IMF says US debts threaten world economy

With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report released on Jan. 7 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Prepared by a team of IMF economists, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the US, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration’s tax cuts, and warning that large budget deficits pose “significant risks” not just for the US but for the rest of the world.

The report warns that the United States’ net financial obligations to the rest of the world could be equal to 40 percent of its total economy within a few years — “an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country,” according to the fund — that could play havoc with the value of the dollar and international exchange rates.

Other economists said they were afraid that this was a replay of the 1980’s when the United States went from the world’s largest creditor nation to its biggest debtor nation following tax cuts and a large military build-up under President Ronald Reagan.

The IMF has often been accused of being an adjunct of the United States, its largest shareholder. (New York Times)

Strike bites in Haitian capital

Many businesses in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince have shut down after the opposition called a general strike.

Shops, gas stations, and banks closed their doors while only smaller stores opened and few cars took to the roads.

Opponents of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide called for the strike to continue on Jan. 9 to force him to be replaced by a transitional government.

The strike followed a day of violent protests, in which at least two people died and more than 20 were injured. Violence began on Jan. 7 when protest marchers encountered armed supporters of Aristide. Police officers also intervened.

The opposition accuses Aristide of corruption and is calling for him to leave power. Resentment against the president, a former Roman Catholic priest, has been increasing over recent months.

Recently, violent confrontations overshadowed celebrations to mark 200 years since Haiti gained independence from France to become the first country in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery.

Aristide has been locked in stalemate with the opposition since 2000, when he returned to power in a landslide election which his opponents say was rigged. (BBC)

Anti-globalization meeting in Bombay lambasts Bush

Bombay is set to be the scene of six days of noisy protests against US policies, particularly the occupation of Iraq, as the world’s anti-globalization activists hold their annual get-together.

While the tens of thousands of activists heading for the Jan. 16-21 World Social Forum (WSF) have already begun to spar — with the far-left holding its own more militant meeting — one glue that binds the movement is fierce opposition to President George W. Bush.

Bombay is already seeing the anti-US tone, with massive banners put up in the center of the city reading “Die Bush Die!” and “Smash US-led Imperialism!”

It is the first time the World Social Forum is being held in Asia, a continent that is home to half the world’s population and suffers gaping inequalities, in a bid to win supporters for the anti-globalization movement, which is dominated by Europeans and Latin Americans.

Among those slated to attend the WSF are about 1,000 activists from the United States, including the American Friends Service Committee, a pacifist Quaker group, and the United Electrical Workers Union and Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network, both labor movements. (Agence France Presse)

Turkey agrees to death penalty ban

Turkey has agreed to a total ban on capital punishment. Its envoy to the Council of Europe signed a European Convention protocol abolishing the death penalty in all circumstances, including during wars.

The Turkish parliament had already voted to abolish the death penalty in peacetime in August 2002. A moratorium on the death penalty had already been in place in Turkey since 1984.

Analysts say the signing of the protocol is part of an extensive program of human rights reforms being demanded by the European Union before it will consider granting membership to Turkey.

The protocol must be ratified by the Turkish parliament.

The EU has praised Turkey’s determination in passing key democratic reforms, but said implementation had been slow and uneven. Some politicians in Brussels say Turkey’s military still has too much say in running the country and that Turkey’s culture of government is very different to that of other applicant states, with a lack of accountability. And in private, some EU officials are somewhat uneasy about letting a predominantly Muslim country join the club. (BBC)

3,000 soldiers desert Afghan army

Thousands of Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers have deserted the fledgling service after completing training given by instructors from the United States, France, and Britain, defense ministry officials said on Jan. 11.

The desertions are a serious blow to the nascent ANA which, according to General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, numbers around 10,000 troops. However, international observers believe the real strength of the ANA is closer to 7,000.

Even though it is forecast to grow to be about 70,000-strong, the ANA’s numbers are small in comparison to the 100,000 armed militia currently being disarmed and demobilised by government authorities.

Tough training, low wages, and factional links to the private militias which still control wide swathes of the country outside Kabul are believed to be behind the mass exodus from the ANA.

Disarming private militias is one of the priorities for President Hamid Karzai as he attempts to extend the authority of his government to the provinces, which have been troubled by factional fighting and rights abuses by commanders. (Agence France Presse)

Powell withdraws al-Qaida claim

The faltering American and British case for war in Iraq has suffered another blow with an admission by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, that there was no hard proof of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, contrary to his claims before the invasion.

