Israel has thrown a nasty spanner into the works of the European-Islamic Forum, opening in Istanbul on Tuesday, by leaking an intelligence report that top al Qaida operative Abu Zubeidah has found refuge near Baalbek in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The terrorist group's chief for logistics, Abu Zubeidah is said to be holed up with 40 fellow al Qaida refugees from Afghanistan, having escaped through Iran, and now guarded by teams of Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards. If the Americans confirm this, airstrikes could follow. True or not, it complicates life for Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud who was hoping to use the Istanbul meeting as a platform for his denials of earlier reports of al Qaida sanctuaries in Lebanon. Hammoud repeated his denials in meetings Monday with Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem -- but kept silent about his later talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi.
The Istanbul meeting, the first of a planned series organized by the European Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, ran into more trouble when the British denied that they had supported the supposedly unanimous backing for the EU's proposed peace plan for Palestine. Devised by French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, the plan seeks to give Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a new mandate through new Palestinian elections that would also force Israeli troop pullbacks to allow the elections to take place. Aides to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he did not sign on to the plan at the EU foreign ministers' meeting in Spain over the weekend. Straw, as usual, is now echoing the American line that the violence must stop first.
The military standoff over Kashmir, with India's massive superiority in manpower dwarfing the Pakistani forces, may not be quite what it seems. The 1990s boom in India's high-tech industries has siphoned off into the private sector many of the young men from military families. According to the Indian newspaper The Statesman, the Indian army is recording 26 percent of its posts unfilled. The navy has 28 percent unfilled, and the air force has declared a recruitment crisis with 45 percent of posts empty.
German industry and politics are coming together to stop the failing Leo Kirch media empire, or at least its prime asset of a 40 percent stake in the Axel Springer group, from falling into the hands of Rupert Murdoch. The shares are already pledged to Deutsche Bank as security for a $600 million loan. HypoVereinBank, Germany's second largest, has stepped in with an offer to pay $1.1 billion for the shares in Springer, which publishes Germany's best-selling Bild and the heavyweight conservative Die Welt. And Erich Schumann of the WAZ newspaper group flew to Berlin last week to see Friede Springer, Axel's widow, to get her backing for "a German solution" to the Kirch crisis. But Murdoch holds some big cards. When Murdoch's BskyB group bought its 22 percent stake in Kirch's PayTV, the deal came with an option forcing Kirch to buy the stake back for $1.6 billion -- so far above the current valuation that Murdoch can force Kirch into bankruptcy.
Now the politicians are getting involved. Bavaria's state-controlled Bayerische Landesbank lent Kirch $2 billion, in a risky move that can be traced to Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber, the conservative candidate for the chancellorship in the elections this fall. Aides to the incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder saw this as their silver bullet in the campaign against Stoiber. But Schroeder has now ruled this out, fearing that it could result in his being blamed for allowing the voracious Murdoch a key foothold in Germany -- which would outrage the entire German media. Instead, Schroeder is backing the WAZ deal to get the Springer shares. Not only would this keep Murdoch out, but the WAZ group is close to Schroeder's Social Democrats, which could blunt the right-wing bias of the Springer group. Moreover, Schroeder's longtime aide and confidant, Bodo Hombach, has just been hired by WAZ.
The United Nations is getting tough. Kyrgyzstan has lost its right to vote at U.N. General Assembly sessions for failing to pay membership dues for 2000-2001. The sum at issue is $204,900, which is rather less than the annual salary of Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Tajikistan and Uzbekistan face the same penalty. Funny how this never happened to the United States, when it owed more than $1 billion.
