New York Times
At a time when the world is pleading for statesmanship, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India and Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan have irresponsibly escalated threats of war. Last week Mr. Vajpayee sounded as if a nuclear confrontation were acceptable when he spoke of winning a "decisive battle" over Kashmir. General Musharraf declared on Monday that Pakistan would "respond with full might." Such inflammatory language was no doubt meant partly for popular consumption at home, but it reflects a disturbing lack of comprehension about the danger of war and contempt for outsiders like President Bush and his aides who have been trying to coax the two countries toward dialogue. ...
The focal point of the India-Pakistan conflict is the future status of Kashmir, India's only Muslim-dominated state, where a guerrilla insurgency has periodically flared since the late 1980s. India is right to demand that Kashmir's future be determined peacefully, not by cross-border military actions from Pakistan. Pakistan is right to demand that India stop using force to crush legitimate demands for self-determination in the state. Intractable though the conflict may seem, it has to be settled by negotiation, not war. There is simply no alternative. Mr. Vajpayee and General Musharraf must acknowledge as much.
Instead, both seem determined to give new meaning to the concept of misguided leadership. ...
In the last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell has spoken repeatedly with Indian and Pakistani leaders. He is sending his deputy, Richard Armitage, to the region next week. But India and Pakistan are acting as if their new military ties with the United States do not mean anything. Each seems to be counting on American support for its blind pursuit of a military solution to Kashmir instead of paying more attention to Secretary Powell's pleas for restraint. The world awaits a more cautious and steady response in coming days.
Chicago Tribune
The current tour of Africa by Paul O'Neill, the buttoned-down U.S. Treasury secretary, and Bono, the unbuttoned star of the Irish rock band U2, had all the makings of a surreal road show through the sub-Saharan slums by two rich men who were more interested in publicity than poverty. Instead, they have sparred at every stop, to the eternal gratitude of reporters.
Indeed, their squabbling, enhanced by their star power, is drawing needed attention to a vexed debate on official development aid. How big should it be? Is it wasted? Can it work and, if so, how?
Bono, a veteran celebrity drumbeater for more aid to Third World nations, insists that these countries need huge aid programs to generate the investment and social development that leads to entrepreneurship, jobs and the erosion of poverty.
O'Neill, an ex-CEO of Alcoa and all-around skeptic of government programs, argues that governments must first guarantee the rule of law, sound financial institutions and honest practices before the aid is allowed to flow. ...
In a cruelly unequal world, it is morally offensive for Western governments to foreswear development aid when they have the resources to do so much good. But it is dishonest and wasteful to pour this aid down rat holes, with no hope that it might do good. O'Neill and Bono, on their magical mystery tour (to mix rock metaphors), are debating just this quandary. ...
The foreign aid debate has degenerated into a simple-minded, yes-or-no argument between soft hearts and hard heads. Seldom have representatives of the two sides spent so much time together looking at the realities of the issue as Bono and O'Neill are now.
They should both emerge wiser and, perhaps, so will we.
Los Angeles Times
The presence of 1 million stalemated troops along the border between India and Pakistan, the nuclear-armed foes who have fought three wars in the last half-century, has set off alarm bells across the world. Aside from a desire to see war averted, Washington has another interest: Pakistan says it will move troops from its west, where they should be hunting for the Al Qaeda forces that fled Afghanistan, to the east, to face Indian soldiers.
The leaders of India and Pakistan should take advantage of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's suggestion that they hold an informal side meeting next week at an Asian regional conference in Kazakhstan.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is happy to see Putin, President Bush and leaders of NATO countries pressuring Pakistan to stop terrorists crossing into Kashmir. But he also should be willing to talk with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf without demanding that Pakistan first stop abetting terrorism. ...
Perhaps it is true, as some analysts contend, that the parity of nuclear arms is keeping India and Pakistan out of war. But it is not a theory that bears testing. Other nations should follow Putin's lead and apply all the muscle they can to get the two countries to sit down in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and talk.
Washington Post
The world is scarred by unspeakable abuses, but the sexual enslavement of children stands out in one way. Curbing this appalling practice could be relatively easy. Those who abduct children, hold them in brothels and hire them out for rape by strangers are breaking the law, openly and continuously; if they operated in secret, they wouldn't get business. It isn't hard to find such self-advertising felons, nor to build criminal cases against them, nor to fire police officers who collude in human trafficking; human-rights workers, posing as brothel clients and using hidden cameras, have demonstrated that it's easy to tape pimps and police commanders trading children's bodies. If this evidence were used to carry out even a few prosecutions of brothel managers, the incentives that drive child prostitution would be altered. Rather than reckoning that enslaved children are cheaper than wage-earning adults, brothel managers would think again.
This logic underpins a law that Congress passed two years ago, directing the State Department to put pressure on governments that are especially complacent about the forced prostitution of children. ...
The law that Congress passed requires the State Department to draw up a list of flagrant offenders, which then stand to lose a portion of their aid unless the president grants them a waiver. In 2001 the list ran to 23 countries, many of which were either too rich to get aid (South Korea, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates) or were already barred for other reasons (Sudan, Burma, Pakistan). But the list excluded India, Thailand and Cambodia, even though they rank among the worst cases.
The State Department is now getting ready to issue this year's list. There is an internal debate about which countries will be fingered; country specialists within the department, concerned about causing offense that might damage other U.S. interests, tend to want leniency. India, Thailand and Cambodia can argue that they are conducting education campaigns against child prostitution and trying to look after girls who escape from it. But naming and shaming offending countries is a good way to stimulate the prosecutorial crackdowns that could actually curb sex slavery. The State Department should not pull its punches.
(Compiled by United Press International)
