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From: BESA Center
Date: Wed, Feb 10, 2010
Subject: BESA Lecture: “Turkey and the Caucasus,” Dr. Alexander Murinson, February 14, 2010

You are kindly invited to a lecture on

Turkey and the Caucasus

Dr. Alexander Murinson
University of London

Sunday, February 14, 2010, 17:00
BESA Seminar Room (Building 203), Room 131
Bar-Ilan University

Faculty of Social Sciences

Dept. of Political Studies

Yes, there was an act of genocide by Turks against Armenians at the time the new Turkey was born from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, but close to a hundred years later it is high time the act is recognized and reconciliation started.

Turkey and Armenia to Establish Diplomatic Ties.

 

 

The Czar Makes Up With the Sultan 

 

Analysis by Hilmi Toros

ISTANBUL, Aug 12 (IPS) – Once the worst of enemies, involved in 12 wars in three centuries, Turkey and Russia have suddenly become the best of friends, forging strong bonds that could be a counterpoint to the European Union if it freezes Turkey out of full membership.

The countries call their ties “multi-dimensional co-operation,” somewhat short of a “strategic partnership”, but that too may be in the offing. 

On an eight-hour visit to Turkish capital Ankara last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed 20 deals with his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. These are mostly commercial contracts in energy, collectively worth some 40 billion dollars. 

The two leaders also declared that rival gas pipelines Nabucco and South Stream to bring natural gas to European markets would be “complimentary” rather than “conflicting”. 

Nabucco, the 7.9 billion euro project backed by the EU and the United States, would bypass Russia in bringing gas from Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iraq and potentially also from Iran to Europe via Turkey. It is due to be operational by 2014. 

The Russian proposed South Stream, to become operational by 2016, would carry gas from Russia to Europe through Turkey’s territorial waters in the Black Sea and onward to Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia to Austria. Its objective is to bypass Ukraine, currently the conduit for 80 percent of Russian gas pumped to Europe.

In the end, conflicting or complimentary, if both projects are realised, Russia and Turkey would play a major role in meeting Europe’s growing gas needs. For Europe, either an unfriendly Turkey or Russia would endanger energy security – and it would be much worse if both were ever to gang up on the EU together. 

There already are signs that Turkey, aware of its critical role as a corridor for EU energy needs, is flexing its muscles, with the rapprochement with Russia seen as a warning to the EU. 

“Turkey is not changing its foreign policy. It still gives priority to ties with the West. But the energy issue is giving a new dimension,” writes Sami Kohen, foreign affairs columnist for the daily Milliyet. “The energy equation will make Turkey’s policy more independent.” 

That translates into more national, less EU, interest. 

“If EU doesn’t want us, we won’t beg,” businessman Hasan Aydemir told IPS. “Europe has to think twice of the implications of Turkey out of its union and allied with Russia. If that happens, why not?” 

Yusuf Kanli, chief columnist for the English language daily Hurriyet, says the current Turkish-Russian closeness will in turn bring Turkey closer to EU as Europe becomes more aware of Turkey’s growing importance and critical geopolitical status. 

But Turkey within the EU is far off, if ever it will happen. Its aspiration to join the EU as the first Muslim nation is now in the 50th year since the first bid – perhaps the longest engagement on record with no marriage in sight. The accession process is faltering in the face of opposition from EU members such as France, Germany and Austria. 

Meanwhile, Turkish-Russian ties are in constant expansion. Russia will ship oil through a pipeline to a southern Turkish port and also deliver gas to Lebanon and Israel via Turkey. A Russian company will be involved in Turkey’s plans to build a nuclear power station. 

Culturally, Turkey will open Russian study institutes and cultural centres. Russians are now the second largest group after Germans visiting Turkey; they numbered about three million last year. Signs in Russian accompany those in English in resorts such as Fethiye, Antalya and Alanya. Radio stations broadcast in Russian. And there are now Russian language newspapers in Turkey. 

Turkey declared 2007 The Year of Russian Culture, and Russia reciprocated in 2008. 

Last year, trade between the two countries reached 38 billion dollars, an eight-fold increase in eight years, making Russia Turkey’s biggest partner. Trade is forecast to reach 100 billion dollars in four years. 

The combined diplomatic weight of the two countries may also help find solutions to regional conflicts, including disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Armenia and Turkey. They might even persuade Iran to take a more moderate stand. One or the other has solid relations with most countries involved in opposition to one another. 

The closeness may be helped by a similarity between Putin and Erdogan: both come from humble origins; both seem ready to bury historical enmities; both are seen as strong leaders firmly entrenched in power for years to come (they are in their 50s); both are dynamic and sporty (Putin excels in judo and Erdogan is a former soccer player); both are stern and all business. 

If there is the touch of a Czar in Putin, there is a Sultan in Erdogan. The Turkish leader has become a regional folk hero for his defence of Palestinians against Israeli strikes when he stormed out of a debate with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos, Switzerland, in February when the moderator attempted to cut short his anti-Israel oratory. 

The closeness contrasts sharply with the history of the two nations. The Czarist Russian and the Ottoman Turkish empires were at each other’s throats from the 17th up to the 20th centuries, when Russia eventually succeeded in wresting the Black Sea and the Balkans from Ottoman domination. 

Later, after World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin eyed but failed to control the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits in Turkey for passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Even as late as the 1980s, Turkey was the West’s bastion against feared Soviet expansionism from the East. If that was seen as the unwelcome Soviet Bear Hug, this now is a mutual embrace. 

The Drylands, Deserts, and Desertification – 2008 Conference. December 14-17, 2008, Sede Boqer Campus, The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Israel.

www.desertification.co.il

THE PROGRAM As Available on November 18, 2008. There might be still Changes and Additions, as well –   further Poster Sessions.

Download this schedule: detailed_program_sessions_1611_publish.doc

December 14-17, 2008

Please note that the list of presentations is still not final.

Furthermore, the breakdown into sessions may change.

Abstracts for the Poster Sessions will be listed separately during the conference

Pre Registration will begin on the evening of December 13, 2008

Day 1, December 14, 2008: LIFE AND SOIL DEGRADATION IN THE DRYLANDS

8:00-9:00 Registration

9:00 – 9:30 Welcome

9:30 – 10:15 Plenary Address: Cutting through the Confusion: An Old Problem (Desertification) Viewed through the Lens of a New Framework (the DDP, Drylands Development Paradigm) – James Reynolds, Duke University (U.S.A)

10:15 – 10:30 Respondents: Thomas Schaaf,, Chief, Ecological Sciences & Biodiversity Section, UNESCO, Ingrid Hartman, Amoud University, Borama, Somaliland, Godfrey Olukoye Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Uriel Safriel, Hebrew University, Israel

Moderator: Alon Tal

10:30-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 Parallel Sessions I

1. Soil Degradation and the Drylands

Chair: Professor Yonah Chen, Hebrew University Agricultural Faculty, HYPERLINK “mailto:yonachen@agri.huji.ac.il” yonachen@agri.huji.ac.il

Causes and Consequences of Soil Damages in Bosnia and Herzegovinia: Some Experiences in Soil Conservation, Markovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Soil Decomposition in a Tropical Semi-arid Region in Central Mexico, Maria Hernandez Cerda, Enrique Romero, Gonzalo Madero, (Mexico)

Soil Communities in the Arava Valley Desert System, Stanislav Pen-Mouratov, Tamir Mayblat, and Yosef Steinberger (Israel)

Effect of plant patchiness on soil microbial community structure

Ali Nejidat, Eric A. Ben-David, Yonatan Sher, Regina Golden, Eli Zaady (Israel)

2. Desert Ecology (A)

Chair: Professor Tamar Dayan, Tel Aviv University, HYPERLINK “mailto:DayanT@tauex.tau.ac.il” DayanT@tauex.tau.ac.il,

Water and Carbon Balances of Tamarix Desert Vegetation Under Variation in Precipitation and Groundwater Table,Hao Xu, Yan Li, (China)

Periodic and Scale-free Patterns: Reconciling the Dichotomy of Dryland Vegetation, Jost von Hardenberg, Assaf Kletter, Hezi Yizhaq, Ehud Meron (Israel)

Water Balance in Desert Mammals and in Flying Birds: Different Evolutionary Paths with Similar Physiological Outcomes, Berry Pinshow (Israel)

Desertification In the Grasslands Of Central Australia: Effects Of Fire And Climate Change, C. R. Dickman, G. M. Wardle, A. C. Greenville and B. Tamayo (Australia)

3. Benchmarks and Indicators of Desertification

Chair: Professor Moshe Shachak, Ben Gurion University, shachak@bgu.ac.il

Spatial Vegetation Patterns Indicating Imminent Desertification Max Rietkerk (Netherlands)

Do Vegetation Indices Reliably Assess Vegetation Degradation? A Case Study in the Mongolian Pastures, Arnon Karnieli Y. Bayarjargal, M. Bayasgalan, B. Mandakh, J. Burgheimer, S. Khudulmur, and P.D. Gunin (Israel)

Results On Changes Of Vegetation Structure And Composition In Semi-Desert Steppe,B.Mandakh Ph.D, Ganchimeg Wingard, (Mongolia)

Restoration of Pasture Vegetation and Assessment of Desertification in Kazakhstan Mirzadinov R.А., Baisartova А.Y., Bayazitova Z.Е., Torgaev А.А., Makhamedzhanov N.Т., Usen К., Karnieli A., Mirzadinov (Kazakhstan)

4. Pastoralism and the Drylands (A)

Chair: Dr. Eli Zaady, Gilat Research Station, Volcani Institute

HYPERLINK “mailto:zaadye@volcani.agri.gov.il” zaadye@volcani.agri.gov.il

Complex Interactions Between Climate and Pastoralists in Desert Grasslands, Curtin, charles (U.S.A)

Sustainable Grazing Strategies for Semi-arid Rangelands of Central Argentina, Roberto Distel (Argentina)

Trophic interactions and the ecology of habitat degradation in grasslands, Yoram Ayal(Israel)

12:30 – 14:30Short Field Trips and Lunch Break

14:30-16:00 Parallel Sessions II

5. Remote Sensing and Assessment of Desertification Processes (A)

Chair: Professor Danny Blumberg, Ben Gurion University, blumberg@bgu.ac.il

Progress in mapping global desertification, S. D. Prince (U.S.A)

Desertification Risk Assessment in Northeastern Nigeria Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques, Taiwo Qudus, S.O. Mohammed, (Nigeria)

Integrating Remotely-sensed Vegetation Phenology and Rainfall Metrics to Characterize Changes in Dryland Vegetation Cover: Example from Burkina Faso Stefanie Herrmann, Thomas Hopson, (U.S.A)

On the Definition of Desertification through the Case Study of the Egyptian-Israeli Borderline, Arnon Karnieli, Christine Hanisch, Zehava Siegal and Haim Tsoar (Israel)

Evaluation of optimal time-of-day for detecting water stress in olive trees by thermal remote sensing, Nurit Agam, Alon Ben-Gal, Yafit Cohen, Victor Alchanatis, Uri Yermiyahu, and Arnon Dag, (Israel)

6. Drought and Salt Resistant Plants for Sustainable Dryland Development (A)

Chair: Dr. Gozal Ben Hayyim, The Volcani Institute HYPERLINK “mailto:vhgozal@agri.gov.il” vhgozal@agri.gov.il

Potentials for Utilizing the Mulberry (Morus Alba) and the Neem (Azadirachta Indica) For Desertification Control In Northern Ghana: the Experience of the Sericulture Promotion And Development Association, Ghana. Paul Kwasi Ntaanu (Ghana)

Phenology, Floral and Reproductive Biolgy Studies of Genus Zizipus in Negev Desert Conditions, Manoj Kulkarni, Bert Schneider and Noemi Tel-Zur (Israel)

Dissecting the Molecular control of Stomatal Movement in CAM plant: A Potential Source for Genes Conferring Drought Tolerance in C3 Plants, Yaron Sitrit (Israel)

Comparison of Germination Strategies of Four Artemisia Species (Asteraceae) in Horqin Sandy Land, China, Li Xuehua, Liu Zhimin and Jiang Demning (China)

Role of Hydrophilins in Water-stressed and Salt-stressed Environments, Dudy Bar-Zvi, (Israel)

7. Water Management Strategies in the Drylands

Chair: Dr. Alfred Abed- Rabbo, Bethlehem University, abedrabo@gmail.com

Water Management in a Semi-arid Region: An Integrated Water Resources Allocation Modeling for Tanzania, Shija Kazumba (Tanzania/Israel)

Towards Sustainable Management of Wadis in Semi-Arid Environments- IWRM Approach, Walid Saleh, Amjad Aliewi, Anan Jayyousi (Dubai)

Is Desalination Right for Sydney? Phoenix Lawhon Isler(Australia)

16:00-16:15 Coffee Break

16:15-17:15 Parallel Sessions III

8. Remote Sensing and Assessment of Desertification Processes (B)

Chair: HYPERLINK “http://home.geoenv.biu.ac.il/lecturer_html.php?id=33” Prof. Hanoch Lavee, Bar Ilan University , HYPERLINK “mailto:laveeh@mail.biu.ac.il” laveeh@mail.biu.ac.il

Assessing Land Cover Change and Degradation in the Central Asian Deserts Using Satellite Image Processing and Geostatistical Methods, Arnon Karnieli, Tal Svoray, Uri Gilad, (Israel)

A Dynamic Model of Dryland Hydrology Using Remote Sensing, Elene Tarvansky, (United Kingdom)

The Effect of Wildfires on Vegetation Cover and Dune Activity in Australia’s Desert Dunes: A Multi-Sensor Analysis, Noam Levin, Simcha Levental, Hagar Morag (Israel)

9. Desert Ecology (B)

Chair: Dr. Yehoshua Shkedy, Chief Scientist, Israel Nature and Parks Authorit, HYPERLINK “mailto:y.shkedy@npa.org.il” y.shkedy@npa.org.il

Is Grass Scarcity in the Chihuahuan Desert A Result of Shrub-Grass Competition or Soil Moisture Limitation? Giora Kidron and Vincent Gutschick (Israel/U.S.A)

Short-term responses of small vertebrates to vegetation removal as a management tool in Nizzanim dunes, Boaz Shacham and Amos Bouskila (Israel)

Microbial diversity of Mediterranean and Arid soil ecosystem. Ami Bachar, Ashraf Ashhab, Roey Angel, M. Ines M. Soares and Osnat Gillor, (Israel)

Effects of woody vegetation and anthropogenic disturbances on herbaceous vegetation in the northern Negev, Moran Segoli, Eugene David Ungar, Moshe Shahack (Israel)

10. Land Restoration Strategies

Chair: Dr. Avi Gafni, Director of Research, Keren Kayemeth L’Yisrael, Avig@kkl.org.il

Role of Wetlands in Sustainable Drylands D. Mutekanga (Uganda)

Restoration of Abandoned Lands, Gabrielyan Bardukh, (Armenia)

Desertification in the Sahel: causes, prevention and reclamation Dov Pasternak (Israel)

11. Strategies for Living in the Drylands

Chair: Prof. Avigad Vonshak, Director Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, avigad@bgu.ac.il

Micro-Climatic Effect of a Manmade Oasis During Different Season in an Extremly Hot, Dry Climate, Oded Potchter (Israel)

Ecological sanitation (ECOSAN) as an alternative approach for sustainable dry-land development, Amit Gross (Israel)

Has dependence on runoff agriculture on the dryland environment of the central Negev mountains changed significantly in the last few thousand years? Testing the contribution of the geological substrate, Wieler Nimrod. Avni Y. Benjamini C. (Israel)

12. Pastoralism and the Drylands (B)

Chair: Mr. Shmulik Friedman Head of Israel Grazing Authority HYPERLINK “mailto:shmulikf@moag.gov.il” shmulikf@moag.gov.il

Normative Carrying Capacity of an Isralei Forest for Domesticated Grazers. David Evlagon, Samuel Komisarchik, Yehuda Nissan, No’am Seligman (Israel)

Herd No More: Livestock Husbandry Policies and the Environment in Israel: from 1900 Until Today, Liz Wachs, Alon Tal (U.S.A)

17:15-19:00 Poster Session (including contest) and Cocktail

19:00-20:00 Dinner

20:00 Evening Activities (optional)

Moonlit Hike in Nahal Haverim (Please come w/ walking shoes and warm clothes)

OR

Films from the Desert Nights Film Festival (sponsored by the Italian Embassy, Tel Aviv)

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DAY 2,December 14, 2008: VEGETATION’S ROLE IN SUSTAINABLE DRYLAND LIVING

8:00-8:30 Registration

8:30 – 10:15Plenary Addresses

Professor Pinhas Alpert, Director, Porter School of the Environment, Tel Aviv University,

“Climate Change’s Impact on Desertification in the Mediterranean Region”

Rattan Lal,Director, Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, Ohio State University. “Carbon Sequestration in the Drylands: Where we Are? Where we might go?”

