From:        naturalhabitat at naturalhabitat.rsys1.c…
Subject:     Natural Habitat Adventures: 60-Second Safari to Bhutan
Date:     July 9, 2008

They write:
Join us for a rare encounter with a lost kingdom, an untarnished land, a unique culture and a gentle people that have remained almost unchanged for centuries.

Bhutan is truly an anomaly in the contemporary world. This small kingdom in the heart of the Himalayas has remained in relative isolation, its Buddhist traditions and peaceable ways untouched by outside influence. Home to snow leopards, blue sheep, red pandas, Asian elephants and tigers, Bhutan’s environment and culture are strictly protected.

Only since 1974 have tourists been allowed and visitors to Bhutan remain few. But those who have made the journey with us have discovered a mystical world of incredible mountains, wild rivers and friendly people.

Please click here for a brief photographic introduction to the spirit and nature of Bhutan. And if you want to be among the lucky few who have the opportunity to explore this peaceable kingdom, please don’t hesitate to contact us for an adventure experience quite unlike anything most travelers have ever experienced.

Sincerely,
Your Nature Travel Specialists

P.S. We only have three places on our November 9 - 20, 2008 Bhutan: Spirit and Nature departure. Please call 1-800-543-8917 today if you’re interested in joining us.

Natural Habitat Adventures
2945 Center Green Court
Boulder, CO, USA 80301
800-543-8917 US & Canada
303-449-3711 International

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Pincas Jawetz notes that he has been there - done that - and written about it. www.SustainabiliTank.info was quite intererested in the GNH idea and would like to see how this concept can be picked up for implementation in the West. Meetings at the University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada tried to investigate this and perhaps the day will come that Nations will agree to make their population’s happiness as their national goal.

India’s dirty laundry: The murder tearing Indian society apart. The murder of a teenage girl in Delhi, unjustly blamed on a domestic servant, has heightened hatred and suspicion at the heart of Asia’s most class-riven society.

Andrew Buncombe reports from Delhi for The Independent.

Monday, 16 June 2008

When 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar was found murdered the police made no effort to examine the crime scene and assumed the killer was the family’s servant, Hemraj. A day later it was found that Hemraj had also been murdered. Aarushi’s father, Rajesh Talwar, is now a suspect. For police in the eastern suburbs of Delhi it seemed like an open and shut case.

When the body of 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar was discovered in a pool of blood, her throat cut and the family’s domestic servant nowhere to be found, detectives had only one suspect. Senior officers said they even had clues as to where the 45-year-old Nepali servant might be hiding and said that a team of officers was being dispatched to Nepal to track him down. The police saw no reason to bring in sniffer dogs, photograph the crime scene or even force open a locked door that led to a terrace despite the presence of drops of blood on the steps.

An immediate media frenzy erupted. The TV channels and newspapers were full of lurid details and unquestioningly blamed Yam Prasad Banjade, also known as Hemraj, the missing servant, for the grisly killing of the teenager. And then one day later, someone opened the terrace door and discovered Hemraj’s decomposing body lying on the floor. He too had been murdered, in the same way as Aarushi. Police were forced to reopen the murder mystery.

The authorities’ handling of the high-profile case – Aarushi’s father, Rajesh Talwar, a dentist, is currently the police’s latest suspect – resulted in angry demonstrations by Nepali labourers, outraged that one of their countrymen had been blamed unfairly for such a horrible crime. But the case has focused fresh attention on the uneasy relationship between India’s middle classes and the ubiquitous servants who wash, cook, shop, drive, garden and clean for them. It has highlighted too, the deep anxiety of many Indians who live in perpetual fear that their servants will rob them, poison them or worse. A constant source of conversation among Indians who employ domestic staff, such fear has now even found its way into a popular new Indian novel that tells the story of a bitter and disenchanted chauffeur in Delhi who slits his employer’s throat.

