US war plans put Islamabad in tight spot
The Pakistani government faces a "damned if you do, damned if you don’t" situation on US plans to attack Iraq: backing Washington would stir trouble at home, but opposition would hurt its post-Sept. 11 ties with the superpower.
At the same time, there is a clear national consensus that cuts across the political and ideological divides against the looming US attack on Iraq. The progressive forces are denouncing it, saying that the US posturing in the Gulf stems from its policy of expansionism and hegemony. The conservative right also opposes it, but for a different reason: that Washington has declared war on Islam.
While peace groups are building an anti-war campaign with small rallies, corner meetings and street theaters in this mainly Muslim country, religious parties have warned of a serious backlash if the government ­- already criticized by many Pakistanis for pro-US policies -­ sides with Washington. (IPS)

Scots medics go unwillingly to war
An army publicity stunt turned into a public relations disaster yesterday when reservists leaving for the Gulf condemned the war against Iraq.
Rather than smiling for the cameras and speaking bravely about doing their patriotic duty, some of the medics ended up in tears as they spoke about leaving behind their families to join the war. One, watched by embarrassed officers, angrily condemned the stance taken by George W. Bush and Tony Blair.
The 26 reservists, from all walks of civilian life, were due to travel to a base in Chilwell, Notts, on Feb. 25, before embarking for the Gulf.
Gary McIntosh, 36, only learned of his deployment last Wednesday after his papers were initially sent to the wrong address and he lashed out angrily at what he termed "Bush’s war." The tiller by trade became tearful when he held his three-year-old daughter Charis. "I don’t understand why we have to go. This is all about Bush wanting to finish off what his father started and us Brits are getting dragged into it because of Tony Blair.
"I don’t really see why I have to be parted from my family because of that." (Scotsman)

Corporate interests take toll on rights and environment, says Amnesty
Corporate interests are inflicting a devastating toll on both human rights and the environment in many parts of the world, according to a report released Thursday by Amnesty International, which lambasted the US government for failing to use its infuence to protect local activists.
The report, "Environmentalists Under Fire," highlights half a dozen case studies of alleged corporate abuses in Indonesia, Ecuador, Russia, Mexico, India, Chad, and Cameroon. In each case, according to the report, the US -­ home to many of the world’s largest corporations ­- either failed to intercede with the companies or governments involved or muted public criticism against them.
In perhaps the most blatant example, the US State Dept. last summer asked a federal judge to dismiss a case brought by Indonesian plaintiffs who had sued ExxonMobil for serious human rights abuses, including torture and killings, committed against them or their family members by Indonesian troops employed to provide security for the company’s huge natural-gas operations in Aceh province. The Department said the case could harm cooperation between the US and the Indonesian military in Washington’s "war on terrorism." (OneWorld.net)

Bolivian president mulls legalizing coca
The president of Bolivia is considering a plan to resume cultivation of the raw ingredient in cocaine in a remote jungle basin, a move the US government fears would undermine what is viewed as its most successful anti-drug program in South America.
President Gonzalo Sanchez, whose entire cabinet resigned last week amid massive public protests and rioting over a proposed raise in the income tax, is studying a proposal to allow cultivation of coca in the Chapare region of central Bolivia. This may calm unrest among growers who have blockaded major highways and put their support behind his political rival.
US officials staunchly oppose the proposal to allow each grower in the area to plant one-fifth of an acre of coca, saying it would undermine the $1.3 billion effort to eradicate coca plantations from the region over the last six years.
Ernesto Justiniano, the vice minister of social defense, said the program would hurt drug traffickers by giving the government more control over what is now a clandestine industry in the jungle lowlands. (AP)

Bush blocks deal on cheap drugs for world’s poor
George Bush’s close links with the drug industry were blamed Feb. 18 for the failure of talks in Geneva aimed at securing access to cheap medications for developing countries. Delegates at the World Trade Organization expressed frustration after the US again rejected a deal that would have loosened global patent rules to enable poor countries to import cheap copies of desperately needed drugs.
Negotiators said a solution to the deadlock lay in the US’s hands. "The pharmaceuticals lobby is running the show in Washington," one development activist said.
The WTO agreed more than a year ago that countries could override patent rules in the interests of public health and license local producers to copy essential drugs. But they failed to spell out how countries with no manufacturing capacity would gain access to life-saving medicines.
A draft accord on imports was rejected by the US last December after lobbying from drug firms, which fear that relaxing the rules to allow poor countries to import copycat drugs will help generics manufacturers in India and Brazil to steal their markets. The US counter proposal, limiting imports to drugs for a shortlist of diseases including HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB, was rejected by developing countries as too restrictive. (UK Guardian)