Dan Yakir, Head, Department of Environmental Sciences & Energy Research, Weitzman Institute, “Israel Forestry, Carbon and the Drylands: Recent Findings from Israel”

Moderator: Mark Windslow, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Germany

9:45-10:00 Coffee Break

10:00-11:30 Parallel Sessions IV

13. The Role Vegetation in Combating Desertification (A)

Chair: Dr. Elli Groner, Arava Institute for desert studies/BIDR, elli.groner@arava.org

Use of Indicator Species in Enhancing the Conservation of Drylands of Kenya J. Aucha, V. Palapala, and J. Shiundu (Kenya)

Green Spots as a Tool to Combat Desertification in the Aral Sea Region, Lilya Dimeyeva, (Kazakhstan)

Vegetation Change in Response to Grazing and Water Level Decline in the Enot Zukim Nature Reserve (en Fescha) Israel, Linda Whittaker, Margareta Walczak, Amos Sabach and Eli Dror (Israel)

Improving sustainability and productivity of rainfed field crops in the Negev regions

David J. Bonfil (Israel)

14. Drought and Salt Resistant Plants for Sustainable Dryland Development (B)

Chair: Professor Micha Guy, Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, HYPERLINK “mailto:michagu@bgu.ac.il” michagu@bgu.ac.il

The chemical induction of Polyploidy Mutan in Zizphus Mauritiana, Noemi Tel Zur and Mohmmad A.Taher (Israel / Jordan)

Using the Model Plant Arabidopsis Thaliana and Extremophile Arabidopsis Relatives to Identify Genes that Can Confer Plant Tolerance to Arid Conditions, Simon Barak (Israel)

Recently Domesticated Native Desert Herbs for Sustainable Planting in Arid and Saline Areas, Elaine Solowey (Israel)

Pattern Formation, State Changes and Catastrophic Shifts in Poa bulbosa Production as Responses to Simulated Grazing, Hadeel Majeed, Yaakov Garb, Moshe Shachak (Israel)

Germination and seedling survival in NaCl solutions after desiccation of some halophytes-used in pasture and fodder production in the solonchak salinities of the Kyzylkum desert, in Uzbekistan, Tanya Gendler, Japakova Ulbosun, Nicolai Orlovsky and Yitzchak Gutterman (Israel)

15. Afforestation in the Drylands

Chair: Dr. Gabriel Shiller, The Volcani Institute, HYPERLINK “mailto:vcgabi@volcani.agri.gov.il” vcgabi@volcani.agri.gov.il

Dryland Afforestation, Bill Hollingworth, (Australia)

Soil and Water Management along with Afforestation for Rehabilitation of Desertified Areas of the Israeli Negev, Yitzak Moshe (Israel)

Land Restoration in the Mediterranean, V. Ramon Vallejo, (Spain)

The Impact of Tree Shelters on Forest Survival of Eight Native Broadleaf Species in Forest Plantations in Israel, Omri Boneh (Israel)

16. Irrigation in the Drylands

Chair: Dr. Alon Ben-Gal, Gilat Research Station, Volcani Institute, bengal@volcani.agri.gov.il

Combating Land Degradation in Irrigated Agriculture Through Systematic Characterization of Saline-Sodic Soils for Improved Irrigation Efficiency in Kenya - E.M. Muya, (Kenya)

Adaption of Drip Irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa, Towards a Strategy for Technology Transfer, Lonia Friedlander (U.S.A)

Managing salt, nutrient and soil structure in reclaimed water irrigated vineyards of South Australia, Biswas and McCarthy (AU)

Future strategies for drainage problems in the desert area (IGNP) of Western Rajasthan in India, Kiran Soni Gupta (India)

Root zone salinity management strategy for the Australian drought, Schrale (AU)

17. Climate Change in the Drylands

Chair: Dr. Yeshayahu Bar-Or, Chief Scientist, Ministry of Environmntal Protection, HYPERLINK “mailto:Ybo@sviva.gov.il” Ybo@sviva.gov.il

Climate Change Trends in an Extreme Arid Zone, Southern Arava (Israel and Jordan) Hanan Ginat, Yanai Shlomi, Danny Blumberg (Israel)

Climate change and its effect on Mediterranean Basin ecosystems, Pua Bar (Kutiel) (Israel)

Climatic Change and Desertification Predictive Modeling In The Northeastern Nigeria.

Dr. Ojonigu Ati And Taiwo Qudus (Nigeria)

11:30-13:30 Open Campus Lunch Break

13:30-15:00 Parallel Sessions V

18. The Role of Vegetation in Combating Desertification (B)

Chair: Mr. Tauber Israel, KKL, HYPERLINK “javascript:addSender(%22IsraelT@kkl.org.il%22)” IsraelT@kkl.org.il

Desertification not at all costs – a matter of temporal and spatial scales and policies

Pua Bar (Kutiel) (Israel)

Cropping systems in the Indian arid zone and long-term effects of continuous cropping

N.L. Joshi (India)

Establishing the Relationships between Soils, Vegetation and Ecosystem Dynamics: A Strategy for Land Degradation Control in Nurunit Marsabit District, Kenya, E.M. Muya, (Kenya)

19. Indigenous Knowledge in the Combating of Desertification

Chair: Prof. Aref Abu Rabia, Ben Gurion University, HYPERLINK “mailto:aref@bgu.ac.il” aref@bgu.ac.il

Ethnobotanical Approach to the Conservation of Dryland Vegetation James Aucha (Kenya)

Environmental and Economic Potential of Bedouin Dryland Agriculture, Khalil Abu Rabia, Elaine Solowey and Stefan Leu (Israel)

Traditional Knowledge and Technologies: Administration of Common Goods from the Perspective of Goat Producers in the Lavalle Desert, Laura Maria Torres (Argentina)

 

20. Managing Drought in the Drylands

Chair, Mr. Yaakov Lomas, Israel Metereological Institute, HYPERLINK “mailto:lomasjakob@yahoo.com” lomasjakob@yahoo.com

Drought Risk Reduction in Rajasthan, India Madhukar Gupta (India)

Merits and Limitations in Assessing Droughts by Remote Sensing, Arnon Karnieli and Nurit Agam (Israel)

The Impact of Long Term Drought Periods in Northern Israel, Moshe Inbar (Israel)

Hydric Characterization of the Sinaloa State (Mexico), Through the Aridity and Aridity Régime Indices, Israel Velasco, (Mexico)

Economic Sustainable rainfed wheat production under Semi-Arid climatic conditions – Agrometeorological criteria for planning purposes, Lomas (Israel)

21. Carbon Sequestration

Chair: Dr. Noam Gressel, Assif Strategies, HYPERLINK “mailto:noam@assifstrategies.com” noam@assifstrategies.com

Semi-arid Afforestation and its Effect on Land-atmosphere Interactions,

Eyal Rotenberg et. al., (Israel)

Capacity of the forest ecosystems to sequester carbon (Case of the watershed basin of Rheraya- area of Marrakech) ) Rachid Ilmen (Morocco)

Halting Land Degradation and Desertification: A Win-Win Mitigation Strategy Neglected by the Climate Establishment, Stefan Leu (Israel)

Special Round Table discussion: Mid-east Regional Cooperation to Research Desertification with Arab and Israeli Desertification Experts

Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli experts meeting and discussing common concerns and solutions to address desertification in the Middle East region.

Moderator: Prof. Avigad Vonshak

Jeffrey Cook Workshop in Desert Architecture and Planning

Architecture and Urban Planning in the Drylands

Dryland Urban Expansion: Environmental Problems and Urban Planning, the Case of Urmuqi China S. Liu (UK)

Towards a Comprehensive Methodology for Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE): A Hot Dry Climate Case Study, Isaac Meir, Eduoardo Kruger, Lusi Morhayim, Shiri Fundaminsky, Liat Frenkel, (Israel)

Sick Building Syndrome in a University Building – an Educational Survey, Lusi Morhayim, Issac Meir (Israel)

Urban Sustainability in Desert and Dryland Areas – a First Exploration, Yodan Rofe and Gabriela Feierstein (Israel/Argentina)

Microclimatic Issues in the Planning of a Modern City in a Desert Environment, Evyatar Erell (Israel)

Sustainable Architecture in the Outback/Desert Regions of Australia: The Paradigm in Theory and Practice, Terence Williamson (Australia)

Arch. Suhasini Ayer-Guigan (India)

Arch. Mary Hancock (UK)

Arch. Laureano Pietro (Italy)

15:30 Bus Ride to Mitzpe-Ramon

16:00-17:00 Sunset Overlooking the Ramon Crater, Visit to Ramon Visitor’s Center

17:30 PLENARY LECTURE: Professor Uri Shani, Director, Israel Water Authority,

“Addressing Scarcity in the Drylands: Israel’s New Water Management Strategy”,

Moderator, Ms. Hila Ackerman, Director of Environmental Department, Ramat Negev Regional Council

19:00 Dinner

20:00 Evening Activity: Music & Dancing OR Astronomy Lecture

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DAY 3, December 16, 2008: FIELD TRIPS

A detailed plan will be provided separately

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DAY 4, December 17, 2008: THE HUMAN DIMENSIONS- POLICIES AND PARTNERSHIPS TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION

8:00-8:30 Registration

8:30 – 10:15Plenary Addresses/ Panel – Reconsidering the Axiom of “Bottom Up” Desertification Programs: Lessons Learned about Partnerships and International Assistance

Chris Braeuel UNCCD Focal Point, Canada,

Christian Mersmann, Director, The Global Mechanism of the UNCCD, Rome

Alon Tal, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research

DelphineOuedraogo, Ministry of Environment, Focal Point to UNCCD, Burkina Faso

Moderator: TBA

10:00-10:15 Coffee Break

10:15-11:50 Parallel Sessions VI

 

22. The Contradictions of “Gender Equality” in Development Discourses in Desert Regions (Panel A)

Chair: Prof. Rivka Carmi, President Ben Gurion University, president@bgu.ac.il

Rethinking modern education among indigenous Negev Bedouin, Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder (Israel)

Looking Ahead: Bedouin Women, Higher Education, Identity and Belonging,Ronnie Halevi (Israel/U.S.A.)

The nation and its natures: Depictions of women Environmental Educators in the Israeli Negev Desert, Miri Lavi-Neeman, (Israel/USA)

“My Life? What is there to tell?” : Interpreting the life stories of multiply marginalized women in an Israeli ‘Development Town” Sigal Ron (Israel)

23. Public Policy, Economics and Desertification

Chair: Dr. Moshe Schwartz, Ben Gurion University, moshesc@bgu.ac.il

Economic Instruments for Mitigation of Desertification Problems in Armenia Gevorgyan Suren, (Armenia)

Land Degradation, Subsidies Dependency and Market Vulnerability of Stock –breeding Households in Central Crete Hugues Lorent, et. al., (Belgium)

The Value of Israel’s Forests and Desertification, Tzipi Eshet, Dafna Disegni and Mordehcai Shechter (Israel)

Current Status and Issues for Combating Desertification In Western Rajasthan, Kiran Soni Gupta, (India)

How To Put Desertification and Water Management in The Political Agenda: The South Italy Development Policies, Carlo Donolo (Italy)

24. Food Security in the Drylands

Chair: TBA

Livelihood Strategies: Indigenous Practices and Knowledge Systems in the Attainment of Food Security in Botswana, Maitseo Bolaane (Botswana)

Drought and food insecurity: a rationale for national grain reserves, Hendrik Bruins (Israel)

Drought Management Planning in Water Supply System, Enrique Cabrera (Spain)

The Impact of Drought on Agriculture in Jordan, Sawsan Batarseh and Hendrik J. Bruins (Jordan)

25. Case Studies – Projects that Combat Desertification

Chair: Beth-Eden Kite, Deputy Director, Mashav, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, beth-eden.kite@mfa.gov.il

Combating Desertification: An Attempt at Wasteland Development in Rajasthan, India, Kusum Bhawani Shanker, (India)

Valuing the Successes of combating desertification – Experience of Burkina Faso in the rehabilitation of the productive capacity of the village territories, Ouedraogo Delphine (Burkina Faso)

Development of Drylands of Kenya Using the Jatropha Curcas Value Chain J.A. Aucha, V. Palapla, and J. Shinundu, (Kenya)

Production Diversification for Expanding the Economic Foundations of Argentinean Monte Desert Communities, Elena Maria Abraham, Giuseppe Enne (Argentina)

11:50-12:00 Coffee Break

12:00-13:00 Parallel Sessions VI

26. Bottom Up: Community Participation in Programs to Combat Desertification

Chair: Dr. Haim Divon, Deputy Director, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Man, Desert and Environment, Hanan Ginat, Noa Avriel-Avni (Israel)

People and institutional participation in forest management for sustainable development: options for drylands based on experiences from Sudan. Edinam K. Glover (Finland)

Dryland Gardening: A Sustainable Solution to Desertification? Southern Africa as a Case Study, Adam Abramson (U.S.A)

27. Culturing Desertification: Gender and the Politics of Development (Panel B)

Chair: Dr. Pnina Motzafi-Haller, Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, pninamh@gmail.com

Development and the Role of Women in Pakistan, Masooda Bano, (UK)

Domestic Water Provision and Gender Roles in Drylands, Anne Coles (UK)

Women’s Work: Gender and the Politics of Trash Labor in Dakar,Rosalind Fredericks, (USA)

28. The Negev Desert – Development and Conservation

Chair: Dr. Yodan Rofeh, Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, yrofe@bgu.ac.il

The Israeli Negev Desert: From Frontier to Periphery, Yehuda Gradus (Israel)

The National-Strategic Plan for Developing the Negev – Negev 2015: An Old Prospect or a New Future, Na’ama Theshner (Israel)

The potential of TOD for development of the Northern Negev, Prof. Dani Gat (Israel)

Sense of place and naming in Hura as an example of the changing spatial consciousness of Beduoin in the Negev, Arnon Ben Israel and Avinoam Meir (Israel)

29. The Political Ecology of Deserts and Desertification

Chair: Dr. Yaakov Garb, Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, ygarb@bgu.ac.il

Rebuilding the Land: Political Ecology of Land Degradation in Somaliland Ingrid Hartman (Germany)

Desertification Narratives (and Their Uses) in the Middle East and North Africa, Diana Davis (U.S.A)

Desertification or Greening in the Sahel? Case study of Inadvertent Greening in the Oued Kowb, Mauritania, Stefanie Herrmann, Mamadou Baro, Aminata Niang (U.S.A)

Political Ecology: Wind Erosion on the U.S. Southern High Plains

R. E Zartman and A.C. Correa (U.S.A)

30. Assessing International Efforts to Combat Desertification

Chair: Professor Uriel Safriel, Hebrew University, uriel36@gmail.com

Follow the Money: Navigating the International Aid Maze for Dryland Development Pamela Chasek (U.S.A)

The Global Mechanism – Lessons Learned C. Mersmann, (Italy)

Research Priorities of the UNESCO Chair on Eremology Gabriels (Belgium)

An Analytic Review for International Collaborations for Drylands Research and Sustainable Development, J. Scott Hauger (U.S.A)

A Conference to Improve the Flow of Science into the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Mark Winslow (Germany)

13:00-14:30 Lunch and Concluding Session

e-mail:  desertification at bgu.ac.il
tel:   972-8-659-6997
fax: 972-8-659-6772

——————————————————

See also:

In The Run-Up To UN CSD 17, and Following Immediately After The UNFCCC Meeting In Poznan, The Ben Gurion University of The Negev, UNESCO, and Israel’s Foreign Ministry Are Organizing for December 14-17, 2008, at Sede Boqer a Conference on: DRYLANDS, DESERTS, and DESERTIFICATION.

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 17th, 2008

His Excellency Manouchehr Mottaki, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 2005, has come now for the third time to The Asia Society during the September – October period of the UN General Assembly In New York City.

Last year I had the opportunity to ask him about about Climate Change and why Iran, with its great scientists, and people involved at the UN level, does not embark in a leadership position in the area of renewable energy rather then striving for nuclear energy incurring only indignities. Others asked him about Iran’s stand on Israel.

This year – none of the above. One question from the floor asked about Israel – but was answered in the general line of the presentation – without the question been tackled at all. The Moderator was illustrious US Career Ambassador Frank G. Wisner, who served as impeccable host, presenting lots of compliments to his guest and making sure he is very comfortable. Further, The Asia Society simply managed to put the press away in a back room, and without the Q & A period reaching out to them – that is except the literally last question which asked about the possibility for regional negotiations in the crucial Middle East problem.   And the answer to that question was then submerged under the previous line of presentation that exposed beautifully the way Iran wants to be seen. No mention was made of the name Israel also in this   answer by the Minister.

The reality is   that many in Iran like actually some of the cocoons   created via the 1980 revolution that came as a reaction to some real injustices its people incurred from the hand of the US CIA when it undid the Mohammad Mosaddeq   April 28, 1951 – August 19, 1953 regime for its nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and reinstated the   Shah who returned   on 22 August 1953, from the brief self-imposed exile in Rome. Also, some in the US Administration feared that Mossadeq was, or would become, dependent on the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party, at a time of returning Soviet influence, and too close for comfort to have the cold War Tectonic Plates reach towards the Saudi and Iraqi oilfields.

The extent of the US role in Mossadeq’s overthrow was not formally acknowledged for many years, although the Eisenhower administration was quite vocal in its opposition to the policies of the ousted Iranian Prime Minister. In his memoirs, Eisenhower writes angrily about Mossadeq, and describes him as impractical and naive, though he stops short of admitting any overt involvement in the coup.

Eventually the CIA’s role became well-known, and caused controversy within the organization itself, and within the CIA congressional hearings of the 1970s. CIA supporters maintain that the plot against Mosaddeq was strategically necessary, and praise the efficiency of agents in carrying out the plan. Critics say the scheme was paranoid and colonial, as well as immoral.

In March 2000, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated her regret that Mosaddeq was ousted: “The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development, and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America.” In the same year, the New York Times published a detailed report about the coup based on alleged CIA documents. For his sudden rise in popularity inside and outside of Iran, and for his defiance of the British, Mosaddeq was named as Time Magazine’s 1951 Man of the Year. Other notables considered for the title that year included Dean Acheson, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and General Douglas MacArthur.

In early 2004, the Egyptian government changed a street name in Cairo from Pahlavi to Mosaddeq, to facilitate closer relations with Iran.

