UPI Hears...

Insider notes from United Press International for Dec. 24

The most important event between now and the end of the year could be the Ashgabad summit on Dec. 26 and 27, when the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan gather to sign the deal for a $3 billion gas pipeline from the Turkmen Dauletabad fields to Pakistan's port of Gwadar. An attempt to disrupt it seems to have the reason for that botched assassination attempt of Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov, but the deal now looks like going ahead. The Afghan government is counting heavily on the transit fees it will receive. At the same time, the current visit of Iran's President Mohammad Khatami to Pakistan looks like securing the second big pipeline deal, the one to take Iranian gas via Pakistan to India. Pakistan has its own Baluchistan gas fields, so the real market for both pipelines will be energy-hungry India. And if what Iranians call "the pipeline of peace" comes off, it will be the biggest cooperative deal that Pakistan and India have ever reached.

Expect the war on Iraq to break out early in February. That's the view of Israel's military intelligence director Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi, as revealed Tuesday to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

The coolness between the Bush administration and Saudi Arabia, along with the new U.S. alliance with Qatar, has just about destroyed the Gulf Cooperation Conference, once seen as the region's core security system. The Arab media is calling the 23rd annual GCC conference, just finished in the Qatari capital, Doha, "The Summit of Absenteeism." Four leaders of the six (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Bahrain) stayed away, though Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, Kuwait's Sheikh Jaber and the UAE's Sheikh Zayed all have plausible excuses of ill health. But relations between the Saudis and Qatar, which has now emerged a key U.S. military base in the Gulf, are so bad that the summit agenda included a discussion on "the benefits of the GCC's continued existence."

Over the centuries, trade diplomacy has not been a major priority for the Holy See's skilled practitioners of statecraft. However, with the march of globalization things are changing. Last week the Vatican called in U.S. Ambassador Jim Nicholson and gave him a message to pass on to his boss, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, and to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. The pope wants to break the gridlock in the World Trade Organization between the United States and poor developing countries over access to cheap drugs. Efforts to come up with a deal by the end of the year unraveled Friday when the White House, under heavy pressure from the pharmaceutical companies, blocked a compromise cooked up by the European Union, and which all of the other 143 members of the global oversight agency could live with. The Holy See, which has observer status at the WTO, emphasized Pope John Paul's II warning that "promises made to the poor should be particularly binding" and "the failure to keep commitments in the sphere of aid to developing nations is a serious moral question." Efforts by French President Jacques Chirac and round the clock calls by trade ministers from friendly governments, including the United Kingdom and Australia, to try and get the Bush administration to buy the compromise drew blanks. Talks to try and salvage a solution will resume next year.

The most dangerous fault-line in Jordan is the one between the original Bedou inhabitants, who make up the bulk of the military, and the Palestinians who arrived after 1948 and 1967 -- and now make up more than half the population. Queen Rania (herself of Palestinian origin) has broken it wide open with her statement to the opening of the Arab Women's Summit in Amman, that the government had agreed a new civil status law giving Jordanian mothers the right to pass on their citizenship, regardless of the father's nationality -- which could almost double the country's citizenship. Resisting this attempt to bounce the Cabinet into agreement, Prime Minister Ali Abu al Ragheb now claims that would "play into the hands of Israelis" who want to make Jordan into the alternative Palestinian homeland.

The Mediterranean island of Malta has adopted the "Irish exception" in its formal accession documents to join the European Union, a special protocol that no mater what future EU law may say about abortion, they -- like the Irish -- can continue to ban it.

In ecumenical spirit, we wish a Merry Christmas to all our readers who appreciate the sentiment, and seasonal greetings and Happy New Year to all the rest.