, not a rich men’s club in which the powerful cut secret deals and get their way through brute force.

A breakdown of the global rules-based trading system is not inevitable. The EU and the United States could commit themselves in advance to a prohibition on agricultural export dumping, a tariff bonfire, and the early despatch of demands for investment liberalization to the dustbin. They have a choice. We will all pay a high price if they make the wrong one.

(The writer is head of research at Oxfam.)
International Herald Tribune