 Now, these last few paragraphs, obviously, do not come from the monologue of Minister Mottaki, but I thought to bring this up because otherwise the show at the Asia Society cannot be understood, and the Ministers personality grasped.

***

The literally last question mentioned above, that came from the back-room filled with people from media was added when the announced “last question” that came from a lady sitting at the front-right table, clearly laudatory asked, “for those of us interested in the understanding of the history of the Middle East, when did Iran invade last one of its neighbors?”   The clear short answer was – “not in our lifetime.”

***

Had be given to me the opportunity to ask a question – what I had in mind was something like this:

“In light of what your excellency has said in regard to regional solutions for regional problems, and in light of justifiable aspirations by Iran to become an Asian powerhouse, what is your reaction to the Bahrain proposal at this year’s High-Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly, when Bahrain suggested the creation of a new UN organization comprising ALL STATES OF THE REGION – that wasinterpreted as meaning a Middle East organization that includes Israel?” This is exactly the most wanting direct question that was not put before our guest.

***

From The Speakers Profile and The Internet:

 Manouchehr Mottaki was born   May 12, 1953 in Bandar Gaz, in the northern Iranian Province of Golestan, and went to school there. Bandar-Gaz, during the Reza Shah Pahlavi rule, was an important city in the north with a national railroad and “several infrastructures.” It was considered   a transit bridge to the Soviet Union. After graduation, he joined the army and as per national plan joined the public education program by which was conducted by the government. He went to Khorasan province and established a school in a poor village around Mashhad, and taught there. After his service in the army, since he was interested in social and political issues, he decided to travel abroad both for experience and study. At that time India was a popular academic destination for young Iranians. So he traveled and studied for a few years in India, before the revolution in Iran.       He holds a bachelor’s degree in social sciences from Bangalore University in India (1976). Mottaki also holds a master’s degree (MA) in international relations from the University of Tehran (1996).

 After the 1980 revolution, he was elected by the people of his home town and the neighboring cities as the first parliament representative and assigned by the other representatives as the head of the national security and foreign policy committee due to his politic and diplomatic talents. During his years in Majlis (Congress) and effective collaboration with the foreign ministry, he was employed then by the ministry after parliament.   Or, he made thus his career within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during 24 years of continuous presence in different positions through   the Majlis (Parliament)..

He served thus as member of parliament in the first Majlis, head of seventh political bureau of Foreign Ministry (1984),

Iran’s ambassador to Turkey (1985),

Foreign Ministry’s secretary general for Western European affairs (1989),

Deputy Foreign Minister – first for international affairs (1989) and then   for legal, consular and parliamentary affairs (1992).

 Iran’s ambassador to Japan (1994),

Advisor to foreign minister (1999),

Deputy head of Culture and Islamic Communications Organization (2001)

Chief of the Foreign Relations Committee of the 7th Majlis National Security and Foreign Relations Commission (2004).

During the 2005 presidential election, he was the campaign manager of Ali Larijani, the right-conservative candidate.

President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad, in 2005,   appointed him to the position of Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2005.

 

Mottaki quotations:

“Referring the case to the Security Council would be a lose-lose game, and we would prefer that this game does not happen. We see a win-win situation, that is where the EU and international community have confidence and the Islamic Republic of Iran reaches its legitimate right.”

“The Islamic Republic pays great cost to control and prevent transfer of narcotics to West.

“We do not accept global nuclear ‘apartheid’ and scientific ‘apartheid’.

“All voluntary measures taken over the past two-and-a-half or three years have been halted and we have no further commitment to the additional protocol and other voluntary commitments.”

“We should try to cool down the situation. We do not support any violence.”

“Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned.”

“The time for using language of threats is over, it’s time for negotiation. We express our readiness for negotiations based on justice and a comprehensive compromise. We want to peacefully solve the problem.

“Nuclear weapons are not in Iran’s defense doctrine.”

“The issue is quite simple. We would like to enjoy our membership as well as the other members of the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty. The country has followed the rules and regulations of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] and wants to keep its rights.”

***

The Foreign Minister’s Introductory Presentation Before The Asia Society, Thursday, October 2, 2008:

Mottaki started by saying that since our last meeting here (2007), we had three events:

(1) The enjoyable visit of members of this Society in Tehran – he hopes this is a start for more such exchanges. This as a better way for mutual understanding – Scholars, Tourists, Students in such exchanges create the possibility to have more realistic picture of each other.

 

(2) LEBANON: A solution of more then 30 months of crisis was achieved after being initiated by different parties. Foreign Minister Mottaki wants to talk about how it was achieved – because the process is as important as the results.

It was a regional-based solution for the Lebanon crisis. The decision was that it has to be a solution based on votes by a 50+ plurality of all groups in the country – all groups in the country come to the table and a consensus is built – that was the tone of the Lebanon Policy agreement.

On the second day of the negotiations in Doha, at 2:30 AM, the feeling was that it all collapsed the negotiations were locked. Amr Moussa, the Secretary General of the Arab League said go ahead, but others opposed. Mottaki was in contact with Doha and Beirut and   at 9 AM they took up the issue again, and it was settled after a day of negotiations by 9 PM.

One learned that use of force should expect a reaction from the other side. Then also that territorial integrity is an integral part of any solution. These lessons apply whenever you have conflict – this clearly also in the Georgia – Russia case.

 

(3) GEORGIA: The areas are already affected by crisis – energy, transportation, security.

The crisis started by use of force based on wrong information and miscalculation. The latter by not expecting reaction.

The second point is territorial integrity.

Its the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia now, before it was Kosovo, Does it result from the same policies? If so, are there other areas where action led to reaction? If Yes – What are these?

On the second day of the Georgia case there was an agreement signed with Poland. If this signing of the agreement with Poland has become another step, should we look for reaction in Syria? in Venezuela?

What is NATO going to do?

Iran is a neighbor of Azerbaijan and Armenia – so there is a regional concern and Iran has to take part in the initiatives – parallel with Europe. So he went to the region and to Berlin. Is NATO moving to accept Georgia as a member?                             The interesting question is then the borders.

***

 

Now it was the turn for Ambassador Frank G. Wisner to take his position as moderator and conversation partner.

He has retired from the US Foreign Service in 1997 with the highest rank – that of a Career Ambassador, but continued to be involved in special positions like the Special US envoy for the Kosovo Final Status (December 2005 – March 2008).   Now he is in the private sector.   In his career postings he was Ambassador to India, the Philippines, Egypt, Zambia… among other appointments, he was also Under Secretary of Defence for Policy.

He started by saying that Iran is a great nation that commands and deserves respect – yet for many of us it is difficult to see how Iran chooses to challenge the international community. How do you square your requirement for respect with a confrontation attitude he then asked the Minister.

Mottaki, who made his introductory presentation in English, but now used a translator for the conversation part of the event, started to smile.

His answer was: A very nice gathering and behavior – my response – What we see is   selective dealing and approach – and double standards.

Back in the 80s we extensively talked up issues. I suggest how the first Iraq war was dealt with and the second war – the war of Saddam against Kuwait. In all   these the underlying issue is the occupation of foreign lands. {I assume he means the Iraq war against Iran as the first war and the war of Iraq on Kuwait as the second war}   Back then the heated discussion was having a cease-fire not a settlement. So the first step is a cease-fire, another first step is withdrawal. We wanted to have the an “a” inserted so that it is clear that a withdrawal comes after the cease-fire. See, using “oil-for-food” money – even now a percentage goes to Kuwait, this while for 4 years we were engaged in lengthy negotiations that were ordered by the UN. Two Assistant Secretary-Generals that dealt with this are present here – they remember those negotiations. Sometimes just to keep things going we had to put proposals on the table. We felt these were in Iraq’s favor and Iraq asked – what do you pay us to accept?

On the nuclear issue – at the end of the day – it is officials of one country … But Islamic and Sharia teachings say that atomic bombs have no place in our defense.we also contend that nuclear weapons are nomore effective. Also military powr has lost effectiveness.

I outlined new agreements for the IAEA last year. 1,5 years ago, in Madrid, we said to the Agency we will give the right answers to the IAEA questions. Then the US turned over questions to the IAEA and they posed them to us. The agency said they have other questions and we started answering them one by one. For each set of questions they sent us a written letter that they accepted the answer as adequate. What expectations should Iran have? We expect the 5+1 to thank us for these efforts to answer all questions. We expected that at the September meeting to be told by the Agency that they put aside all questions, but they provided a second US set of contentions.

They were supposed to bring up questions in one set of timetable. These questions went beyond the timetable. but we accepted.

These questions, like the previous are baseless, we will not agre to the US directed routes. I believe if we continue the negotiations we will reach a point of agreement that will lead to action.

 

{All the above sounded to me like a reprise of the 1001 Nights stories – this time from Tehran. I wonder how many people in the room accepted these, though, as I remarked at the beginning of this article, I am probably one of the most inclined to allow some slack to the Iranians because of past US behavior – but this story contained really too much rope. It did not inspire safety at all.}

 

Now Ambassador Wisner had one more short question he said. The elections in the US. “Do you see from Iran’s point of view an opportunity for dialogue? What will be the modalities for negotiation?

A. A US President will have to reach out including the Middle East. If there are changes in the White House we will intently consider them. We take note of comments made by previous Presidents, who are not in power anymore, also candidates not yet elected. Comments made, promises given by them cannot yet be seriously considered. We have to wait and see.

As for an interest section, there is only stories in news media.

 

***

Q&A from the floor:

Answer On Israel of sorts:   Iran US relations are dependent on a number of issues. Unilateral Vs. Policies in the Middle East have complicated the situation. NO MENTION OF ISRAEL IN THE ANSWER.

 

Answer on Nuclear In The Middle East:   Atomic weapons cannot provide security. We all heard that the US had enough to destroy Russia. It helped in the balance of fear.

Six years have passed from the day your troops have entered Iraq – they have not succeeded. Why could not atomic weapons help in Afghanistan and Iraq? This year the 13th anniversary since the Islamic revolution in Iran.

if I were to list our grievances against the US it will be a long long list. Had we a nuclear bomb, could that have changed your actions in Iraq?

In tandem with development on hardware side, the software side. The US is not lacking in modern weapons, also in its economic might (except for the present problems). No serious changes will occur in the US. The problem is – insufficient reasoning to convince the international public opinion.

 

Answer to the last question on the Middle East: We go about our business about our nuclear problems. We provided the answers.

if a person is asleep- how hard you knock, it will not help. The US cannot accept Iran’s peaceful proposals because once they accept they will not be able to stay in this position.

US intelligence agencies announced that Iran does not work on nuclear bomb, but the uS did not accept. I know of five different reports. I think it is high time for them to accept this.

The 15 years they were against my country. What is wrong about changing policies – and see what was wrong for their country?

 

 

This weekend, as expected, the TV was plastered with the Russians in Georgia and the Beijing Olympics.

President Bush and Secretary Condaleezza Rice said that Russia will not get away with this like it happened in Hungary.

On CNN, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the man with the Kosovo and Bosnia experience, said this was not Kosovo. The Russians were ready to stage this action already two years ago. It happened now because there was a Russian provocation and there has been indeed a real ethnic cleansing going on in Ossetia and in Abkhazia that caused many thousands of refugees pouring continuously into Georgia. The US says the number is 150,000 displaced people.

Holbrooke looks back into history and thinks of Budapest of 19956, Prag of 1966, Afghanistan of 1968 – so this is the invasion of Georgia that was executed in similar methodology.

Dmitry Simes, President of the Washington DC Nixon Center, and Rose Gottemoeller, Director of Carnegie, Moscow, agree to the above and say that the fact that this happened again at the time of the Olympics, just shows the Putin self confidence and that Putin does not worry that this will harm Russia’s Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014. That area is in fact just across the border from were fighting was going on now.

Governor Bill Richardson stressed that this is not time for high US talk, simply, “we have no leverage on Russia,” so we have to engage them and not isolate them. He knows the area, problems, has been there – all as part of his UN Ambassadorship.

Georgia was incorporated into Russia in 1801 and stayed under Russian rule for 190 years. They re-emerged as an independent state only in 1991. The Ossentians always considered themselves different from the Georgians – and also not similar to the Russians. The same goes for Abkhazia and Azaria as per Rick Stengel, editor of Time Magazine, who was this Sunday’s coordinator of the GPS program that is usually brought out by Fareed Zakaria.

So, can one ostracize Russia from world business? Will this bring about a renewal of the Cold War?

He does not think that Russia has become a revisionist State and that it is fighting for a larger Russia. His idea is that the area is specially complicated – something like the Balkans, and that there were many reasons to what went on.

———

***

Cold Friends, Wrapped in Mink and Medals.

By BILL KELLER
Published in The New York Times August 16, 2008

Writing in The Financial Times last week, Chrystia Freeland recalled Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay “The End of History?,” which trumpeted the definitive triumph of liberal democracy. The great nightmare tyrannies of last century — the Evil Empire, Red China — had been left behind by those inseparable twins, freedom and prosperity. Civilization had chosen, and it chose us.

Related
Map
Russia Marches, Neighbors Check Their Cards (The New York Times, August 17, 2008)
Specter of Arrest Deters Demonstrators in China (The New York Tines, August 14, 2008)

Chrystia Freeland’s Article: The New Age of Authoritarianism  www.ft.com August 12, 2008)

So much for that thesis. Surveying the Russian military rout of neighboring Georgia and the spectacle of China’s Olympics, Ms. Freeland, editor of The Financial Times’s American edition and a journalist who started her career covering Russia and Ukraine, proclaimed that a new Age of Authoritarianism was upon us.

If it is not yet an age, it is at least a season: Springtime for autocrats, and not just the minor-league monsters of Zimbabwe and the like, but the giant regimes that seemed so surely bound for the ash heap in 1989.

The Chinese have made their Olympics an exultant display of athletic prowess and global prestige without having to temper their impulse to suppress and control. From the dazzling locksteps of that opening ceremony, to the kowtowing international V.I.P.’s, to the carefully policed absence of protest, this was an Olympics largely free of democratic mess.

Individualism has been confined between lane markers. The pre-Olympics promises that attention would be paid to international norms of behavior went unredeemed. The New York Times’s Andrew Jacobs followed one citizen who decided to take up the government’s Olympic offer of designated protest zones for aggrieved parties who had filed the proper paperwork. Zhang Wei applied for the requisite license and was promptly arrested for “disturbing social order.” Take that, International Olympic Committee.

The striking thing about Russia’s subjugation of uppity Georgia was not the ease or audacity but the swagger of it. This was not just about a couple of obscure border enclaves, nor even, really, about Georgia. This was existential payback.

It turns out that if 1989 was an end — the end of the Wall, the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire, if not in fact the end of history — it was also a beginning.

It gave birth to a bitter resentment in the humiliated soul of Russia, and no one nursed the grudge so fiercely as Vladimir V. Putin. He watched the empire he had spied for disbanded. He endured the belittling lectures of a rich and self-righteous West. He watched the United States charm away his neighbors, invade his allies in Iraq, and, in his view, play God with the political map of Europe.

Mr. Putin is, in this sense of grievance, a man of his people, as visitors to the New York Times Web site can see in the sampling of breast-beating commentary from Russian bloggers. It is safe to assume that Mr. Putin’s already stratospheric popularity at home has grown to Phelpsian proportions, not least among the long-suffering military.

In China, 1989 was the year that a spark of liberal aspiration flickered on Tiananmen Square, and was decisively extinguished. That was another beginning, or at least a renewal: of Chinese resolve. In May of that year, in the midst of the Tiananmen euphoria, Mikhail S. Gorbachev visited Beijing, and two visions of a new communism stared each other in the face.

The protesters on the Chinese pavilion held banners welcoming Mr. Gorbachev as a champion of the greater freedom they sought. Meanwhile, the visiting Russian delegation marveled at the abundance in Chinese stores, the bounty of a policy that chose economic liberalization without political dissent.

The Chinese and Russians scorned each other’s neo-Communist models, but in some ways they have evolved toward one another. Both countries now tolerate a measure of entrepreneurship and social license, as long as neither threatens the dominion of the state. Both countries have calculated that you can buy a measure of domestic stability if you combine a little opportunity with an appeal to national pride. (The Chinese “street” felt no more sympathy for restive Tibetans than the Russian blogosphere felt for Georgia.) And both have discovered that if you are rich the world is less likely to get in your way.

President Bush was mocked from both sides for his seeming impotence. Neoconservatives were appalled by photos of President Bush sharing a laugh with Mr. Putin in Beijing while Russian armor gathered at the Georgian border. For a president who has made the export of democracy his signature doctrine, that looked to the stand-tough crowd like a “Pet Goat” moment.

Others argued that this was a crisis Mr. Bush tacitly encouraged by talking up Georgia’s rambunctious president as a friend and NATO candidate. By midweek, possibly goaded by the wailing of neoconservatives and the aggressively anti-Putin rhetoric of Senator John McCain, Mr. Bush had abruptly amped up his opprobrium and dispatched an American airlift of humanitarian aid. And by the weekend there was a cold war chill in the air.

But Mr. Bush’s predicament is not just his. The question of how to deal with these reinvigorated autocracies bedevils the Europeans and will surely rank high among the legacy issues that confound Mr. Bush’s successor.

This time it is not — or not yet — the threat of nuclear apocalypse that limits the West’s options toward our emboldened Eastern rivals. The Chinese, in fact, are acting as if they have gotten past the saber-rattling stage of emerging-power status; they lavish diplomacy on Taiwan and Japan, and deploy the might of capital instead. The Russians may be in a more adolescent, table-pounding stage of development, but Mr. Putin, too, prefers to work the economic levers, bullying with petroleum.

The United States, meanwhile, is mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, estranged from much of the world, and bled by serial economic crises.