“I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection,” Powell said last week. Almost at the same moment, the assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — another crucial aspect of the Secretary of State’s presentation to the UN Security Council last February — was being further discredited.

Not only did it emerge that a 400-member military team tasked with searching for unconventional weapons in Iraq had been quietly withdrawn, a leading Washington think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, accused the Bush administration of “systematically misrepresenting” the danger of Saddam’s alleged WMD before the war. The Washington Post also reported the discovery of a document suggesting Iraq might have destroyed its biological weapons more than a decade ago, and that subsequent “programs” existed only on paper.

The Carnegie Endowment report, compiled over six months, is scathing about the deliberate errors and omissions of the White House, saying the thesis that Iraq or another rogue state would make WMD available to terrorists was “questionable” and “unexamined.”

Officials ignored caveats by the intelligence agencies, and consistently adopted “worst case” assumptions. (Independent (UK))

Nuclear spotlight shifts from Libya to Israel

The attention to WMDs in Libya and Iran has inevitably led to questions about Israel’s undeclared arsenal, but there is little indication that it will give up what it has.

In the wake of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi’s announcement that he will relinquish WMDs, as well as Iran’s declared willingness to accept nuclear inspections, both Egypt and Syria have recently called on Israel to give up the bomb.

Gadhafi made specific mention of Israel after his shock pronouncement, reasoning that “This would tighten the noose around the Israelis so that they would expose their programs and their weapons of mass destruction.”

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammed ElBaradei, called on Israel last month to give up its nuclear weapons as part of a regional peace agreement, saying that he feared a situation in which “there will be continued incentive for the region’s countries to develop weapons of mass destruction to match the Israeli arsenal.”

Despite the diplomatic heat, Israel is not about to alter its decades-old policy of “nuclear ambiguity.” Israel continues to view nuclear deterrence, even if undeclared, as the ultimate guarantee of its survival in a hostile neighborhood. (IPS)

Germany refuses to give reparations for Namibia genocide

Germany has expressed its “regret” for the killing of thousands of Namibia’s ethnic Hereros during the colonial era.

Between 35,000 and 105,000 people were killed after the Hereros rebelled against German rule in 1904.

After the Hereros rebelled, the German military commander, General von Trotha, ordered the Hereros to leave Namibia or be killed. Hereros were massacred with machine guns, their wells poisoned, and they were then driven into the desert to die.

But Germany’s ambassador to Namibia ruled out paying compensation, as the Hereros have demanded in a law suit, saying it would be unfair to Namibia’s other groups to only compensate the Hereros.

Correspondents say Wolfgang Massing’s statement, at a ceremony to commemorate the massacres is the closest Germany has come to an apology.

But Herero Paramount Chief Kuaima Riruako insisted that compensation must be paid.

“The wounds of the past must be healed. Our reparation claim must only be seen as an effort to regain our dignity and help us restore what was wrongfully taken away from us,” he said. (BBC)

Latin America squares up to US

This week’s Summit of the Americas is in danger of being totally overshadowed by tension between the US and several heavyweight regional powers.

One chief bone of contention is the new US requirement that foreign visitors be fingerprinted and photographed at US airports. No Latin American country has been included in the list of 27 states exempted from the measures.

Brazil retaliated by ordering the same measures to be applied to American visitors. The tit-for-tat move is hugely popular in Brazil.

The most vehement anti-American voice is likely to come from Venezuela. It’s president, Hugo Chavez, promised to speak his mind. “The time of cowardly governments on this continent subordinate to the dictates of Washington is coming to an end,” he said.

Bush should find some solace in the summit’s host, Vicente Fox, the president of Mexico. Fox has welcomed the US leader’s proposal to provide millions of illegal immigrants, mostly Mexicans, with temporary work visas.

But even this is qualified by the knowledge that the move faces opposition in the US Congress and falls far short of the amnesty Fox had sought.

Officials were struggling even to produce an agenda for discussion by the 34 OAS [Organization of American States] leaders. The US is pushing for a pan-American free trade deal to be concluded next year, but Brazil is leading opposition to the move. The US also wants to kick out “corrupt” governments from the OAS, drawing further regional ire. (Guardian UK)