New York Times
Seven years after the end of the war in Bosnia, the country has far to go to build the institutions of a successful European state. One of the few bright spots has been its local television stations, some of which do aggressive and professional reporting. A new law, however, could result in their closing -- a law written not by the country's politicians but by Wolfgang Petritsch, who was the international community's high representative in Bosnia until last Monday. His successor, Paddy Ashdown, should make overturning the law one of his first tasks.
The law sets out the rules for Bosnia's public television, a national system created out of the old state propaganda stations. Public television has attracted considerable financing and support, especially from Europe, but its backers have gone overboard. In their zeal to ensure its viability, they are allowing it to escape budget scrutiny and have weakened the agency designed to oversee it. Moreover, Mr. Petritsch has given public television commercial advantages that could put the smaller stations out of business. The law allows Bosnia's public TV to keep running advertising. But since public television has other financing, it charges advertisers minimal prices. This starves the commercial stations, which depend on ad revenue. A spokesman for Mr. Ashdown said he would make sure commercial broadcasters were not undermined by the law, and added that he believed in a stronger regulatory agency. But he seems unlikely to change the law before Bosnia's October elections.
That may be too late for some of the commercial stations, which have already filed an urgent appeal with the regulatory agency -- which is likely to be futile. Mr. Ashdown should act now to change the law, toughen the regulatory body and end the office's highhanded treatment of the media. The international community has spent considerable money and effort to foster diverse, professional and independent media in the Balkans. The high representative should not be allowed to wipe out this progress in Bosnia with one decree.
Dallas Morning News
India and Pakistan are massing troops on their borders, skirmishes continue in Kashmir, and nuclear war looms like a bad dream. On Friday, the United States and some other governments urged their citizens to leave India. More urgent warnings about Pakistan already were in place; the U.S. Embassy there has been reduced to only essential personnel. With Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage headed to the region, and countries such as Russia adding to diplomatic efforts, there's hope that this current peaking of tensions can be dissolved as others have been in the past. It won't be easy.
Both Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee are facing internal pressures to respond to hardliners.
Mr. Vajpayee leads a more moderate coalition government than his Hindu nationalist party might like. But he must respond to Pakistan-based militants who were responsible for violence on India's Parliament and in Kashmir.
Mr. Musharraf faces pressures from radical Muslims who are calling him a "corrupt policeman" for the United States. They say India oppresses Muslims and is unwilling to resolve the Kashmir issue. Continuing Hindu-Muslim violence in the Western Indian state of Gujarat has left as many as 2,000 dead in recent months.
Unlike India, Pakistan never renounced first use of nuclear weapons. In fact, Mr. Musharraf this week said no military options are off the table. It will be hard for the U.S. to argue for a public no-first-use policy, given that the U.S. never embraced such a policy. But it's in the interests of both Pakistan and India not to cross the nuclear line.
A Defense Intelligence Agency report estimates a full-scale nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would kill 9 million to 12 million people immediately and injure 2 million to 6 million.
To get both parties to stay away from the abyss, radicals must be controlled and the Kashmir dispute must be resolved. The U.S. should help get that process started. With Pakistan saying it may have to redirect troops from the Afghan border to Kashmir, U.S. interests are already being affected.
Washington Times
After six weeks at Guantanamo Bay, the man couldn't take it anymore. So he talked. Told the Times of London everything he knew about what Camp X-Ray has come to.
What he described isn't pretty -- not, that is, if winning the war on terrorism is your idea of a good cause. According to a former interpreter named William Tierney, the newspaper reports, the interrogation center at Guantanamo Bay has become "a politically correct regime that puts prisoners' complaints ahead of intelligence gathering." Washington, it seems, is less afraid of al Qaida and the next attack than the human-rights lobby and the next report.
So goodbye Gitmo, hello Eggshell City -- the ultra-sensitive, politically correct (dare we say Clintonesque?) center for suspected terrorists, where only the guards have to suffer in silence, and a Marine can get himself transferred for being too tough. So writes the Times in a revealing account based on the experiences of Mr. Tierney, a Gulf War veteran and Arabic speaker who spent six weeks interpreting at the camp and who, as the newspaper notes, "decided to speak out after losing his job in a long-running dispute with the Pentagon."
Remember the shackles, the razor wire and the global-baloo over the inhumanity of it all? "Suspected terrorists are allowed to treat their captors with derision," the newspaper reports, "lying, chanting the Koran in unison, mocking and threatening guards and throwing water at them. Americans are under orders not to react roughly." After these al Qaida training-camp alumni groused about their leg irons, stretcher-like trolleys were provided to run them back and forth between interrogations -- at least until a media reports speculated that prisoners were being wheeled because they had suffered beatings. Now, the detainees roll around the Cuban camp on golf carts.
As a visiting general reportedly put it to a group of these fighters suspected of holding the key to future attacks, "We don't want anyone to say we're mistreating you."
If Mr. Tierney's experience is typical, it's tough to see man's inhumanity to man on display at Eggshell City. "Prisoners were being treated so carefully, for fear of accusations of torture, that no serious pressure was being put on them to cooperate," the newspaper reports. Mr. Tierney says he doesn't believe in resorting to torture. "But we can't have it both ways," he explains. "We can't obtain the information we need without offending anyone." But how to do it when self-defense seems to mean never being offensive?
Salt Lake Deseret News
In an historic step toward international cooperation, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have embraced former foe Russia as a junior partner in the new NATO-Russia Council.
What a remarkable turnabout, considering the trans-Atlantic Cold War alliance was formed after World War II to counter Soviet influence. If anything, this new alliance speaks to the need for cooperation to stem global terror. Russia recognizes it needs warmer relations with the West to secure aid and improve its trade prospects in a worldwide economy. Moreover, the partnership moves the parties closer to a Europe that is whole, free and at peace for the first time in history.
The new alliance comes days after Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to mothball two thirds of their respective nation's nuclear weapons. Both are remarkable post-Cold War milestones, which should be celebrated and encouraged.
While both events portend great optimism for future relations, they are somewhat limited by lingering distrust. Russia's participation in NATO will be bound to certain issues such as terrorism, global crisis management and air space control.
As Bush explained in a recent White House interview with European reporters, "We're not fighting a nation that has got the capacity to move tanks. We're fighting a group of killers, international killers who hide in caves, who burrow in free societies, who are patient and mean and who want to destroy.
"We must share intelligence. We must run down leads. We must interdict. We must arrest. And a great place to start is with a collection of freedom-loving countries, and that is NATO."
San Francisco Chronicle
What better beginning could there be for the World Cup? Haughty France, the defending champs, are laid low by upstart Senegal, a former colony, in a 1-0 thriller.
Big deal, you say? The entire West African nation took the game day off. France is staring into its empty wine glass, tres desole, thinking about the next match.
Such emotional swings are part of the quadrennial sweepstakes. Held in Korea and Japan, the monthlong derby will end with a final game in Yokohama with a predicted 2 billion viewers. That's 15 times the number of fans who watched the Super Bowl.
Time delays from the Far East make live-action viewing tough with games starting around midnight or near dawn. The United States, for all its professed love of sport, won't likely catch the fever that infects the rest of the planet.
Too bad. This is a sport that won't let a viewer turn away. Every shot, pass, faked injury and header can determine a game. There's rarely a break or a time out, making soccer an endurance sport for fans and players alike. Let the games begin.
(Compiled by United Press International)