History, it seems, is back, and not so obviously on our side.

Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, covered the last years of the Soviet Union for the newspaper.

***

——————

The New Age of Authoritarianism.
By Chrystia Freeland
Published: August 12 2008 in The Financial Times.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, democracy was on the march and we declared the End of History. Nearly two decades later, a neo-imperialist Russia is at war with Georgia, Communist China is proudly hosting the Olympics, and we find that, instead, we have entered the Age of Authoritarianism.

It is worth recalling how different we thought the future would be in the immediate, happy aftermath of the end of the cold war. Remember Francis Fukuyama’s ringing assertion: “The triumph of the west, of the western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to western liberalism.”

Even in the heady days of 1989, that declaration of universal – and possibly eternal – ideological victory seemed a little hubristic to Professor Fukuyama’s many critics. Yet his essay made such an impact because it captured the scale, and the enormous benefits, of the change sweeping through the world. Not only was the stifling Soviet – which was really the Russian – suzerainty over central and eastern Europe and central Asia coming to an end but, even more importantly, the very idea of a one-party state, ruthlessly presiding over a centrally planned economy, seemed to be discredited, if not forever, then surely for our lifetimes.

That collapse brought freedom and prosperity to millions of people who had lived under Soviet rule. Moreover, the implosion of Soviet communism inspired hundreds of millions of others around the world to embrace freer markets and demand more responsive governments. The great global economic boom of the past 20 years, which has brought more people out of poverty more quickly than at any other time in human history, would not have been possible had the Soviet way of ordering the world not been discredited first.

Yet today, in much of the world, the spread of freedom is being checked by an authoritarian revanche. That shift has been most obvious in the petro-states, where oil is casting its usual curse. From Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, the black-gold bonanza has given authoritarian regimes the currency to buy off or to repress their subjects. In Russia, oil has fuelled an economic boom that prime minister Vladimir Putin, and some of his foreign admirers, mistakenly attribute to his careful demolition of the chaotic democracy of the 1990s.

For Russians, that argument is strengthened by the fact that the rising economic power of the moment – China – is unashamedly sticking to its faith in one-party rule. The end of the cold war made it tempting to believe that as countries opened up their markets, and became richer in the process, they would inevitably open up their societies, too. George W. Bush, US president, reiterated that hopeful thesis on his Asia tour last week, insisting: “Young people who grow up with the freedom to trade goods will ultimately demand the freedom to trade ideas.”

But the Chinese mandarins and the Russian siloviki are taking a different view – and acting on it. As China scholar David Shambaugh recounts in his new book, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation , the CCP studied the collapse of Soviet communism with great care. And rather than seeing it as proof of the inevitable, global triumph of western liberalism, the Chinese comrades treated the Russian example as a textbook case of what a ruling Communist party ought not to do.

In this version of history, sinologist Andrew Nathan tells me, 1989 is also a turning point, but not because that was when communism’s most notorious wall came down. Instead, the key event of that year was the bloody suppression of protesters in Tiananmen Square: “As a propaganda position they have put it out that we had a crackdown in 1989 and we saved the party and we saved the country,” he says. “We didn’t have a failure of will like the Russians. Without that, we wouldn’t have been a great, modern power.” That’s a point of view Mr Putin has embraced, too, describing the collapse of the Soviet Union as a tragedy and his own reconstruction of a neo-authoritarian state as the only way to restore Russian “greatness”.

The west has been remarkably sanguine about this resurgence of authoritarianism, and one reason is that, this time, the comrades have money. Even as the Kremlin repeatedly confiscates the assets not just of its own businesspeople but of foreign ones, too, investment bankers, and plain old investors, are flocking to a Moscow flush with petro-roubles. The same is true of the Gulf states. China, on a path to become the world’s largest economy, is the most attractive of all.

But the Age of Authoritarianism is bad news for all of us, not just the human rights campaigners that businesspeople and practitioners of realpolitik love to dismiss. Like all overly rigid objects, authoritarian regimes conceal a tremendous fragility in their apparent strength – and their leaders know it. It is this realisation that has driven Mr Putin’s systematic destruction of all forms of civil society – an eminently pragmatic measure, although it has mystified some outside observers, who wonder why so popular a leader needs to be so heavy-handed. China’s chiefs have figured this out, too, hence their anxiety about everything from the Muslim Uighurs to the internet to the former Soviet Union’s “colour revolutions”.

Of course, another way to ensure popular support for your authoritarian regime is by playing up nationalist sentiment. We are more tolerant of our home-grown bullies if we think we need them to fight our enemies abroad – as even democratic America has demonstrated in recent years. Mr Putin has understood this all along, launching a brutal attack on Chechnya even before his coronation as president in 2000.

Russia’s expert taunting of the hotheads in Georgia, followed by immediate and massive retaliation the moment Tbilisi took the bait, is the latest evidence that, for the Kremlin, neo-imperialism is an essential bulwark of neo-authoritarianism. Bringing down the walls really did make the world safer. Now that so many leaders are building them back up again, figuring out how to contain the 21st century’s monied authoritarians is our most pressing foreign policy dilemma.

 chrystia.freeland at ft.com

New York — EYEontheUN reports that Iran has become a member of the “Group of Friends of the Chair”, an informal group of states charged with taking the first steps towards producing a Durban II manifesto. Anne Bayefsky, Editor of EYEontheUN says: “the travesty of Durban II as a vehicle for getting serious about combating racism is more obvious than ever, as a regime whose President is a Holocaust-denier acquires an important role in shaping the result.”

Durban II – known formally as the UN Durban Review Conference – will be held next April in Geneva. It is charged with implementing the notorious 2001 Durban Declaration which found Israel guilty of racism and gave no other country even a passing mention.

The role of his “friends” is described by Armenian Chairman Zohrab Mnatsakanian as “engaging in brainstorming and consolidating inputs.” Other members of the behind-the-scenes group are Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Egypt. Bayefsky adds, “one shudders to imagine the brainstorming among such human rights paragons.”

The “friends of the Chair” have already met twice in July 2008 and intend to meet again shortly.

By creating this informal group, UN states have deliberately created a forum which excludes NGOs for the first time from the Durban II process.

The first contribution of the “Group of Friends” will be filed at the next stage of the process, the ‘Intersessional Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group’ session to be held in Geneva September 1-5, 2008.

“The authority figures surrounding Durban II remind us once again that this forum is an instrument serving those states bent on defeating human rights not protecting them,” said Bayefsky.

HUDSON INSTITUTE   |   90 Broad Street   |   Suite 2003   |   New York, NY 10004

‘Eastern Partnership’ could lead to enlargement, Poland says.

27.05.2008 – 09:15 CET | By Renata Goldirova, Euobserver from Brussels.
Poland and Sweden have officially tabled proposals for an “Eastern Partnership” between the EU and its neighbours Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – with Poland presenting the deal as a path toward EU membership.

“It’s time to look to the east to see what we can do to strengthen democracy,” Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt said on Monday (26 May), after presenting the project to the rest of the EU club with his Polish counterpart, Radoslaw Sikorski.

According to Mr Sikorski, the eastern partnership initiative is tailored to “practically” and “ideologically” strengthen the union’s existing neighbourhood policy towards countries that could eventually become EU members, but are held back by “enlargement fatigue” within the bloc.

The minister drew a clear line to distinguish the EU membership prospects of those countries affected by the Polish-Swedish proposal and those involved in the “Mediterranean Union” – a similar, French-sponsored project for countries lying south of the EU.

“To the south, we have neighbours of Europe. To the east, we have European neighbours…they all have the right one day to apply [for EU membership],” Mr Sikorski said, urging the eastern countries to follow the example of the Visagrad Group set up in 1991 by Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as part of their EU integration efforts.

“We all know the EU has enlargement fatigue. We have to use this time to prepare as much as possible so that when the fatigue passes, membership becomes something natural,” the Polish minister said.

The initiative has seen some criticism from countries such as Bulgaria and Romania who do not want to see the union’s “Black Sea Synergy” – a co-operation scheme for Black Sea rim states – undermined. But the Czech Republic, which will sit at the EU’s helm in 2009, has thrown its weight behind the Polish-Swedish plan.

“It goes in the same direction that we want. And we see that the next year, we need to balance. This year, it is a Mediterranean year. So, the next year would be the eastern year,” the country’s deputy prime minister, Alexandr Vondra, told journalists.

EU-hopeful Ukraine has, for its part, made it clear it is not willing to settle for anything less than EU membership.

“We believe that the initiative of the Eastern partnership should envisage a clear EU membership perspective to those European neighbours of the EU who can demonstrate the seriousness of their European ambitions through concrete actions and tangible achievements,” said a statement issued by Ukraine’s foreign ministry on Monday.

A NAGORNO-KARABAKH FOREIGN MINISTRY IN DISCUSSIONS WITH THE EU?

The Nabucco pipeline – the EU hopes construction will begin in 2010
(Photo: Nagorno-Karabakh foreign ministry)

Turkmenistan to cut EU dependence on Russian gas.

April 14, 2008 – By Renata Goldirova, for the EUobserver.

Turkmenistan has agreed to supply 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas to the European Union each year – something that should cut the energy-hungry bloc’s dependence on gas from Russia.

“The president [Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov] gave us assurances that 10 bcm will be set aside for Europe in addition to possibilities in new fields to be tendered,” EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told the Financial Times on Sunday (13 April).

Ms Ferrero-Waldner described the deal as “a very important first step” in energy cooperation, although she acknowledged the amount agreed by the two sides does not represent a “vast quantity”.

The former Soviet Republic in Central Asia has the world’s fifth largest reserves of natural gas and substantial deposits of oil. It annually produces 60 billion cubic metres of natural gas, but two-thirds are exported to Russia’s state-run Gazprom.

Demand for energy is sharply rising in the European Union. By 2020, it is expected to import at least 360 bcm – out of 500 bcm consumed – from third countries.

The 27-nation bloc has been trying to diversify its energy supplies away from Russia and is currently pushing for a new energy corridor, the Nabucco pipeline.

The pipeline – connecting Turkey with Austria, via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary – would enable the transportation of Caspian energy resources to the European market. Main gas supplies could come from countries such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan or Egypt.

Speaking about the fresh deal with Turkmenistan, Ms Ferrero-Waldner called on European business to invest in infrastructure in order to bring the project to life.

It is still unclear how Turkmen gas will be imported to Europe, with the commissioner suggesting three possible short-term scenarios in the interview with the Financial Times.

Under the first one, a 60-kilometre gap between Azeri and Turkmen offshore installations could be closed with a mini-pipeline.

Secondly, an onshore link to Kazakhstan could be built to connect with a route to Azerbaijan.

Under the third option, the gas could be compressed into liquid form and taken by tanker across the sea.

————————-

Russia questions value of Nabucco energy pipeline.

April 18, 2008 – By Renata Goldirova from Brussels for EUobserver:

Moscow has questioned the viability of the EU-backed Nabucco energy corridor, a pipeline designed to lessen the bloc’s dependency on Russia.

“I know few things about political geography. The only way to fill the Nabucco pipeline is to rely on Iranian gas,” Russian ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov told journalists earlier this week (15 April). He added: “But then, it’s up to the West, I would not tell the EU, to make up its mind how to deal with Iran. Either bomb Iran or buy its gas.”

Mr Chizhov’s blunt comments came only hours after Turkmenistan had agreed to supply 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas to the EU each year – something that should cut the energy-hungry bloc’s dependence on gas from Russia.

“There have been some euphoric comments about Turkmenistan,” the ambassador said, stressing that the volume agreed by the two sides is “not enough”. In addition, he questioned the ability of Azerbaijan, another potential source, to fulfil the union’s sharply rising energy demand.

The European Commission considers Nabucco to be “essential” to the EU as it is designed to bring gas from non-traditional suppliers via a new transport route.

The pipeline – connecting Turkey with Austria, via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary – would enable the transportation of gas from the resource-rich Caspian region to the European market.

Its capacity amounts to 31 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year. The bulk of the supplies are expected to come from countries such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan or Egypt.

The EU is also hoping to secure natural gas from Iraq, with Baghdad earlier this week pledging to provide five billion cubic metres of gas each year. The two sides are set to sign a so-called energy security memorandum of understanding in coming days.

In response to Mr Chizhov’s statements, the commission said that a list of source countries was yet to be defined. It addmitted, however, that once the problems with Iran are solved, Tehran can be taken into consideration on the longer term.

Meanwhile, Moscow – the world’s largest producer of natural gas – has been pushing for its own project, the South Stream pipeline. It should connect Russia’s Black Sea coast and Italy, with Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Serbia already saying they will take part in the project.

According to the Russian ambassador to Brussels, there will be enough room for the South Stream, Nabucco and perhaps for another pipeline due to growing energy consumption in Europe – but only in the long run.

In the short run, the defining difference is that the South Stream can rely on real gas supply, whereas Nabucco does not have gas, Mr Chizov said.

The South Stream project is seen by some as a rival to Nabucco, with the European Commission saying “it is not promoting it actively” because the pipeline will bring more gas from Russia.

“The two projects are complementary, not contradictory,” reads the commission’s official line on the issue. The EU needs 80 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year on top of current consumption.

But some experts on EU-Russia energy relations have also suggested that Moscow has made a valid point.

According to Marco Giuli from the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, the Nabucco pipeline is “economically viable only with Iranian gas”.

He cited political tensions in Central Asia, the proximity of Chinese market as well as the US’ tough stance on Iran among those factors that cloud Nabucco’s prospects.

Within the 27-nation EU, France and the UK seem to have the toughest position towards the Iranian regime, wanting to stop its nuclear ambitions not only through dialogue, but also via sanctions.

On the other hand, Italy’s oil and gas producer ENI is set to undertake some investments in Iran – something, Mr Guili says has been endorsed by the country’s outgoing as well as incoming political leadership.

THE DARFUR DISGRACE.

By Daniel Rackowski, The TransAtlantic Institute, Brussels     www.TransAtlanticInstitute.org

Introduction

After years of deliberation, repeated condemnations and the eventual deployment of UN and EU troops, Darfurian communities continue to be threatened by expulsion, rape, famine and extermination in a strife-torn region.

Darfur is not only a testimony to the atrocities committed by the apocalyptic Janjaweed horsemen and by Sudan’s very own armed forces in response to rebel factions demanding greater independence and power; it equally serves as a reminder of the world’s continuous and collective failure to effectively interfere in the gravest man-made catastrophes of our time.

A timeline   of omission in Darfur:

The African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), dispatched in mid-2004 to contribute to a solution to the Darfur crisis amounted to little more than a fig leave.

AMIS never had any real de jure or de facto power to intervene and was, from the outset, lacking the structure to deliver relief and provide protection to civilians.

Years of wrestling with the UN went by with talks held in Abuja, Addis Ababa, N’djamena, Tripoli and other places that were all prematurely hailed as the settings where lasting agreements came into being.

The Sudanese regime seemed to finally give in to mounting pressure and in late 2006 agreed to a hybrid AU/UN force (UNAMID) with the requested numbers of 20,000 soldiers and about three times as many service personnel to be deployed on the ground. Khartoum however continued with its charade. President Omar Al-Bashir inserted yet another caveat according to which most armed troops on the ground will have to remain African in what he alleges is an attempt to thwart the hidden neo-colonial aspirations behind the deployment. The regime knew all too well that AU forces are spread thin throughout Africa and therefore managed to undermine the very rationale of the agreement: to place substantial numbers of well trained blue helmets on the ground in order to fulfill the task that the African green helmets cannot accomplish with only logistical and minor ground troop support. As could have been expected, the UN takeover of the peace force at the beginning of this year has done little to improve the situation. Recently, reports have emerged that document the continued use of government planes to bomb areas in West Darfur.

It appears that each time new sanctions are looming on the horizon, the government seems to agree to some sort of compromise from which it can subsequently renege. It is a sophisticated method to protract the suffering of segments of the country’s population and to dupe the international community. In spite of this lengthy and obvious display of the government’s unwillingness to cooperate, the Security Council stood by its decision to make troop deployment quasi-contingent on Khartoum’s approval by inviting the “consent of the Government of National Unity” to it in its Resolution 1706 (1) (2006). In light of its past poor compliance record with UN requests, one could have already expected Khartoum to remain defiant of a functional UN peacekeeping operation at the time 1706 and subsequent resolutions were drawn up. Members of the Security Council should have felt compelled to act without delay, irrespective of the approval of the bellicose Sudanese regime which demonstrated on so many occasions to be remarkably unyielding.

What lessons can Europe learn from the Darfur episode?

While a concerted effort at the UN level is often a sine qua non for eventual settlement of major conflicts, the Security Council is also an arena for political stalemate due to the widely diverging geopolitical interests of its Members.

The existence of the UNSC should not mean that the EU cannot develop its own policies towards murderous groups or regimes that go beyond Security Council stipulations. When confronted with devastating conditions on the ground, measures need to be taken swiftly and the omission to do so cannot be entirely blamed on an impasse at the UN. If apposite, sanctions regimes should be imposed to the extent deemed necessary by the EU member states – not only in accordance with UN sanctions, but possibly exceeding them.

EU governments can call for an EU-wide divestment from companies that directly or indirectly aid and abet atrocious policies. Comprehensive asset freezes and more extensive travel-bans to European countries can be imposed and extended to the highest echelons of the government, as part of a pinpointed and incremental sanctions policy.

One way to rally more support for a stronger European involvement would be to remind decision-makers of their responsibilities and to urge politicians and the media to start referring to episodes like Darfur by the correct legal classification – fully-fledged genocide. Part of the reason why there has been relatively little outrage at the lack of effective action against Khartoum is because the European public remained for a long time largely unaware of the magnitude of the atrocities.

