New York Times
The Bush White House held its first state dinner last September, in honor of President Vicente Fox of Mexico. A week later, Secretary of State Colin Powell was sitting down to breakfast in Lima with Peru's president, Alejandro Toledo, when he heard about the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Ever since then, the administration's pledge to make relations with Latin America a top priority has been tested, understandably enough, by the need to focus on the war on terrorism.
The White House announcement last week that the president would visit Mexico, Peru and El Salvador in March is a welcome sign that the United States has not forsaken its broader foreign policy agenda. Congress ought to reinforce this message by renewing the Andean Trade Preference Act, which was inexcusably allowed to lapse in December.
Congress passed the Trade Preference Act under the first President Bush in 1991. This trade benefit, exempting certain goods from Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador from any tariffs, was an offshoot of the war on drugs, an incentive offered to help wean the hemisphere's major coca-growing nations from the drug trade. By building up Colombia's flower industry -- more than 80 percent of the fresh roses sold in this country are Colombian imports -- and boosting Peru's agricultural sector, the act showed that the war on drugs could be waged with more than guns. ...
Further delay in reinstating the Andean region's duty-free status for certain products could not come at a worse time. The countries have gone to great lengths to eradicate coca crops, Colombia's struggle with its guerrilla groups is intensifying and Peru is eager to consolidate its democracy after Alberto Fujimori's corrupt rule finally ended in December 2000.
It would seem an odd time for the United States to withdraw an economic benefit so crucial to the region's hopes for the future. Moreover, a failure to renew the uncontroversial benefit would signal to the rest of Latin America that the United States is not serious about pursuing a more ambitious hemispheric trade pact in the future. The Senate needs to ensure that Mr. Bush does not arrive in Lima empty-handed next month.
Washington Post
The state of emergency declared last week by Liberia's autocratic president, Charles Taylor, is taking effect just as the former warlord would wish. An independent newspaper has been closed down in Monrovia. Dissent by opposition groups has been declared intolerable. Raids and arrests are underway in the capital. Liberians and foreign nationals can no longer leave the country without a government-approved exit visa. And fear of children being once again conscripted as soldiers, as they were when Mr. Taylor and his rebel forces launched their bloody insurgency in the 1990s, is running high. But so is war fever now that, in an ironic turnabout, a rebel insurgency unleashed on the Taylor regime two years ago seems to be making headway toward the capital. Never known as a fountain of liberty, Liberia is now on the verge of a civil liberties meltdown and a return to unrestrained bloodshed.
Charles Taylor has brought this new round of violence upon himself. The attacks in northern Liberia, which are spreading, are a response to Taylor-created conditions. As U.S. officials have noted, democratic opposition voices in Liberia have little space. ...
Mr. Taylor finds himself under attack because he has brought his country to ruin. ...
The hour is late for a Charles Taylor redemption. But the leadership in Monrovia can still take steps to signal a willingness to avert further calamity. Restrictions imposed on the press and civil society must be lifted. Mistrust is high, but reconciliation with the democratic opposition must be initiated with ironclad, internationally observed security guarantees in place. And the commitment to hold free and fair elections next year must get beyond lip service with a demonstration of concrete actions to bring about that outcome. Charles Taylor has taken Liberia to a wrong and dangerous place. A sharp reversal in direction, even at this late stage, might be enough to pull that nation in misery back from the cliff.
Washington Times
Former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic is on trial in a court whose jurisdiction he does not recognize for masterminding crimes in wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo that cost 200,000 lives. True to form, Milosevic is likely to use the court as his stage, to broadcast his place in history to his people back home. He plans to name international figures who were "involved in the Yugoslav crisis," such as Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright, his legal adviser Dragoslav Ognjanovic said. Milosevic has accused the West of trying to destabilize the Balkans during his rule in order to control them. All of which will play into the Serbian people's sense of victimhood. ...
Serbs want their former leader tried at home rather than in The Hague court, which they view as a tribunal controlled by the oppressive West.
Unfortunately, they are doing little to show that their judicial system at home is up to the job. When asked at a meeting with editors and reporters of The Washington Times about two indictees for war crimes still on the loose -- Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic -- Mr. Kostunica said simply, "It's a very unpleasant question for me." ...
He also said he had no information of any progress by his government to investigate the death of Momir Gavrilovic. The former secret service agent was found shot dead in a parking lot Aug. 3 last year just hours after meeting with members of Mr. Kostunica's Cabinet to give documentation of connections between the Serbian mafia and Belgrade authorities. "There are many such cases," Mr. Kostunica simply said.
Unfortunately, he is right. Yugoslavia can either see Milosevic's trial as another opportunity to cry victim or as a reminder to reform its own justice system. They can either choose the past or the future.
Los Angeles Times
Mass murder trials, with their litanies of death, are not for the squeamish. But they are often the only way to clear the political and psychological ghosts that can haunt a nation's killing fields for generations.
This week, in grim opening statements, United Nations prosecutors are recounting how soldiers in the former Yugoslavia slaughtered innocents, burned victims to death and picked off children with high-powered rifles. The objective is to prove that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was responsible.
This is the most important tribunal since World War II victors brought justice to the leaders of Germany and Japan. In contrast, the U.N. seems ready to stop trying to prosecute the Khmer Rouge murderers in Cambodia. The world should not let that happen. The Hague proceedings, at which authorities will take an estimated two years to try Milosevic for alleged crimes against humanity in Croatia and Kosovo, and genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, demonstrate the international community's resolve. ...
Likewise, seeing Khmer Rouge torturers brought to justice would help fix responsibility for the nearly 2 million Cambodians whom Pol Pot and his underlings butchered in the 1970s, while attempting to create an agricultural utopia. ...
Cambodia's leaders need to realize that a trial without U.N. involvement would be seen as a whitewash. They, like the Serbians, need to understand that international assistance to build schools and clear mines will never lead to real progress so long as the past remains unexamined -- or, worse, mass murderers stroll the streets.
Chicago Tribune
The war in Afghanistan is largely winding down, evolving into a mission to protect that nation's fragile interim government. But even before the dust settled over Kabul -- and with little if any public or congressional debate -- the Bush administration said it would dispatch 650 soldiers to train and support the Philippine army's decade-long war against Islamic guerrillas.
Meanwhile, American ships patrol some of the coast of Africa. Talk of potential U.S. intervention against terrorists flies almost daily, singling out Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the "evil axis" of North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
The threat is real, and was underscored Wednesday in Yemen when a suspected al Qaida terrorist blew himself up as authorities tried to apprehend him. The Afghan war is indeed only the first shot in a long campaign by the U.S. against terrorists. ...
It's not even clear why the Bush administration picked the Philippines to launch its worldwide anti-terrorist campaign. Branches of al Qaida exist in dozens of countries, including neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia. Some are considered far more dangerous than Abu Sayyaf, whose ties to Osama bin Laden frayed a few years ago because of internal disputes.
Abu Sayyaf claims to be fighting for an independent Islamic state, but during the past few years it has specialized in snatching foreigners and wealthy Filipinos to collect ransom, in a campaign with little ideological content. Abu Sayyaf is holding two American missionaries.
Abu Sayyaf appears to be a worthy target. But the Bush administration needs to make its reasoning and objectives far more transparent, both to keep the public informed and to maintain the domestic support essential to success.
(Compiled by United Press International)