Anti-war protesters block US military train in Italy
Italian police moved in after protesters against a possible war in Iraq attached themselves to railway tracks in the north of the country to block two US military trains carrying troops and equipment. Police repeatedly charged a group of around 40 protesters blocking the track near San Martino Buon Albergo.
The trains were blocked by the protesters shortly after they started their journey from a base in nearby Bicenza to the US military base of Camp Darby in the Tuscany region.
The authorities were forced to close Verona’s Prota Nuova train station and divert the trains onto other lines after groups of protesters spread themselves along the lines, acting on information leaked by rain unions and using mobile phones and radios to communicate.
Police also stepped in when demonstrators lit fires on the tracks near the city of Padua. Another protest at a station in San Rossore forced the convoy to reverse and take another route to its destination. (AFP)

Guatemala admits slaying responsibility
The Guatemalan government admitted to an international tribunal that it was responsible for the 1990 slaying of human rights leader Myrna Mack, the nation’s foreign minister said Feb. 16.
Edgar Gutierrez said Guatemala sent a letter to the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights acknowledging its "institutional responsibility" in the killing.
Mack was stabbed 27 times outside her downtown Guatemala city office on Sept. 11, 1990. The 39-year-old anthropologist allegedly angered the military when she wrote a groundbreaking report blaming state anti-insurgency campaigns for killing Mayan Indians during the country’s 1960-1996 civil war.
Gutierrez said the government decided to admit wrongdoing after Mack’s sister, Helen, filed a criminal complaint with the human rights court charging that the Guatemalan government conspired to kill Myrna Mack and then cover it up. In October, Col. Juan Valencia, an assistant director of Guatemala’s presidential guard, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for ordering a fellow member of the guard to kill Mack. (AP)

Egypt accusedof entrapment, prosecution of gays
A Feb. 17 appeals court ruling in Egypt may signal an increasingly harsh campaign of entrapment, arrest and conviction of men solely on the basis of alleged consensual homosexual conduct, Human Rights Watch said today. A Cairo appeals court upheld a penal sentence against Wissam Toufic Abyad, a 26-year-old Lebanese citizen. Police arrested Abyad on Jan. 16 after he had arranged to meet with someone he had met through a gay personals-advertisement site.
Human Rights Watch urged the Egyptian authorities to conduct a fair review of all sentences handed down in such cases, and to free from prison anyone convicted solely for private, consensual conduct among adults.
"For two years now, the Egyptian authorities have conducted an on-going campaign of harassment against suspected homosexuals," said Joe Stork, Washington director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. "The police are raiding private homes and using the Internet to entrap men on trumped-up charges of ‘debauchery.’ People looking for support and community find a prison cell instead." (Human Rights Watch)

Lobby group attempts inspection of US facility
The Toronto-based organization Rooting Out Evil sent a team of 13 "weapons inspectors" to the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center near Aberdeen, MD, on Feb. 23 but the group was refused entry to the military site.
One participant, Vancouver East New Democrat MP Libby Davies, said a letter had been sent to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week, announcing the team’s intention to search the facility at the Aberdeen Proving Ground for weapons of mass destruction.
The group’s request was denied.
Davies said she hadn’t ruled out actually getting access to the facility. "We were prepared for a variety of scenarios. I didn’t go there with a foregone conclusion that we’d get turned away. I went there with an open mind that it was possible — maybe remote -- that they’d let us in."
Other members of the group’s citizen weapons inspectors team included Deborah Bourque, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers; Mel Watkins, a professor of economics and political science at the University of Toronto; Samaa Elibyari of the Canadian Islamic Congress; and politicians from Italy and Denmark. (Canadian Press)

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