EU officials and European government representatives will quietly admit that genocidal acts are being committed but most are reluctant to say so in public because they are aware of the legal obligation to act.

Nonetheless, such a categorisation would reflect the tenor of the 1948 Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which states that cases of genocide are defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” No matter how one spins it, in the case of Darfur, the government’s actions – directed against parts of the population that are almost always distinguishable by ethnicity, culture or other determining factors from their persecutors – are covered by the Convention. The Security Council reaffirmed its responsibility to protect populations from genocide in Resolution 1674 (2006), yet the language of European governments has not changed.

As we Europeans are debating whether atrocities committed against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire by the young Turks some 90 years ago constituted genocide or not, we fail to adequately address our responsibility to forestall its recurrence in the present. When it comes to the Holocaust, a healthy commitment to remembrance has taken root in the West. Yet, remembering the past is worth little, if it does not translate into a resolve, in the present, to prevent atrocities from re-occurring. To do our utmost to effect speedy intervention in such conflicts would be the most sincere attempt to honor the memories of those who perished on European soil through ethnic cleansing and genocide. How can intervention in the Balkans be justified on the basis of human rights, yet what is deemed a universal right denied to others? It is trite knowledge that the remedy of humanitarian intervention is not solely administered against the malaise of gross violations of human rights, but rather on the basis of a fitting constellation of political, economic and altruistic factors. One has to choose battles wisely, but the disparity between the scale of humanitarian crisis in areas where the international community has intervened in recent years on the one hand, and largely neglected conflicts on the other, is at times so significant that interference should not be a question of choice but a relative moral obligation. This disparity is further compounded when it comes to troubled Africa, where European colonial legacy and humanitarian values have left us with a responsibility duly recognised in the EU’s Strategy for Africa.

The EU can pride itself to be the single biggest aid donor in the region. Its engagement in Congo, humanitarian aid delivered chiefly through ECHO as well as the support for AMIS and now UNAMID are vital lifelines for the many victims of internal strife, refugees and internally displaced persons. Yet Brussels is mostly treating the symptoms and not effectively fighting the disease. The humanitarian situation in Darfur has worsened to an extent that aid cannot even reach the intended recipients in most cases and while UNAMID is unlikely to change the situation in Darfur, the conflict has long spread beyond the borders to Chad and to the Central African Republic. The deployment of the EUFOR force in these countries is another commendable effort, but ultimately only serves the purpose of containment and is in itself dependent on the goodwill of the host states.

None of the above efforts will have a lasting impact however, unless EU governments step up their military capabilities and show a willingness to use them. Such attempts have been given new impetus through the creation of the European Defence Agency (EDA), the EU Battlegroups, the EU Reform Treaty in general and recent policy speeches given by European leaders notably Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Miliband.

In order to synergise the mechanisms already available to the EU and those currently in the making a task force on genocide prevention at the Council level could be created. Such an entity would draw from a range of experts with different portfolios with the aim of identifying conflicts with the potential for mass atrocities before break-out or at a very early stage of conflict. It could further function as a catalyst for various planning and actions stages and demonstrate the EU’s seriousness in battling this undying phenomenon.

There are strong indications that the European public too, supports such policies. An overwhelming majority of Europeans show a willingness to take on greater responsibility in facing global threats.[1] Among them, the greater part is all for stepping up aid for development, trade as a means of pressure and committing more troops for a variety of missions, including a staggering 67% in favour of sending troops to Darfur.[2]

Conclusion

There is an urgent need to generate the political will among EU member states, to move beyond a myopic policy of damage control to more forceful measures. Genocide is a recurring reality and we Europeans have insufficient means to address this predicament. The lessons learned from the horrors of two World Wars ought not to be the complete negation of interventionism, but preventionism coupled with the ability to have recourse to the full spectrum of means available to us under the framework of international law.

Daniel Rackowski is a senior fellow for EU affairs at the Transatlantic Institute

[1] Transatlantic Trends – Key Findings 2007, p.13
[2] ibid., p14

Thursday, March 6, 2008, The European Union Studies Center of The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, with the help of the Alexander S. Onasis Public Benefit Foundation (USA), had the great opportunity to hear from one of Greece’s important political figures - Dr. Yannos Papantoniou.
Dr. Papantoniou currently serves as an Onassis Foundation Senior Visiting Scholar at the University of Athens. In 1981, he was elected as a member of the European Parliament and in 1984 became adviser to the prime minister on European Economic Community affairs.

Since June 1989, he has been an elected member of the Greek Parliament. He served as deputy minister of National Economy, then variously as minister of Commerce, minister of National Economy and Finance, and minister of National Defense under the Socialist, or Pasok, government.

On February 27, 2008, Greece Named Yannos Papantoniou As its Candidate To Lead the the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development , (EBRD). He has also been Governor of the National Bank of Greece in 2000.

Over the 12-month period in 2002-03, when Greece held the presidency of the European Union’s Council of Defense Ministers, Dr. Papantoniou helped to coordinate the policies that led to the creation of the European Military Force and its engagement in international peacekeeping operations as well as the establishment of the European Defense Agency.

Dr. Papantoniou studied economics at the Universities of Athens and Wisconsin, history at the Sorbonne (France), and obtained his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Cambridge (U.K).

The topic at the CUNY presentation was: “Regional Security in Southeastern Europe.” We got obviously an explicit Greek point of view.

At first we got a tour of the European expansion from 15 to 27 States and we saw how this was possible. The Three Baltic States were adopted by the Scandinavian States and this helped their economic integration into the EU. Poland was helped by foreign investment and its relations to US Poles. The Central Europeans were helped by Germany and Austria (Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians – also Slovenia and the future accession of Croatia. The Creation of a partnership for peace at NATO helped Bulgaria and Romania.

So now we are left with the remnants of the Balkans. The situation came to an edge with Kosovo declaring unilaterally independence on February 17, 2008 and being by now recognized as an independent State by over 100 countries. Obviously Serbia and Russia do not recognize Kosovo – neither does Greece. We found in effect, on the internet, a 2007 official statement from Greece saying that they do not agree to an “imposed’ solution for Kosovo. They think of the old concept of Sovereignty under which you cannot dismember Serbia, this because if that succeeds, North Cyprus will also want to become an independent Turkish State …

Turkey? As an attached State to the West would be an important role player to stabilize the Middle East – that gave me a reason to think that one should also ask the Turks what they think.

“The EU is an economic organization with political ambitions.”

The requirements for accession are: a. Democracy; b. A market Economy; and c. Adaptation of EU law into National law.

“Turkey is a strong regional power. If it were to come into the EU it would come in as a 100 million bloc that would change the balance of power in the EU. They might have more power then Germany and the UK combined, and this is unacceptable. The EU would prefer a special linkage to be offered to Turkey. After 12 additions the enlargement may have reached a limit. The EU has already become less homogeneous and less coherent.”

For the Balkans, joining the EU gives them the best motivation to normalize their society and economy. The speaker would like this to happen eventually, but not immediately.

Here, Professor Hugo M. Kaufmann, Professor of Economics at Queens College and at the Graduate Center, who chaired the event, opened up for questions, and there were many very interesting questions. I will bring up mainly our own question that came about because of the suggestion of having special relationships between the EU and countries like Turkey, that want to join the EU, but are rebuffed – then offered a special compensation that looks good to some at the EU, but which they cannot accept. Internally their governments will look like losers, and they will become losers indeed because of internal politics.

My question was why look at special arrangements with single countries, while a special arrangement with a large group of countries would be much more palatable to these outsiders – and I named three such groups: The Mediterranean Group, The Black Sea Group, and the Turkic Group.

The Mediterranean group does exist in effect – this as a result of the Barcelona Process. It started as an alliance to clean up the Mediterranean Sea – as such it had to include the Southern States of the EU – those reaching the sea shores – the North African States, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey etc. It includes countries that do not have good relations with each other – but they have to cooperate – and you know what – it works and gives results.

The Black Sea International Council started out as an environmental organization with Greece as the only participating EU member. Now after the EU accession of Romania and Bulgaria, a new Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) organisation was created. This group that obviously also includes Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, has been extended to include the ‘frozen conflicts’ in Georgia, Moldova and between Armenia and Azerbaijan. (To others this reminds of the GUAM countries) This is indeed also an economic power house that can deal with quite a few oil and gas pipelines as well.

The Turkic group includes obviously Turkey and the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia. It could include also Azerbaidjan and Georgia. In effect it could be an oil backyard of the EU.

The bottom line of all this is that Turkey is a central part of all these three groups – it could in effect come in with all this dowry and thus be welcome in its special arrangement as leader of outside EU alliances. This – rather then thinking of Turkey as the EU opening to a Middle East where Turkey is indeed not welcome to the Arab feast – surely, even less, then its welcome to the EU table.

I had also a short question – what about Albania? Why actually not putting it ahead of all this talk about Turkey?

 

The respected Greek speaker said that Albania was one of the poorest countries in the world and he did not think Germany will want to finance Albania. (I clearly could not reopen this point – if I could I would have reminded him that the Kosovars are also Albanians, so are some 15% of the people of Macedonia. Nobody speaks now of a greater Albania, like nobody speaks now of rejoining the present Greek part of Cyprus with Greece. The latter came about because some sort of solution was found, but leaving Albania dangling brought once Mao to this country, now it could be Al Qaeda. This is just unsound policy.)

On the Barcelona process the answer was again money. The process does not go forward because of lack of money. Again I do not think that this is the case – it seems to be rather a jelousy of North EU not wanting to fund deals that favor the South States of the EU – sort of shooting themselves in the feet in the process. The speaker did not pick up the other two groups beyond saying that these are interesting ideas.

On the other hand, to a question about the name dispute between Greece and Macedonia, the speaker explained that the problem was that it worries Greece if later Macedonia would put claim to the areas in Turkey and Bulgaria that carry that name. He recognized that you cannot restrain people from naming themselves what they wish, but for international relations purpose they will have to pick for themselves some neutral name because even the temporary name of FYROM is not acceptable to Greece. Because of this – in our eyes total nonsense – Greece is vetoing Macedonia’s entrance to NATO – thus in effect hurting more NATO then Macedonia.

 

After all of this, when the meeting was called to end, in overtime, a Turkish Consul in New York asked for his right to say also a few words. He said flat that for 200 years Turkey is part of Europe. Turkey’s per capita income is now 1/5 to 1/4 of the average of the EU, but when Spain and Portugal entered the EU they were only 1/10. It is already 45 years that Turkey is trying to get recognition for its potential.

With the final end of the meeting I had the chance to talk to Mr. Basar Sen the Turkish Consul. He explained to me that the expectation of joining the EU has created its own logic and the government is now trapped by it, and turning away will have internal consequences. Surely I remember that starting with Ataturk and his “Young Turks,” a secular new Turkey was created out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire – a secular Turkey that wanted to be recognized, already then, as part of Europe. How can the speaker try to push them back into the Middle East from where these military men tried already then to escape?

But, sensing a friendly person, I followed up with a question I posed years ago to the Turkish Ambassador to the UN. Something that I think was the cardinal sin of Turkish thinking of last century. The question of the Kurds.

The Young Turks wanted to create a homogenized people out of the remnants of the Empire. They still had many – many different ethnic groups in the large piece of land that became Turkey – some say 154 ethnicities with language differences. But even if this was the case, there was only one minority that counted – these were the Kurds. What Turkey feared was that the Kurds will seek independence for their part of the land – so the Turkish government pursued them vehemently and turned them into real enemies. But even if the Kurds might have dreamt of having a larger Kurdistan to include also parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Azerbaijan, those other Kurds where not yet convinced that they, themselves, were ready to go for such a frame, with all this uncertainty hanging over the heads of their Turkish brethren. On the other hand, had Turkey realized that there were tremendous benefits in turning Turkey into a bi-national Turkish-Kurdish State, they could have indeed lured into their sphere of influence the Kurds of Iraq – the oil world would have looked differently, and the chances of having created an EU interest in their future would have helped more modernize Turkey, then the way they ended up fighting the greater majority of their people without showing for real economic results. We hope now that the Consul will find a way to provide us with think-tank material to help explain the the thinking of the Turkish leadership – past and present.

 THE EU LOOKS TO THE MEDITERRANEAN AND TO THE BLACK SEA AS ITS NATURAL FRONTIERS. SYNERGIES IN THESE AREAS WILL SERVE ITS INTERESTS. IN THE CASE OF THE BLACK SEA, VIA EU NEW MEMBERS BULGARIA AND RUMANIA, THE EU IS ALREADY PART OF LOCAL REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS.

[Comment by Fabrizio Tassinari on Euobserver] Sailing the black sea at last.

February 7, 2008EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - At a meeting between the EU and Black Sea countries foreign ministers in Kiev on February 14th, the EU will finally kick off its new Black Sea policy.

In view of the 2007 expansion of the EU to Bulgaria and Romania, and after some ten years since the European Commission’s only communication on Black Sea cooperation, the launch of the Black Sea Synergy last spring was a long-awaited and welcome step.

Now it’s time to deliver, which is where things could begin to look difficult.

In this new initiative, the commission identifies as many as thirteen cooperation areas. It plans to draw the EU closer to the existing regional organisations, primarily the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) organisation. And it aims to correlate region-wide developments with the resolution of the ‘frozen conflicts’ in Georgia, Moldova and between Armenia and Azerbaijan. All this is not endowed with new financial means, but will draw on existing resources, as well as on mechanisms for joint financing with other international actors operating in the region.

These indications appear sensible and promising, but they also raise a number of important questions that the Black Sea countries and the commission will have to address if the proposed policy is to be effective and sustainable.

First, there is the sector-specific focus of the initiative. The commission places a strong emphasis on sectors such as the environment, energy and transport, where EU programmes and initiatives are already up and running. This is understandable. EU-sponsored mechanisms in these fields deserve a new boost, particularly the case of energy, where enhanced Black Sea cooperation could play a key role in the EU’s fledging goal of supply diversification.

The inclusion in the Synergy of issues such as democracy and internal security is also noteworthy.

Regional cooperation and exchange of best practices in these fields could potentially have a major impact on the fragile governance structures of most former Soviet countries. Likewise, EU initiatives when it comes to the promotion of democracy could take particular advantage of the interest shown for the Synergy by local and regional authorities, as well as non-governmental actors in the region.

Overall, however, the list of priorities is a bit on the long side: issues such as employment, science and technology have little regional specificity and could in the long run dilute the effectiveness of the new initiative.

The second question relates to the institutional level. The Synergy will not create new institutions, and the commission has obtained observer status in the BSEC. These are, as such, sound moves. Black Sea cooperation is already a jungle of agreements, associations, and acronyms. And BSEC, with a membership spanning from the western Balkans to the Caspian shores, represents the most comprehensive forum to discuss pan-regional issues.

At the same time, the EU would be well advised not to rely exclusively on this organisation for its Black Sea policy. What should warn against it is, on the one hand, BSEC’s relatively modest implementation record over the past fifteen years. Furthermore, the EU would have much to gain from including in its plans the other regional initiatives and their main sponsors: Romania, Ukraine and Georgia. As these countries emerge from a turbulent couple of years of domestic power struggles, they should be encouraged to revive and streamline the core business of organisations such as the Black Sea Forum and the Community of Democratic Choice.

Third, the launching of a Black Sea Synergy presents unavoidable challenges at the broader strategic level. Russia’s assertiveness in the region is of course the major stumbling bloc here. Should the new EU policy really fulfil its promise, it may further ratchet up Moscow’s aggressive posturing, especially in relation to its western neighbours, energy and the frozen conflicts. But this need not necessarily be so. Moscow’s recent constructive BSEC chairmanship suggests that the prospect of isolation can give way to a more cooperative attitude towards the EU in due course.

Lastly, and just as importantly, there is the issue of visibility and ‘branding’ of the region. A new framework organising Black Sea cooperation should send a strong signal about the importance that the EU attaches to this region. At the same time, regional leadership must necessarily come from the region itself, not from Brussels. One indirect outcome of the new EU initiative, in this respect, has to be a more concerted effort of the littoral actors to enhance cooperation and promote the region at the wider European level.

May the meeting next week point the way in that direction.

Fabrizio Tassinari, author of “A Synergy for Black Sea Regional Cooperation” (CEPS, 2006), is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, a non-resident Fellow at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University and at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels.

A Scholar’s Legal Peril in Poland: Princeton Historian Could Face Criminal Charges Over Book.

By Craig Whitlock, Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 18, 2008.
WARSAW — Polish prosecutors are considering taking the unusual step of filing criminal charges against an Ivy League professor for allegedly “slandering the Polish nation” in a book that describes how Poles victimized Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in the aftermath of World War II.

Jan T. Gross, a Princeton University historian and native Polish Jew, has raised hackles here with the publication of “Fear,” an account of Poland’s chaotic postwar years in which Jews who barely survived the brutal Nazi occupation under the Germans often went on to suffer further abuse at the hands of their Polish neighbors.

The book was first published in 2006 in the United States, where reviewers found it praiseworthy. Gross’s work, however, generated bitter feelings among many Poles who accused him of using inflammatory language and unfairly stereotyping the entire population as anti-Semitic. When the Polish-language edition of his book was released here last Friday, prosecutors wasted no time in announcing that he was under investigation.

A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Krakow, which is handling the case, said a decision was expected this week on whether to press charges against Gross or summon him for questioning.

The law in question was adopted in 2006, around the time that “Fear” was published in English; Gross and some other historians say it was partly a response to the book. The measure prohibits anyone from asserting that “the Polish nation” was complicit in crimes or atrocities committed by Nazis or communists. The maximum penalty is three years’ imprisonment.

