SYNDICATION

SAARC Falling Prey to Bilateral Disputes

Viewpoint by Sugeeswara Senadhira*

COLOMBO (IDN) - The Indian way of sabotaging the fragile regional cooperation in order to express hostility towards a neighbour due to a bilateral issue is causing concern to the friends of South Asian regional cooperation.

India, not for the first time, ensured that the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit in Islamabad would become a non-event. In the early 1990s India took similar actions to sabotage Dhaka and Colombo SAARC Summits.

On those two occasions what New Delhi did was to get a dependable South Asian friend – Bhutan – to announce its inability to attend the Summit, thus leading to the cancellation of the event as the SAARC Charter is specific on consensus of all seven, now eight, Member States.

: IDN-INPS Asia Editor; OPINION; 19 October 2016

A special "Kasab class" is part of Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)'s training module for its new recruits during which they are told about the mistakes committed by Ajmal Kasab during the deadly Mumbai terror attack. Source: IndiaTVNews

India and Pakistan Must Negotiate a Permanent Peace

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - In the middle of September Pakistani militants moved across the “line of control” that separates Pakistan-controlled Kashmir from the Indian-controlled part. The two countries have been at loggerheads about the title to this gorgeously beautiful state, now bereft of tourism and much income, since independence.

In recent years guerrilla activity has died away and most observers thought that the Pakistani army was seriously clamping down on its own sponsored guerrillas. The indications were that the government truly wanted rapprochement with India. And India too with Pakistan.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 18 October 2016

Photo: Dar es Salaam ('The Abode of Peace') city skyline. Credit: Ali Damji | Wikimedia Commons.

The Press is Blind to the Africa of the Future

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - Africa up or down? After 10 years of quite remarkable growth across the continent most countries are experiencing a downturn, with average growth nearer 3.75% than 5% as before.

Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country with its largest economy, was at one time growing year after year at 7+%. Now it looks like it’s heading for recession and a growth rate pointing to zero. It has been hit by a six-fold whammy – oil prices sharply down, the effects of the great recession in the industrialised countries, the Chinese economy slowing, bad economic and foreign exchange policies under the relatively new president, Muhammadu Buhari, increased corruption under his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, and the war against Boko Haram in the far north.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 11 October 2016

Mexican Artists Featured in Mesmerising Paris Expo

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS (IDN | SWAN) – It is being billed as the largest exhibition devoted to Mexican art in at least half a century, and the impressive show now on at Paris’ Grand Palais does feel like a landmark event.

Titled Mexique 1900 - 1950: Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Orozco and the avant-garde, it features Mexico’s most famous artists, as well as those less known, and gives a historical perspective of the Latin American country through its art.

: A.D. McKenzie; ARTS & CULTURE; 10 October 2016

Photo: The Nobel Peace Prize laureates for 1994 in Oslo. From left to right: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Credit: Saar Yaacov, GPO - Government Press Office, Israel | Wikimedia Commons

Israel's Self-Obsession Obstructs the Path to Peace

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - The many world leaders who gathered in Jerusalem on September 30 for the funeral of Shimon Peres, the former president of Israel, are safely ensconced back home. They will not bother much to think about Israel again until the next Palestinian uprising. But the Israelis will continue to only think about themselves.

The Israelis are obsessed with themselves, with their history, with the present time and with their destiny. Every nation has some of this but Israeli navel gazing is something else. At this level of intensity it makes compromise difficult and condemns Israel to political paranoia and limitless inflexibility.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 04 October 2016

Photo: The USS Ohio sailing in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Trident nuclear submarine has been converted to a guided missile submarine. It was first launched in 1979, and was the original nuclear submarine in the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed at what is now Naval Base Kitsap. (Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times)

Next US President Has a Nuclear Option: Scrap the Program

Viewpoint by David Hall and Leonard Eiger

David Hall, of Lopez Island, and Leonard Eiger, of North Bend, are active members of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

SEATTLE (IDN | The Seattle Times) - Have you seen the Seattle bus ads? They read: “20 miles west of Seattle is the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the U.S.”

In light of recent media attention on who should have their finger on the nuclear button, this statement seems to beg the question: With so many nuclear weapons, what would happen should the president order their use?

: IDN-INPS Asia Editor; OPINION; 28 September 2016

Photo: The UN Security Council met to consider the recent peace agreement between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP). UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

Colombia Shows That Peace is Possible

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - The last war in the Western hemisphere came to an end on September 26 with the signing of the formal peace treaty between Colombia and the FARC rebels, a conflict that has raged on and off for 50 years.

Fortunately, the cities have been spared overt destruction – it was the army and individuals who were targeted. In Syria, even though the war has lasted only 5 years, in some cities, such as Aleppo, the bombing and fighting have wrought almost total destruction.

Is the world going to hell in a handbag? If one looks at Colombia the answer is “no”. Moreover, Latin America has long been the most peaceful of all continents. Only East Asia rivals it. Africa after decades of civil wars, at one time being the most violent of all the continents, is increasingly peaceful.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 27 September 2016

Photo: Ban Ki-moon receives the Seoul Peace Prize in South Korea on October 29, 2012, with his wife, Yoo Soon-taek. In his last speech to the UN General Assembly opening session in 2016, Ban excoriated Syria. Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo

Ban Ki-moon’s Turbulent UN Years, in His Own Words

By Barbara Crossette* | Reproduced courtesy of PassBlue

NEW YORK (IDN | Passblue) - With a cease-fire in Syria collapsing around him and bombs destroying precious relief supplies intended for the hungry, traumatized survivors of relentless government attacks on the once grand city of Aleppo, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used his last speech to open a UN General Assembly debating season to lash out at the government of Syria and its supporters.

“Many groups have killed many innocents, but none more so than the government of Syria, which continues to barrel bomb neighborhoods and systematically torture thousands of detainees,” Ban said on Sept. 20, in a rare outburst of anguish and anger from a secretary-general aimed at a member country in this most public of places, as the world watches. “Powerful patrons that keep feeding the war machine also have blood on their hands.”

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; UN INSIDER; 24 September 2016

Photo: President Barack Obama greets Premier Wen Jiabao and members of the Chinese delegation after a bilateral meeting at the United Nations in New York, Sept. 23, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

US Should Emphasise Harmony with China

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - The two American presidential candidates give the impression of being rather hostile towards China. This is counterproductive.

“The US should not adopt confrontation as a strategy of choice. In China, the US would encounter an adversary skilled over the centuries in using prolonged conflict as a strategy and whose doctrine emphasizes the psychological exhaustion of the opponent.

"In an actual conflict both sides possess the capabilities and ingenuity to inflict catastrophic damage on each other. By the time any such hypothetical conflagration drew to a close, all participants would be left exhausted and debilitated. They would then be obliged to face anew the very task that confronts them today: the construction of an international order in which both counties are significant components”.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 20 September 2016

Photo: Russian President Putin (left) with Israel Premier Netanyahu (right). Credit: intifada-palestine.com

The Russians Go to Israel and Palestine

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - Russia announced on September 8 that it has decided to go where angels fear to tread – into the whirlpool of negotiations between Palestine and Israel. Long a preserve of the Americans and the French, the attempt to bring peace between the two and to make a final settlement on boundaries has frustrated them for decades. Can Russia do better?

Russia comes on the scene at a time when the script is perhaps about to be re-written in a radical way. After decades of negotiating around the premise that the only solution was a two-state arrangement with an independent Jewish state and an independent Palestinian state existing cheek by jowl, opinion in Palestine is shifting.