New York Times
Gov. George Pataki has been having a good year as he runs for a third term. His poll numbers are way up, his campaign bank account is extremely healthy, and he just announced a new computer research center that will be very good news for the Albany region. However, the most important test of Mr. Pataki's success as New York's governor will be what happens in the restoration of Lower Manhattan in the wake of Sept. 11. The buck stops at his desk. If Ground Zero becomes a spectacular public place, a soaring memorial, a thriving section of a thriving city, the governor will have earned a place in New York history. But if it winds up a colossal mess, that mess will have Mr. Pataki's name on it.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has unveiled six dismal plans for rebuilding the World Trade Center site that emphasize commerce over quality. Already the proposals are inciting understandable outrage from those who see that these renderings serve the interests of only developers and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, not the general public. As that public begins to voice its concerns at today's public hearing at the Javits Center, the governor needs to listen. To make room for the best use of this site, he will also have to undo the glut of office and retail space that defines these early proposals. That means he must take the lead in negotiating with companies that hold leases to the World Trade Center, while also pushing planners for more inspired visions of how to use the space. ...
The governor has vehemently denied any connection between the development interests financing his campaign and the rebuilding effort. But in the current election campaign, his role in resurrecting ground zero should be a critical issue. So far, there's very little to indicate that the governor is exercising the kind of leadership that adds luster to the Pataki name.
Washington Times
Even if they haven't found a peace solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Americans and Europeans have agreed to keep the peace between themselves as they design a plan to deal with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That may have been the only thing agreed to at a meeting this week of U.S., U.N., European and Russian representatives. As unhappy as the Europeans were with President Bush's June 24 speech on his Middle East policy, in which he stated that Yasser Arafat must go before a peace settlement could be reached, they have decided avoiding conflict with America may be more important than continuing to coddle the Palestinians -- with some unfortunate exceptions, of course.
Under scrutiny at the quartet meeting, which was held in New York, was a new peace plan by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. The proposal would see Mr. Arafat immediately appointing an interim prime minister, who would oversee reforms in the Palestinian Authority, followed by elections for a new leader next year, the declaration of a provisional Palestinian state at the end of 2003 and the beginning of final-status negotiations in 2004. The U.N. Security Council would appoint an envoy to keep the Palestinians accountable for reform. The proposal is revolutionary for Europeans, who have long supported Mr. Arafat, in that it sets out a potential timetable for Mr. Arafat's departure.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on American television Monday night that he would be "more than willing to consider" a plan that would lead to the appointment of a new Palestinian prime minister and leave Mr. Arafat as a figurehead, though he had said in an interview with reporters the previous Saturday that "it would be an excellent idea" if Mr. Arafat would name a replacement and step down. ...
In the end, though, the quartet agreed that the Palestinians had to decide on their next leader themselves, and that it would focus its energy on assisting with reforms to the security and civil institutions. The fact that the parties agreed to disagree over how to handle Mr. Arafat and what to expect from him until elections early next year may remain a way to keep peace between the non-combatant European and Bush administration for now. It is a reflection of the deteriorating trans-Atlantic relationship that such a conclusion is considered succor.
Washington Post
While carnage in Israel and Kashmir and Colombia has dominated international attention in the past few months, a still-bloodier conflict has been taking place in Nepal, a desperately poor country of 25 million people wedged between India and China. Most people think of Nepal, when they do, as a tourist destination for Himalayan mountain climbers; now that image, and the country's vital tourist business, are being overtaken by reports of grisly battles between government troops and rebels. Major encounters have been happening almost weekly this summer, and death tolls in the hundreds are common. Since the war intensified seven months ago, an estimated 2,800 people have died.
Nepal's democratic government and its supporters, which range from the Bush administration to China, often describe the conflict in terms of the war on terrorism. In reality, this war is a throwback to an earlier era -- a rural-based insurgency by lightly armed but well-organized guerrillas who seek to impose vintage 1950s Maoism on Nepal. The insurgents' spokesmen praise Joseph Stalin and spout agitprop rhetoric of the kind no longer heard outside North Korea; even China's post-communist Communists are appalled. That makes negotiations with the insurgents next to impossible -- their idea of a compromise is to replace Nepal's parliamentary government with a Communist-dominated front and draw up a new "people's" constitution.
Sadly, this anachronistic movement has succeeded in devastating Nepal's economic infrastructure, has taken control of up to half its countryside and has gravely weakened its democracy. ... The government's strategy has been heavily focused on military measures; the new annual budget announced this month includes big cuts in development aid while devoting 85 percent of spending to the army and police.
The United States will fund the equivalent of more than 10 percent of that military budget, provided Congress approves a Bush administration request for $20 million in new military aid to Nepal. The aid is desperately needed; but so is the $38 million in development aid the administration has requested. As senseless as their agenda may sound to the rest of the post-Cold War world, the Maoists have won significant support from poor Nepalese peasants who have never been touched by official development programs or aid. Nepal's democracy deserves help in fighting off the insurgents' attacks, but it also needs to be prodded toward policies that will remedy some of the misery on which such movements have always fed.
Milwaukee Journal
Not long after a gang of terrorists bushwhacked a bus full of Israeli settlers in the West Bank this week, the United States and its Mideast allies met in New York City in the administration's first high-level diplomatic initiative since President Bush addressed the subject on June 24. Far from moving to ease the continuing violence and suffering, however, the U.S. and its partners got bogged down in a polite disagreement over what to do first.
Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted that ending Palestinian terrorism was the key condition for movement on other goals, notably establishing a Palestinian state and easing the humanitarian problems in the region.
That assessment was challenged by the other representatives of the so-called Quartet: the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. They insisted that movement on all three tracks -- security, political and humanitarian -- had to be simultaneous. ...
Terrorism is the deadliest and most visible problem to afflict the region, but not the only one. Israelis, Palestinians and others are also suffering serious economic and social ills. ...
Powell may be right when he says nothing good can happen until the violence stops. But peace has a hard time taking root, in the Middle East or anywhere else, when thousands of people languish in hunger and poverty, without jobs or prospects.
Officials who are supposed to offer leadership and ideas have no right to content themselves with inconclusive meetings and polite disagreements when innocent people are being shot, bombed, terrorized and in other ways tormented.
It has now been nearly a month since Bush washed his hands of Yasser Afafat and called for new Palestinian leadership. Since then, very little has emanated from the Oval Office except rhetoric. Officials say things are being done out of sight, behind the scenes. But that is not where the deepening emergency is. And that's not where Bush and Powell ought to be, either. They ought to be out front, doing what leaders are supposed to do: leading.
(Compiled by United Press International)