The threat of legal action has not deterred Gross so far. He arrived in Warsaw on Monday for a nationwide tour to promote his book, which has already sold out in some stores. In an interview, he said he doubts prosecutors will charge him.

“It’s completely bizarre,” he said, seeming to relish the attention. “There’s an old saying in Polish that if God wants to punish someone, he takes away their brains first.”

Poland has prosecuted Gross for his views before. In 1968, during communist rule, he was arrested as a student for participating in a free-speech movement and served five months in prison. He departed for the United States a year later, taking advantage of a Polish government policy that encouraged Jews to leave the country. He enrolled at Yale University and ultimately became a U.S. citizen.

In 2001, as a scholar, he provoked an intense public reckoning in Poland by publishing “Neighbors,” a book about a 1941 pogrom in the town of Jedwabne. Uncovering new evidence, he documented how hundreds of Jews were massacred by Polish villagers in an atrocity that had previously been blamed on the Nazis. Although the book caused an uproar, its findings were later corroborated by an official historical commission and endorsed by the government.

Many Polish historians are less enamored of Gross’s most recent book. But several have slammed the authorities for even thinking about taking the Princeton professor to court, saying it makes the country look backward.

“As a historian, I quite simply consider it a scandal,” said Pawel Machcewicz, a professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences. “It jeopardizes the standing of Poland as a democratic nation. We must demonstrate that we are not afraid of any historical truths, no matter how devastating.”

At the same time, Machcewicz and other scholars have strongly criticized “Fear,” arguing that Gross has sought to inflame public opinion by exaggerating the Polish attacks on Jews as “ethnic cleansing.” They also said he ignored how Polish society was filled with ethnic and religious recriminations after the war and that many Catholics, Poles and Ukrainians found themselves the target of violence.

“I’m not going to say the majority of his facts are wrong,” said Machcewicz. “It is true: Polish anti-Semitism existed. There were pogroms. Many Jews were killed. There is no reason to deny it or hide it. . . . But the language he used is counterproductive.”

Poland’s tragic wartime history remains a highly sensitive topic here. The Nazis exterminated an estimated 3 million Jews in Poland, or about 90 percent of the prewar Jewish population. But 3 million other Poles were also killed, and many people see them as forgotten victims in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Many Poles are still reluctant to engage in an open discussion of those years. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the archbishop of Krakow, suggested this week that the publisher of the Polish-language edition of “Fear,” a printing house with close ties to the church, had made a mistake.

“Your task is to promulgate the truth on history and not to wake up demons of anti-Polishness and anti-Semitism at the same time,” he said. “Reading the book filled me with pain.”

Andrzej Paczkowski, a well-known Polish historian and board member of the Institute of National Remembrance, said Gross had succeeded in stirring up emotions but questioned whether the public debate would do much good.

“This book is as much for psychologists as historians,” he said. “I think in this case he’s not a very good teacher. If you want to persuade someone of your own opinion, in my view, you should avoid scandals and media circuses and instead slowly demonstrate the course of events by relying on facts.”

As he prepared to launch his book tour, Gross said he was not surprised at the hostile reaction.

“The memories of the war here are fixed, of people being victims and heroes,” he said. “The truth of the matter is that European societies during the war did not behave as they’d like to think toward Jews.”

He also said he was not intimidated by the risk of a legal backlash or any other dangers. Next week, he is scheduled to make a public appearance in Krakow, the city where prosecutors are weighing legal action.

“People have warned me that I should worry and not walk at night alone, but I don’t feel any threats,” he said. At the same time, with his photograph in dozens of newspapers and magazines these days, he admitted to wearing a hat to disguise himself on the streets. “We’ll see what happens,” he said with a shrug.

Rival priests do battle in Bethlehem church – The Church of the Nativity.
By Nasser Shiyoukhi in Bethlehem for AP.
Published: December 28, 2007.

Robed Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests attacked each other with brooms and stones inside the Church of the Nativity yesterday as long-standing rivalries erupted in violence during holiday cleaning.

The basilica, built over the grotto in Bethlehem where Christians believe Jesus was born, is administered jointly by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic authorities. Any perceived encroachment on one group’s turf can set off vicious feuds.

Yesterday, dozens of priests and cleaners came to the fortress-like church to scrub and sweep the floors, walls and rafters ahead of the Armenian and Orthodox Christmas, celebrated in the first week of January. Thousands of tourists visited the church this week for Christmas celebrations.

But the clean-up turned ugly after some of the Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church’s section, touching off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians.

Palestinian police, armed with batons and shields, quickly formed a human cordon to separate the two sides so the cleaning could continue, then ordered an Associated Press photographer out of the church.

Four people, some with blood running from their faces, were slightly injured.

Activities at The UN – That Have Long Range Value – Do Not Appear In The UN Journal. Such As the June 6, 2007 Global Climate Events With ATHGO International and Mr. Miliband – The Activist Environment Minister Of the UK.

ATGHO International is a Los Angeles based organization with extensions to New York, Geneva, Washington DC, Yerevan, and Brussels. It is the Alliance Toward Harnessing Global Opportunities - www.athgo.org.
 http://www.athgo.org/NewSite/pdf/ATHGOGl…

Its mission is training, motivating, and inspiring future generations of international diplomats with skills and vision to cope with the rapid changes and challenges of the 21-st century. It was established in 1999, with the financial help of rich Armenian-Americans and is busy educating young people, globally, on issues of global dimension. It is only natural thus that its 2007 meeting at the UN, June 6-8, 2007, was for the purpose of: a conference on global warming and climate control titled – “Global Third Way: Becoming One with the Environment.”

They brought about 400 students and young professionals from 80 countries (250 academic institutions). The main focus was obviously Former Vice President Al Gore’s Climate Project in a series of presentations, panel discussions, with the involvement of many ambassadors to the UN, scientists, think tank members, NGOs, others with involvement at the UN …

I visited the Wednesday panel: “Developing International Will.” Among the participants were the Ambassadors from Switzerland, Japan, Sri Lanka, Namibia and others. We heard from Swiss Ambassador Peter Maurer that his embassy will be the first to become carbon-neutral. He also wants to do away with much of the travel by aiming at computer conferencing. Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam of Sri Lanka stressed the need for bottoming up rather then a top down approach because the responsibility is ours – we cause the demand that pushes the private sector to answer the needs we create. So also in matters of Climate change – the answer must be a bottoming up approach.

Then a tremendous observation was made by a student from the University of Cologne. He said that President Bush, by raising the question of the lack of democratization in Russia, brought out The response of President Putin that he will redirect his missiles, and the result is that the G8 meeting has been highjacked and the original question of climate change will not be dealt with. He wanted to know what should be the reaction to such an intentional highjacking of the meeting. The question was deemed very relevant to the topic of the panel and all members addressed it in various ways – but the common line was that as long as the threat is felt more by one group then another there will not be a an honest dealing with the subject. The Swiss Ambassador remarked that we must realize that in the end we have a common future, and that is that it will take us at end – to heaven or to hell.

The students continued their questions and when I left to go to the other meeting I was convinced that in that room there were young people that are not ready to bend before the art of bamboozle that is common practice in today’s diplomacy. Also, I was quite convinced that the ambassadors that participated at this meeting came there to put their best foot forward. These were not people that stood there for hidden purpose. They explained the diverse angles of the problem and talked about how one could have these ends meet – this provided that there is a clear understanding that the problem is real and we are not entitled to pass it on to a next generation.

When I left, next speaker was going to be Princeton U. Professor Michael Oppenheimer who was a lead author of the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports of the IPCC and co-founder of CAN (Climate Action Network) – an NGO.

I had to leave because at 5pm, in a different corner of the UN basement, organized by the UK Mission to the UN, we were going to listen to the Rt. Hon David Miliband MP, UK Secretary of State for Environment, on whose tour to Washington DC and the UN in New York we posted two earlier notes. The fact that he came here, rather then be already in Heiligendamm, we considered as a matter of high importance to the follow up of the G8+5 Summit.

There were many Ambassadors present in the Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium. Even the Swiss Ambassador moved over here from the podium at the other meeting. There was also a sprinkling of press people – none from the major daily press – those folks never come to the basement – they usually write only what they pick up in the official UN press-briefing room (S-226) or by bringing up questions at the official “stake-outs” in front of the Security Council.

Retiring Exquisite British Ambassador Sir Emyr Jones Parry, chaired the event and the lectures title was: “Climate Change and Development: Promoting Low Carbon Growth.” The invitation also said: “The speech will examine the complex relationship between climate change and development, and look at how we can ensure that sustainable economic growth and a low carbon emission economy are mutually reinforcing and mutually exclusive. There will be an opportunity for questions afterwards.”

The backdrop of all this is the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm, Germany, that has, under the leadership of the German EU Presidency, as its main topic of discussion Climate Change and as well will be touching upon Aid to Africa. Historically, it was under the UK EU Presidency, and at the Gleneagles, Scotland, G8 meeting, in 2005, and under the NGO push coming from popular activists Geldorf and Bono, that both those topics got on the G8 agenda, and the link between those topics is Sustainable Development.

Further, April 17, 2007, the UK Presidency of the UN Security Council, brought another first – the so called “Open Discussion on Energy, Security, and Climate Change,” which again was looking at security problems in Africa that result from global warming/climate change induced in other regions of the globe but having terrible effects upon Africa. Again, sustainable development was seen as a way out of this dilemma.

But, as said, this year’s G8 is under German leadership, and Tony Blair can only try to give a supporting hand to Mrs. Merkel’s efforts. Nevertheless, the leaders of the UK feel that these subjects are very much at the heart of UK Foreign Affairs interest, as well as at the heart of every other department in the British Government including the obvious Ministry for Environment. That is while everyone had his eyes on Heiligendamm, Mr. Miliband thought that trying to defuse USA opposition by talking to Washington political establishment about the need to continue negotiations on a post-Kyoto 2012-and-beyond regime for dealing with the needed decrease in CO2 emissions, with a follow up to the UN headquarters in New York, to speak with the ambassadors, the UN personnel, and the press that covers the UN. Mr. Miliband is also part of the establishment that has feelings of responsibility of the “richesse oblige” kind – that tells him and us that the common and differentiated responsibilities concept obliges the developed world to help the least developed part of the world. He also feels that the Doha trade round, whose prime purpose was to help poor nations develop, has stalled over rich country subsidies and this also impacts on Climate Change by interfering among other things with rational development of biofuels.

With above in mind, I am reviewing my notes for what novel nuances I could find on the June 6, 2007 evening at the UN.

First, from Sir Parry’s introduction we learned that this is not a subject of emissions alone – this is about environment policy, energy policy and the consequences and costs onf inaction. That the Security Council has specifically the responsibility to take position on these topics because there is no greater threat to security then the level of water rising because of global warming and the wiping out of whole UN Member States.

From Ambassador Parry we learned some dates, that to the best of my knowledge, were not made public by the UN yet. These are in September – with the UN Secretary-General to make a statement on the subject September 24th and a high level debate September 26-27.

Mr. Miliband delved right into the topic of development and the need to decrease the carbon footprint. He stressed that this is not an anti-growth approach, but a choice between low carbon growth and high carbon growth. His choice is clear and he stressed that it is based on Rio’s Common and Differentiated Responsibilities.

There are three reasons for the responsibility to help developing economies to achieve low carbon development.

(1) Climate Change effects all parts of the world – CO2 emitted in Bangalore is like CO2 emitted in Birmingham Alabama or England.

(2) Economic Development has the possibility to leapfrog in its development. There is no reason why a developing country now should repeat the mistakes that were done by previously developing countries.

(3) A post 2012 framework of commitments is necessary which collectively has to be a UN legal and binding framework. It has to be started by the G8+5 meeting.

Mr. Miliband went through part of the scientific data that shows how from a 280-300 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere of the pre-industrial era we got now to 425 ppm which led to a temperature increase by 0.7 degrees C
(1.5 degrees F) and what is worse – this increase that at first was slow – is accelerating now. This might have tremendous impacts in some areas, and he gave as an example Northern India where crop yields could fall by 75%. Also, deforestation results now in CO2 emissions that reach now 18-20% of total emissions.

* Above creates pressure for migration – WE Will Not Be Able To Adapt – We Will Have To Migrate, he said.

Mr. Miliband is adamant that we need to decrease energy demand and DECARBONIZE. He has no doubt that nuclear power is part of the energy mix – but he thinks that it will never reach a large part of the mix.

In Transport – a post-oil policy will lead to increase in biofuels, with inputs from energy efficiency and other technologies such as hybrids.

* Develop decentralized energy production including biofuels use, efficiency, wind, solar. Decentralization is specially advantageous in rural areas in developing countries.

The UK wants to build around 5 elements:

(1) Agreement to a long term goal needed to boost market commitment. President Bush also said it is needed and now we have to move to practical steps.

(2) A Carbon market with price on carbon and the backing of low carbon technologies. In this respect UNDP has already announced the creation of a new Carbon Credits Facility. see: http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2007/06…

(3) Carbon trading will bridge between countries. The World Bank will help with clean energy investments.

(4) Help dissuade deforestation.

(5) Help develop means for adaptation as it was asked at the Nairobi meeting of December 2006.

The bottom line is that 2007 is the last year to launch the negotiations for the post-2012 period and the G8 can help launch this and then to get it to the UN for general inclusion.

When the extensive Q&A period was started, it became obvious that with the many ambassadors in the room, they will be the ones to be favored for the questions.

The first was Mr. Peter Maurer, Ambassador for Switzerland. He pointed out the WTO mechanisms and linked them to the Kyoto Protocol Mechanisms and carbon mechanisms in general – saying that the beauty of these mechanisms is that they provide funding for development. This being a win-win.

The Ambassador for Mexico touched upon energy, Security, Climate Change and in Mr. Miliband’s answer we found the notion that Nations, and even parts of Nations, will in the end set their own way on how to generate low carbon energy. We found these ideas extremely interesting as he opened the way (a) to the possibility that there will be different ways of handling the problem – not just one agreed upon way, and (b) that doing something about climate change may take preference to Sovereignty in a dry way that things nations must have one central decision making center. What we read here is that States, Provinces, Territories etc., which are parts of a larger Sovereign Nation, may decide on their own way of contributing to solutions to the global warming problem – this being part of the stated US position so far as it mentions National Governments, but different from the US position when it might allow for separate ways of parts of a Nation.

Then, he continued pointing out that not all Nations are in the same situation – for instance Austria has already a 70% low carbon electricity generation infrastructure based on hydropower, but the UK has only 35% low carbon electricity.

Miliband points out that science, providing some solutions, has now shifted the old way of talking about the weather. We still talk about the weather, but now we might have the power to do something about it!
As Such:

* the business community has undergone now a fundamental shift, and wants a smooth and orderly change to low carbon.

* the political climate has changed. The green parties are involved. But there is a danger of backlash – and we saw the defeat of some Greens.

* there is recognition of the fact that development can be threatened by Climate Change. Me must thus line up market solutions and make the social justice parts of the Rio Declaration work.

The Ambassador from Uganda brought up the topic of transfer of Technology. Mr. Milbank insisted that the biggest drive will be for private sector investment. There will be a price on the carbon (the pollution) and it must be a just price. If it is too low there will be no incentive for change. Also, AID MONEY MUST BE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF A SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE.

To a question on biofuels Mr. Milbank he said that the emerging model calls for years of biofuels and that two questions will have to be answered:
(1) if the production is sustainable and (2) if the impact on other issues does not create negative aspects.

To look at the way Mr. Miliband, a youngish looking well centered presenter, made his arguments, there is really no reason to worry about his impact on the relationship with the US or with the UN, as one might have thought from the article in the Independent we brought up in:
 http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2007/06…

In effect he did not come to accuse President Bush, but rather to set the stage for a possible cooperative form that allows, under the aegis of the UN, after making sure that the problems are fully understood, a multi-ways move provided it goes in the same direction – a decarbonization of our energy systems in order to avoid horrendous future problems. Considering the article in the Independent, it really was far from the truth, at least at his presentation in new York. What he said in Washington we do not know, but we saw that he had enough to say in order to make the whole thing sound positive, and he allowed enough slack to economical skeptics.

To link back to the first part of this posting, the ATGHO meeting, we wish that his presentation had been available also to the young folks that were in that other, much larger, Conference Room. Those folks, after all, will be those to live with the consequences of actions or inactions at the UN. Mr. Miliband was not really a presenter that made another scientific background presentation. He rather, in a subtle way, tried to show how the world of international politics has the obligation and the possibility to do something about the problem – and the event gave pretty much the blueprint of things to come.

The US resolution to outlaw via the UN system the denial of the Holocaust, had a total of 103 co-sponsors, and was adopted by the UN without vote. This made some misrepresent the fact as “an Acceptance by Consensus.” Some early UN releases even said that it was accepted by 192 States – which is a terrible misrepresentation. Iran, on the record, spoke up against it. We called this article “A Litmus Test” because as we shall show, by analyzing the available information, the behavior regarding this issue – that is a record of inhumanity by sort of civilized people – throws also disgusting shadows on governments that hold seats, as UN Member States – in the UN glass building.

An NGO sent us the following e-mail:

UN REFORM ADVOCATES
34 East 39th Street, Suite 1B
New York, N.Y. 10016
 Hoschoenberg at aol.com

UN REFORM ADVOCATES WELCOMES ADOPTION OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL RESOLUTION

United Nations, New York, N.Y., January 26, 2007 … UN Reform Advocates welcomed the adoption today by consensus of the UN General Assembly resolution condemning without reservation any denial of the Holocaust. It expressed its profound appreciation to United States Ambassador Alejandro D. Wolff and his colleagues for their exemplary efforts on behalf of this resolution, which ended up with 103 co-sponsors.

At the same time it is deeply troubled by the number of delegations that questioned the Holocaust. In the opinion of Dr. Harris O. Schoenberg, UN Reform Advocates President, “Holocaust denial is incompatible with UN membership, and could only too easily lead to a new manifestation of genocide.”

The adoption of the Assembly resolution coincides with the 62nd anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945 and the commemoration of that event by the UN this year on January 29th.

# # #

As per information we obtained from the American Mission to the UN the 103 co-sponsors are as per attached list. Going over the UN Member States listings, and comparing also this list with the list of the States that voted for in the original UNGA resolution that made recognized the Holocaust and declared January 27 as the UN day for remembrance of the Holocaust, very interesting patterns become clear. The fact that this time the final adoption of the resolution was by consensus, can nevertheless not cover the fact that 89 UN Member States opted for not becoming part of the list of co-sponsors.

10 States were declared “no shows.” Of these only Papua New Guinea voted for the first resolution – so we can say with clarity that 9 States out of the 10 did in effect declare that they did not want to be part of this resolution. Two more States “arrived too late” for the second resolution and did not co-sponsor the first resolution – thus, without any further diplomatic niceties – let us say that these 11 States clearly oppose the resolution, so any contention by the UN that 192 States voted by consensus for this resolution is a blatant lie.

Of the remaining 76 States, that were present in the hall, but did not sign for co-sponsorship, 12 States did co-sponsor the first resolution but did not co-sponsor the second resolution – this may be a sign that the politics of the Holocaust deniers have influenced their position and led them to remove their names from the list of co-sponsors.

Among the clear no-shows at the second resolution, who also did not co-sponsor the first resolution, were: Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Zimbabwe. We raise our eyebrows at South Africa and Swaziland, but are left blaze in what regards the rest – basically all states with questionable status at the UN. Saudi Arabia does not come as a surprise, since 1948 they have had no good word for Jews or Israel and funded activities that threaten those groups.The two remaining States on this list of 10 are Belize and Cambodia, and we can understand that this issue may be of no interest to them.

Those that arrived late now, and did not co-sponsor the first resolution, are Burundi and Tanzania.

The ten States that co-sponsored the first resolution but did not co-sponsor the second resolution, states we regard under suspicion of having given in to outside pressures, or perhaps even to pressure groups within their own country, are: Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Philippines, Uganda, Uzbekistan. From This list we are amazed at the three Muslim States former members of the Soviet empire and of China.

On the other hand – Ghana, Grenada, Jamaica, Kenya, Maldives, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Samoa, Senegal, Seychelles, Togo, Vanuatu are 13 UN Member States that did not co-sponsor the first resolution but DID co-sponsor the second resolution. So we see also a movement in the positive direction that shows that there is hope and governments do sometimes try to redress past wrong decisions. Specially we applaud here Ghana, Jamaica, Senegal, Mexico and Mongolia which we understand the source of pressures they were under.

Now we are left with 64 UN Member States that did not get involved in either of the two co-sponsorships but were present in the hall. Of these Iran made a statement declaring “the resolution is a political hypocritical exercise.” So goes out the window the concept of consensus.

As per attached complete listing, it is obvious that all of the States of the League of Arab States that are Members of the UN, are part of this list. But amazing that countries like India, Armenia, Venezuela and Vietnam are part of this list. Who would imagine that Armenia, a people that suffered of genocide against them, did not see the importance of these resolutions. They just had one of their own killed this week because he spoke out against the past killings of Armenians? But so be it.

———————————-

The co-sponsorships – this because there was no real voting except the negative voice of Iran.
Permanent Mission Previous Co-Sponsor Current Sponsor # Notes
NAME
Afghanistan
Albania …………….. yes yes … 1
Algeria
Andorra …………….. yes yes … 1
Angola
Antigua & Barbuda
Argentina ………….. yes yes … 1
Armenia
Australia ……………. yes yes … 1
Austria ………………. yes yes … 1
Azerbaijan … yes
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus … yes
Belgium …………….. yes yes … 1
Belize No Show
Benin ……………….. yes yes … 1
Bhutan
Bolivia ………………… yes yes … 1
Bosnia/Herzegovina …….. yes yes … 1
Botswana
Brazil ………………….. yes yes … 1
Brunei Darussalam
Bulgaria …………………… yes yes … 1
Burkina Faso
Burundi arrived too late
Cambodia No Show
Cameroon ………………….. yes yes … 1
Canada ……………………. yes yes … 1
Cape Verde
CAR ……………………… yes yes … 1
Chad
Chile ……………………… yes yes … 1
China ……….. yes
Columbia yes yes … 1
Comoros
Congo …………………. yes yes … 1
Costa Rica ……………. yes yes … 1
Cote d’lvoire …………….. yes yes … 1
Croatia …………………. yes yes … 1
Cuba
Cyprus …………………. yes yes … 1
Czech Republic ………….. yes yes … 1
Dem Korea
Dem Rep Congo …………. yes yes … 1
Denmark ………………….. yes yes … 1
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic ………. yes yes … 1
Ecuador … yes
Egypt
El Salvador …………………. yes yes … 1
Eq Guinea … yes
Eritrea
Estonia ……………………. yes yes … 1
Ethiopia …………………. yes yes … 1
Fiji ………………………. yes yes … 1
Finland …………………… yes yes … 1
France ………………….. yes yes … 1
Gabon ………………… yes yes … 1
Gambia … yes
Georgia ………………… yes yes … 1
Germany …………………. yes yes … 1
Ghana …………………… yes … 1
Greece ……………………. yes yes … 1
Grenada ………………… yes … 1
Guatemala ……………….. yes yes … 1
Guinea
Guinea-Bissazu
Guyana
Haiti ……………………….. yes yes … 1
Honduras ……………………. yes yes … 1
Hungary …………………. yes yes … 1
Iceland …………………… yes yes … 1
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland ……………………. yes yes … 1
Israel ………………………… yes yes … 1
Italy ………………………… yes yes … 1
Jamaica …………………… yes … 1
Japan ……………………….. yes yes … 1
Jordan
Kazakhstan …. yes
Kenya ……………………… yes … 1
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Lao People’s DR
Latvia ………………………. yes yes … 1
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia ……………………… yes yes … 1
Libya
Liechtenstein ………………. yes yes … 1
Lithuania ……………………… yes yes … 1
Luxembourg …………………. yes yes … 1
Macedonia …………………… yes yes … 1
Madagascar ………………….. yes yes … 1
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives ………………… yes … 1
Mali ………. yes
Malta …………………………. yes yes … 1
Marshall Islands …………….. yes yes … 1
Mauritania
Mauritius ………………….. yes … 1
Mexico ……………………. yes … 1
Micronesia ………………….. yes yes … 1
Monaco …………………….. yes yes … 1
Mongolia …………………….. yes … 1
Montenegro …………………… yes yes … 1
Morocco
Mozambique ………………….. yes yes … 1
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru …………………………. yes yes … 1
Nepal
Netherlands ………………….. yes yes … 1
New Zealand …………………. yes yes … 1
Nicaragua …. yes
Niger
Nigeria
Norway …………………… yes yes … 1
Oman
Pakistan
Palau ……………………. yes yes … 1
Panama …………………….. yes yes … 1
Papua New Guinea ….. yes No Show
Paraguay ………………………. yes yes … 1
Peru ………………………….. yes yes … 1
Phillipines …. yes
Poland ……………………… yes yes … 1
Portugal …………………… yes yes … 1
Qatar
Rep of Korea …………………. yes yes … 1
Rep of Moldova ………………… yes yes … 1
Romania ………………………….. yes yes … 1
Russian Federation …………….. yes yes … 1
Rwanda ………………………… yes yes … 1
St Kitts & Nevis ……………….. yes yes … 1
St Lucia
St Vincent/Grenadines
Samoa …………………………. yes … 1
San Marino …………………….. yes yes … 1
Sao Tome & Principe
Saudi Arabia No Show
Senegal …………………………. yes … 1
Serbia …………………………… yes yes … 1
Seychelles ……………………. yes … 1
Sierra Leone …………………….. yes yes … 1
Singapore ……………………….. yes yes … 1
Slovakia …………………………. yes yes … 1
Slovenia …………………………… yes yes … 1
Solomon Islands
Somalia No Show
South Africa No Show
Spain ……………………………… yes yes … 1
Sri Lanka
Sudan No Show
Suriname
Swaziland No Show
Sweden ……………………………. yes yes … 1
Switzerland ………………………. yes yes … 1
Syrian Arab Rep No Show
Tajikistan No Show
Thailand
Timor-Leste ………………………… yes yes … 1
Togo ………………………… yes … 1
Tonga ……………………………. yes yes … 1
Trinidad & Tabago ……………… yes yes … 1
Tunisia
Turkey ……………………………. yes yes … 1
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda …. yes
Ukraine ……………………….. yes yes … 1
United Arab Emirates
UK …………………………….. yes yes … 1
United Rep of Tanzania arrived too late
USA …………………………… yes yes … 1
Uruguay …………………….. yes yes … 1
Uzbekistan … yes
Vanuatu ………………………. yes … 1
Venezuela
Viet Nam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe No show
total 103

——————————————–

Statement by Ambassador Wolff on the Introduction of the Holocaust Denial Resolution on 1-26-07

Madame President,

I have the honor to speak on behalf of 103 co-sponsors. As we prepare for
Monday’s observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the
victims of the Holocaust, it is crucial that the General Assembly declare,
unambiguously and forcefully, its condemnation, without any reservation, of any
denial of the Holocaust. The resolution we are introducing builds on the strong
foundation of resolution A/60/7 of 2005 in making clear that all people and all
states have a vital stake in a world free of genocide.

The terrible events of the Holocaust are deeply disturbing and will always
remain so. It was one of the most tragic moral catastrophes in the history of
humankind. We remember it, indeed we must remember it, to ensure that such
events are never repeated. Those who would deny the Holocaust–and, sadly,
there are some who do–reveal not only their ignorance but their moral failure
as well.

Finally, the resolution urges all member states unreservedly to reject any
denial of the Holocaust as an historical event, either in full or in part, or
any activities to this end. By so doing, this Assembly places its moral
authority, and its political will, squarely behind the very first words of our
Charter, “to save succeeding generations.” The United Nations was founded in
the immediate aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, and it is
particularly fitting to remember this legacy.
Madame President, on behalf of the co-sponsors, I offer this resolution for
adoption. We hope that all member states will join in consensus so that the
United Nations may speak as one on this vital issue.

————————————–

The Statement Made by US Ambassador Alejandro D. Wolf After The Vote:

USUN PRESS RELEASE # 011 (07) January 26, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Explanation of Vote by Ambassador Alejandro D. Wolff, Acting U.S. Permanent
Representative, on Adoption of the Resolution on Holocaust Denial, at the
General Assembly, January 26, 2007

The United States strongly supports this Resolution that condemns without
reservation any denial of the Holocaust. This Assembly should be proud of
adopting today’s Resolution by consensus. It is shameful that one country
decided to reject that consensus.

Tomorrow will be the 62nd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a Nazi
death camp where over 1 million people were murdered. To this day, Auschwitz
serves as a powerful symbol of what can happen when tyranny and oppression go
unchecked. As we mourn those who lost their lives, we must, as
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted, “reassert our commitment to human rights”
which was “desecrated at Auschwitz and by genocides and atrocities since.”

The United States introduced and sponsored this important Resolution, not as a
rhetorical exercise, but because of the implications of Holocaust denial in the
world today. Some experts on the topic have noted that, “Every genocide is
followed by denial.” Despite the undeniable truth about the Holocaust, we are
now witnessing so-called scholars, even world leaders, attempting to revise
history, masking a more dangerous agenda.

This Resolution is not about countering free speech or intellectual thought; it
is about avoiding future disasters. One observer put it simply and powerfully
when he stated that “The black hole of forgetting is the negative force that
results in future genocides.”

A little over a month ago, people around the world marked International Human
Rights Week and renewed the solemn pledge of the Universal Declaration on Human
Rights, which was drafted in the wake of the atrocities of World War II.

We take note that this esteemed body adopted by consensus in 2005 a Resolution
unequivocally rejecting the denial of the Holocaust as an historical event. We
call upon all Member States to follow through on that and today’s Resolution to
include measures in their educational systems that underscore the importance of
never denying the Holocaust. As Kofi Annan remarked at the end of his tenure,
“some of the rhetoric used in connection with the issue implies a refusal to
concede the very legitimacy of Israel’s existence, let alone the validity of its
security concerns….Today, Israeli’s are often confronted with words and action
that seem to confirm their fear that the goal of their adversaries is to
extinguish their existence as a state, and as a people.”

Indeed, the words and actions of some, in direct violation of the UN Charter,
underscore why this Resolution is so important. Just last month, the Iranian
regime sponsored a conference questioning the historical fact of the atrocities
of the Holocaust. Iranian President Ahmadi-Nejad has also called for the state
of Israel to be “wiped off the map.” That same regime is under UN Security
Council sanctions right now to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, in
direct violation of its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The confluence of these three forces cannot be viewed abstractly or in isolation
of each other. They create a cauldron of conflict that cannot be ignored.

Some will cloak their hatred and hidden agenda by invoking the right to free
speech and academic freedom. There is a categorical difference between free
speech and speech which willfully and maliciously ignores recognized historical
facts in order to advance an ulterior agenda. Conferences like those sponsored
by Iran are designed solely to polarize and incite hatred. If successful, they
can then use that hatred as a catalyst to justify genocide. It is also specious
to diminish the Holocaust by making false comparisons — as we heard earlier
this morning by some delegations. As Kofi Annan powerfully noted, “What was
done to Jews and others by the Nazis remains an undeniable tragedy, unique in
human history.”

The United States stands firmly opposed to any attempts to deny the Holocaust.
This Resolution reinforces that message and we encourage all Member States to
take concrete steps to make that message heard. To deny the events of the
Holocaust is tantamount to the approval of genocide in all its forms. Today we
stand together saying to the world that we will not allow that to happen.

————————–

Remarks by Ambassador Wolf After The Vote:

Reporter: What are your comments regarding the statement made by the Iranian
delegation, stating that this adoption of the resolution is a hypocritical
political exercise?

Ambassador Wolff: Well, as you heard from our statement — first of all, let me
say Iran is the only country, by disassociating from this consensus, that
rejected this consensus. It stands alone, in shame, isolated, against the rest
of the international community. I won’t comment any further in terms of who is
hypocritical and who deserves opprobrium.

Reporter: Ambassador, were you disappointed that there were so few members in
the General Assembly hall for this –

Ambassador Wolff: Yes, I was.

————————

The bottom line for us from all of this is that “Consensus” is a misnomer for what went on in the UNGA when it adopted the proposal to outlaw Holocaust denial – at least within the UN and its member states.

There was at least one Member State – Iran – that openly defied above proposition. There were 10 more countries that clearly showed their lack of enthusiasm. At least Saudi Arabia, out of this group, has a clear track record of not accepting the proposition. Both these countries use oil money to undermine the proposition in active ways.

Why do good people talk of a united UN, of “consensus” that does not exist, and by doing so create a make believe conditions that, dangerously, may actually, build up for new atrocities?

—————————

This is the official UNGA Press reporting to the press.

General Assembly
GA/10569

Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York
Sixty-first General Assembly
Plenary
85th Meeting (AM)

GENERAL ASSEMBLY ADOPTS RESOLUTION CONDEMNING ANY DENIAL OF HOLOCAUST

United States Representative Says to Deny Events
Of Holocaust Tantamount to Approval of Genocide in All Its Forms

The General Assembly today adopted by consensus a resolution condemning, without reservation, any denial of the Holocaust, with the United States, among the text’s 103 sponsors, stressing that to deny the events of the Holocaust — one of the most tragic moral catastrophes in history — “was tantamount to approval of genocide in all its forms”.

Reaffirming its landmark resolution of 1 November 2005 rejecting efforts to deny the Holocaust based on the conviction that ignoring the historical fact of those terrible events increased the risk of their being repeated, the Assembly urged all Member States to unreservedly reject any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, or any activities towards that end. The United Nations has designated 27 January as the annual International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.

Saying that those who denied the Holocaust revealed their ignorance and moral failure, the United States representative commended the Assembly for asserting its moral authority and political will. He introduced and sponsored today’s text, not as a rhetorical exercise, but because of the implications of Holocaust denial. What the world was witnessing today in terms of such denial was “masking a more dangerous agenda”. As one observer had recently said, “the black hole of forgetting was the negative force that resulted in future genocides”.

Just last month, Iran had sponsored a conference questioning the historical fact of the Holocaust; its President had also called for the State of Israel to be wiped off the map. The Iranian regime was also under a Security Council resolution to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. The confluence of those three forces created a “cauldron of conflict”, which could not be ignored, he said.

Israel’s representative said that the historic 2005 resolution on the Holocaust remembrance had reflected the Assembly’s understanding that the lessons of the Holocaust were universal; that speaking out and educating about the Nazis’ brutal and systematic murder of the Jewish people must focus world attention on the horror of genocide and compel all nations and people of goodwill to recommit their efforts to preventing such atrocities.

Regrettably, those lessons were being rejected and flaunted in certain parts of the world, he said. While the nations of the world gathered here to affirm the historicity of the Holocaust with the intent of never again allowing genocide, “a member of the Assembly was acquiring the capabilities to carry out its own”. The President of Iran was in fact saying, “‘There really was no Holocaust, but just in case, we shall finish the job!’”.

Placing on record his deep concern and rejection of what he saw as an attempt to misuse the General Assembly’s procedures, Iran’s representative said the resolution’s main sponsors had sought to present the text under “mischievous” intent to pursue narrow political interests and misuse the Assembly. The intent behind that move could by no means be regarded as genuine. If the thrust of the resolution was to condemn the crime of genocide, the Assembly, through a great number of resolutions, had already addressed that grave concern.

Iran, like many other countries, had condemned genocide against any race, group, or religion as a crime against humanity. He reiterated that unambiguous position today. However, the Israeli regime had manipulated the sufferings of the Jewish people as a cover for crimes committed against the Palestinians, including ethnic cleansing and State terrorism. The international community must not allow that regime to exploit past crimes as a pretext to commit new genocide and crimes.

At the start of the meeting, Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa of Bahrain drew the Members’ attention to a letter of the Secretary-General (document A/61/709) addressed to the President informing the Assembly that 16 Member States were in arrears in the payment of their financial contributions to the United Nations under the terms of Article 19 of the Charter. She reminded delegations that Article 19 states that a Member in arrears shall have no vote in the Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years.

Also speaking in today’s meeting were the representatives of Egypt, Indonesia, Venezuela, Germany (on behalf of the European Union), Russian Federation, and Costa Rica.

The General Assembly will meet again at a time to be announced.

Introduction of Draft Resolution

Introducing the draft resolution (document A/61/L.53), ALEJANDRO DANIEL WOLFF ( United States) said that, since the text’s original submission, several more delegations had joined as co-sponsors, bringing the total to 103. On their behalf, and in preparation for Monday’s observance of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, it was crucial for the General Assembly to declare, unambiguously and forcefully, its condemnation, without reservation, of any denial of the Holocaust.

He said that the draft resolution before the Assembly built on the strong foundation of resolution A/60/7 of 2005 in making clear that all people and all States had a vital stake in a world free of genocide. The terrible events of the Holocaust had been deeply disturbing and would always remain so. That had been one of the most tragic moral catastrophes in all history, and humankind must remember to ensure that such events were never repeated. Those who denied the Holocaust revealed their ignorance and moral failure.

The draft resolution urged all Member States to reject any denials of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, or any related activities. By so doing, the Assembly had asserted its moral authority and its political will, under the United Nations Charter, to save succeeding generations — which was indeed the Organization’s legacy, as it had been founded in that event’s aftermath. He offered the draft resolution for adoption and hoped that all would join consensus so that the United Nations might speak as one on that vital issue.

Speaking before the vote, HOSSEIN GHARIBI (Iran) said he wished to place on record his delegation’s deep concern and rejection of the attempt being made by certain members to misuse the Assembly’s procedures to raise an issue not on the agenda of the sixty-first session and of no relevance to the items on which the resolution had supposedly been tabled. He had every reason to believe that today’s attempt was both procedurally and substantively flawed. The intent behind that move could by no means be regarded as genuine. Its main sponsors had sought to present the text under “mischievous” intent to pursue narrow political interests and misuse the Assembly.

He said that, if the thrust of the resolution was to condemn the crime of genocide, the Assembly, through a great number of resolutions, had already addressed that grave concern. Iran, like many other countries, had condemned genocide against any race, group, or religion as a crime against humanity. He reiterated that unambiguous position today. There was no justice or any justification for the attempts made by some, particularly the Israeli regime, to exploit past crimes as a pretext to commit new genocide and crimes.

Many new such cases necessitated a thorough and comprehensive examination by the international community, in order to prevent their recurrence in the future, he said. Imposing a restrictive approach to such an examination would not serve that purpose; only an objective examination of what had happened could ensure that such crimes were never again repeated. Addressing the enormity of historical crimes should be done with a view to avoiding their recurrence. That required rigorous scrutiny. The necessary seriousness and sincerity of that endeavour would be undermined by political judgement and closing the door on scope and extent of such crimes.

He said that the basic principles of democracy, including the right to freedom of expression and belief, should pave the way to explore different aspects of history without arbitrary restrictions. Genocide and aspects associated with that horrific crime should not be manipulated. Regrettably, the Israeli regime had manipulated the sufferings of the Jewish people as a cover for crimes committed against the Palestinians, including ethnic cleansing and State terrorism. The international community should take strong action against such atrocious crimes and allow humanitarian sentiment to pursue its legitimate goals.

The main aims behind submitting today’s resolution were anything but about genocide and the suffering that wrought, he said. The main sponsors otherwise would have referred to other cases of genocide, past and present, especially in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Palestine, and the Balkans, where enormous suffering had occurred. In view of the above, he fully dissociated himself from today’s entire hypocritical exercise.

Action on Text

Then, the General Assembly adopted the resolution on the Holocaust denial (document A/61/L.53) without a vote.

Explanations of Position

Explaining his position after the vote, MAGED A. ABDELAZIZ ( Egypt) said he had joined consensus on the text, stressing once again his strong belief that the Holocaust should be remembered as one of the dark points in the history of humanity. He thanked the co-sponsors, particularly the European countries, for keeping that memory alive and for working to correct those mistakes. Adoption of the resolution today under agenda item 44, “culture of peace”, could serve as a sobering reminder that preventing the recurrence of such heinous crimes could only be through the international community’s intensive efforts to enhance and revitalize the culture of peace, tolerance, co-existence, recognition and prevention of the suffering of others, regardless of religion, ethnicity or belief.

He said that the United Nations had a particular responsibility in that regard to promote ethnic dialogue among civilizations, cultures and regions, and to do what it could to prevent the recurrence of such crimes in all parts of the world. The painful memories of the Holocaust should also serve as a repugnant reminder of the need to combat racism, intolerance and xenophobia in all its forms, and serve as a lesson that appeasing intolerant ideologies would cost humanity dearly. The international community should not remain complacent in combating the xenophobic tide growing in many parts of the world, he warned.

ADIYATWIDI ADIWOSO ASMADY ( Indonesia) said that, for more than 50 years, the world had struggled with the implications for the relationship among peoples. While there could be no forgetting its lessons, the Holocaust was hardly the only human tragedy to offer such lessons. Modern history was replete with incidents in which millions of people had been eliminated in the most heartless way.

She said the highest tribute that could be paid to the victims of the Holocaust and other victims was to prevent the recurrence of such atrocities and to stop them in their tracks wherever they might erupt. However, the question of standards of morality and freedom of expression posed certain challenges. Cartoons purporting to depict the Prophet Mohammed had created tensions among different peoples of the world. There was a need for mutual respect and freedom of expression must be expressed within certain parameters. There must also be respect for differences, especially those relating to culture and religion.

MARCO PALAVIANA (Venezuela), also speaking after the vote, said that, while millions of human beings had been victims of the Holocaust during the Second World War, the resolution should also cover the deaths of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the Palestinian people, who were the victims of excesses perpetrated under the pretext of self-defence and security, as had occurred in November 2006 at Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip. The horrors of the past were the best reason to demand respect for international law, international humanitarian law and human rights. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were being victimized by actions carried out in the name of democracy by the United States. The resolution should cover the entire scope of victims and find an appropriate balance.

General Assembly President SHEIKHA HAYA RASHED AL KHALIFA of Bahrain said that, by its action today, the Assembly had reaffirmed its condemnation of the Holocaust as a crime against humanity, and issued a strong reminder that the international community was united in opposing all crimes against humanity. For the dignity of all humanity, Member States must strengthen their resolve to prevent such atrocities whenever and wherever they might occur. Quoting Edmund Burke, she said: “All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Also explaining his position, DAN GILLERMAN ( Israel) said that adoption of the resolution on Holocaust remembrance more than a year ago (document A/60/7) had been a historic milestone for the Assembly and for the United Nations, and an important step in bolstering the founding principles of the world body. More so, the text on the Holocaust remembrance had reflected the understanding of the Assembly that the lessons of the Holocaust were universal; that speaking out and educating about the Nazis’ brutal and systematic murder of the Jewish people must focus world attention on the horror of genocide and compel all nations and people of goodwill to recommit their efforts to preventing such atrocities.

Regrettably, he said, lessons were being rejected and flaunted in certain parts of the world. While the nations of the world gathered today to voice in unison their collective commitment to condemning Holocaust denial — without reservation, in any and all forms — a member of the Assembly continued to deny that eternal truth. While the nations of the world gathered here to affirm the historicity of the Holocaust with the intent of never again allowing genocide, “a member of the Assembly was acquiring the capabilities to carry out its own”. The President of Iran was in fact saying, “‘There really was no Holocaust, but just in case, we shall finish the job!’”.

It was against that backdrop that the draft resolution on Holocaust denial had been conceived, he went on. The international communities carried the profound responsibility of ensuring that the Holocaust and its lessons were never forgotten. The Holocaust served as a warning to all people of the profound dangers of hatred, bigotry, and racism. Joining the resolution was an affirmation that the Holocaust was “not up for question or debate”. Its lessons carried such universal weight that they could not be carried solely by the Jewish people. That was precisely why the nations of the world supported the resolution on the remembrance last year and were supporting the text on the denial this year — today’s text reminded those who viciously denied the Holocaust that they could not escape the truth of reality.

Speaking on behalf of the European Union, THOMAS MATUSSEK ( Germany) said he was aware that the unprecedented crime of the Holocaust had been committed by Germans in the name of their country, and that Germany’s very special responsibility stemmed from that. While the Holocaust had taken place in Europe, its significance reached beyond that continent, and it was unprecedented in human history. Therefore, every 27 January the General Assembly and many Member States commemorated the liberation of the Nazi death camps, honouring the memory of the victims of the Holocaust -– millions of Jews, as well as other groups like the Sinti and Roma people, persons with disabilities and those persecuted because of their sexual orientation.

In 2005, the General Assembly had created the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, he said. That consensus decision was proof of the resolve expressed by each Member State not to let the Holocaust fall into oblivion or be ignored. The Commemoration must be a defining part of humanity’s common heritage and a measure of each State’s commitment to a world free from genocide. The international community must understand the responsibility imposed by the victims of the Holocaust. Especially today, when ever fewer survivors could pass on their own personal experience of the Holocaust, it was vital to find new ways to keep alive the memory of those terrible crimes for future generations.

Commemoration of the Holocaust reaffirmed the responsibility to combat anti-Semitism, racism and any form of political, ethnic or religious intolerance, he said. While anti-Semitism had been the central historical context of the Holocaust, racism, intolerance and hatred might again generate atrocities and genocidal crimes. It was the duty of every member of the global community to prevent that. But the first and foremost prerequisite for taking up that duty was the readiness to face the truth, the resolve neither to evade the truth nor to distort historical facts. Such distortions were a shameful failure of the common responsibility to ensure a world free from such atrocities.

VITALY I. CHURKIN ( Russian Federation) said that the memory of the monstrous crimes of Nazism was still alive today. No one had the right to forget that tragedy, and it must be remembered in order to avoid its possible repetition. Furthermore, no one could remain indifferent to religious intolerance, racism and xenophobia. The Holocaust was not only a tragedy for Europeans, but for humanity as a whole. The adopted resolution contained an appeal to all Member States to condemn, not only the fact of the denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, but any act that sought to achieve that aim. That meant that Member States were bound to include in that condemnation attempts to revise the history of the Second World War and the merits of those who took up arms to fight the Nazis. Any attempt to make heroic the henchmen of fascism must be rejected.

Noting that the United Nations had declared 27 January the International Day of Commemoration, he recalled that that had been the date when the Red Army had freed the Auschwitz death camp, one of the largest. The memory of the heroism of the Soviet soldiers and the many millions of victims in his country could never reconcile itself with those of “opportunistic political interest” who sought to distort the significance of that history. He honoured as sacred the memory of the 6 million Jews and Europeans, half of whom had been citizens of the Soviet Union. Thus, he welcomed the adoption of the resolution and had co-sponsored it.

Expressing his strong support for the resolution, which condemned without reservation any denial of the Holocaust, Mr. WOLFF ( United States) said that the Assembly should be proud of its adoption by consensus. It was shameful that one country had decided to reject it. Tomorrow would be the sixty-second anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where more than 1 million people had been murdered. That served as a powerful symbol of what could happen when tyranny and oppression went unchecked. As the world mourned those who lost their lives there, it must reassert its commitment to human rights, which had been desecrated at Auschwitz and at genocides and atrocities since then.

He said that the United States had introduced and sponsored today’s important text, not as a rhetorical exercise, but because of the implications of Holocaust denial in the world today. Some experts on the topic had said that every genocide was followed by denial. Despite the undeniable truth of the Holocaust, the world was now witnessing that some so-called scholars and world leaders were attempting to revise world history, “masking a more dangerous agenda”. The resolution was not about countering free speech or intellectual thought; it was about avoiding future disasters. As one observer recently said, the black hole of forgetting was the negative force that resulted in future genocides.

Just last month, Iran had sponsored a conference questioning the historical fact of the Holocaust; its President had also called for the State of Israel to be wiped off the map, he said. The Iranian regime was under a Security Council resolution to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Those three forces could not be viewed in isolation from each other; the confluence of those forces created a “cauldron of conflict”, which could not be ignored. Some would cloak their hatred by invoking the right to free speech, but there was a categorical difference between free speech and that which ignored historical facts in order to advance an ulterior agenda. Such conferences were designed solely to polarize and design hatred. If successful, that hatred could be used to justify genocide.

“To deny the events of the Holocaust was tantamount to approval of genocide in all its forms,” he said. The United States stood together with all the world in saying it would not allow that to happen.

SAUL WEISLEDER ( Costa Rica) expressed support for the statement by the Egyptian delegate, saying it was to be hoped that the resolution would ensure there were no more holocausts.

————-

26 January 2007

Secretary-General
SG/SM/10855

Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York
SECRETARY-GENERAL WELCOMES ADOPTION OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION,

SAYS DENIAL OF HISTORICAL FACTS, SUCH AS HOLOCAUST, UNACCEPTABLE

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

The Secretary-General welcomes the adoption by the General Assembly today of a resolution unequivocally condemning any denial of the Holocaust. This reflects the prevailing view of the international community. The Secretary-General reiterates his conviction that the denial of historical facts such as the Holocaust is unacceptable. He expresses his strong desire to see this fundamental principle respected both in rhetoric and in practice.

—————–

From the UN News Center:

UN Assembly condemns Holocaust denial by consensus; Iran disassociates itself – (26 January 2007)

The United Nations General Assembly today condemned without reservation any denial of the Holocaust, with only Iran publicly disassociating itself from the consensus resolution which was immediately hailed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The Assembly, noting that the resolution was adopted on the eve of the UN-designated annual International Day of Commemoration for Holocaust victims, who also included not only Jews but also Roma, Sinti, homosexuals and other groups, called on all its 192 Member States “unreservedly to reject any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, or any activities to this end.”
Welcoming the measure, which was introduced by the United States on behalf of 103 co-sponsors, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement voicing “his strong desire to see this fundamental principle respected both in rhetoric and in practice.”
“By this action today, the General Assembly reaffirms its condemnation of the Holocaust as a crime against humanity,” said the body’s president, Sheikha Haya Al Khalifa of Bahrain.
“This is a strong reminder to all that the international community is united in opposing all crimes against humanity,” she said. “For the dignity of all humanity, we must strengthen our resolve to prevent such atrocities, whenever and wherever they might occur.”
Introducing the resolution, acting US Permanent Representative Alejandro D. Wolff said it made clear that all people and all States have a vital stake in a world free of genocide.
“We remember it [the Holocaust], indeed we must remember it, to ensure that such events are never repeated,” he stressed. “Those who would deny the Holocaust – and, sadly, there are some who do – reveal not only their ignorance but their moral failure as well.”
Iranian representative Hossein Gharibi, while reiterating his country’s “unambiguous” condemnation of genocide against any race, dismissed the resolution as a manipulation to deflect attention from Israel’s “atrocious” crimes and said it should have included other cases of genocide such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the US dropped atomic bombs, Palestine, Rwanda and the Balkans.
“In view of the above we truly disassociate ourselves from this entire hypocritical political exercise,” he declared.
Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman said the lessons of the Holocaust are universal, compelling all nations to recommit to preventing the horrors of genocide. “While the nations of the world gather here to affirm the historicity of the Holocaust with the intent of never again allowing genocide, a Member of this Assembly is acquiring the capabilities to carry out its own,” he added.
“The President of Iran is in fact saying: ‘There really was no Holocaust, but just in case, we shall finish the job.’”
Speaking on behalf of the European Union (EU), German Ambassador Thomas Matussek said distortions of historical facts “are a shameful failure of the responsibility we all share to ensure a world free from such atrocities.”
Speaking in the name of his country, he noted that the “unprecedented crime of the Holocaust was committed by Germans and in the name of Germany, and from that stems our very special responsibility.”
The UN marks Holocaust Commemoration Day annually on 27 January but because it falls on a Saturday this year, it will be observed on Monday 29 January. In a message prepared for the occasion, Mr. Ban calls the Holocaust “a unique and undeniable tragedy.” The remembrance “is an essential response to those misguided individuals who claim that the Holocaust never happened, or has been exaggerated,” he adds.
Tomorrow, a month-long exhibition will open in the General Assembly Visitors’ Lobby, displaying both the plight of the Roma and Sinti minorities in Central and Eastern Europe and paintings and sculptures by four Holocaust survivors – Joseph Bau (deceased), Henny Trompetter Zwecher de Brito, David Friedman (deceased) and Hanka Kornfeld-Marder.
Last month, on the day he was sworn in as the next UN Secretary-General, Mr. Ban was asked about Iran’s conference on the scale and nature of the slaughter of 6 million Jews. “Denying historical facts, especially on such an important subject as the Holocaust, is just not acceptable,” he replied. “Nor is it acceptable to call for the elimination of any State or people.”
In 2005, both then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Security Council condemned reported remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for Israel to be wiped off the map.