“We always get our staff verified by the police and we also try and get people who are recommended to us. Only then do we let them in our house,” said Rosie Kapoor, a businesswoman from south Delhi, who employs one full-time and two part-time maids. “But even after all this I am still very careful.”

While in the West servants largely belong to an earlier generation, in India they remain commonplace. Even families with a modest income will employ one or two maids; however industrious middle-class Indians may be in other respects, most have a loathing of domestic chores. In Delhi alone, it is estimated there are at least 60,000 domestic servants, of which perhaps just a third are registered with the police.

The maids, cleaners, drivers and cooks usually earn pitifully little and often live in miserable conditions. Often they are migrants from Nepal or else impoverished Indian states such as Orissa or Bihar. A full-time maid can earn as little as 2,000 rupees (£24) a month, supplemented with a meagre diet and perhaps some cheap clothes given to them by their employer. For this, the servant will usually work 12 to 14 hours a day, perhaps with one day off a week. Usually, servants will live in a simple one-roof shack or shed, often built on the roof of the house – swelteringly warm during the long, hot summers and bone-chilling in northern India’s brief but cold winters. Most servants’ bathroom facilities are probably best left undescribed.

And the relationship between domestic staff and the families they work for can have additional complications above and beyond the obvious financial disparity. Often staff will be from a lower caste than their employer, adding to possible mistrust and resentment.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some employers treat their staff well, even almost considering them members of the family. On holidays such as Diwali and Holi, the staff will get a generous bonus or gift, they will receive their meals and clothes and time off to go back to their village or town if a family member is ill.

But there are numerous reports of employers treating their staff as little more than slaves. An 18-year-old who works as the live-in cook for a businessman in the Safdarjang area of south Delhi said that his every move was followed by CCTV monitors that his employer had installed in the house. The cook, Sushil, said that if he was caught leaving the house during working hours he was punished. He said that he, and two teenage girls employed as maids, were often beaten.

“If anyone makes a mistake, the boss beats them. He is dangerous,” said Sushil, who came to Delhi from the Sultanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. “He hits the girls as well. He is a really bad man.”

Sushil said that he earned 4,500 rupees a month but that he had to pay for his own food and clothes from this. In the three years he had worked at the house, his employer had never given him a holiday bonus.

Given the wretched, impoverished conditions in which India’s domestic servants live it would perhaps not be surprising if servants were to turn to opportunistic crimes. “The class difference of employers and the employed is so big and that tempted them to commit crimes,” a Delhi police spokesman, Rajan Bhagat, told the Associated Press.

But despite the widespread stories of chauffeurs routinely siphoning off petrol from their employers’ cars, maids rustling through jewellery boxes when they should be sweeping the floor and newspaper cartoons showing Nepali servants chasing terrified elderly women, to what extent is the middle-class fear of their staff justified and how much of it is urban myth?

“I think it is real and I think we are hearing a lot less than actually takes place,” said an expatriate living in Delhi who employs domestic staff and asked not to be named. “It’s getting worse. [Domestic servants] can see the light. They know that money will give them a way out. It’s something new. And people have to be careful.”

While the media attention devoted to Aarushi’s murder was exceptional, even the family’s lawyer believes such servants are often responsible for crimes. Pinaki Mishra said there were many factors behind the phenomenon – increasing economic disparity, the increasing influx of rural people into India’s cities and even mafia-style groups that force domestic servants to steal from their employers.

“India is an entire society in transformation,” he said. “You have a middle class of up to 300 million people and below that you have an aspirational class of up to 300 million … All the values are breaking down. No one wants to do menial work.”

This view was shared by the family of an east Delhi businessman killed 10 days ago in his home. In this case too, the family’s Nepali servant – employed for less than a year – has gone missing and police say he is a suspect. The businessman’s hands had been tied behind his back and he had been strangled by a bed-sheet.

“Globalisation is the problem. Everybody wants a television, everybody wants the luxury. If they cannot get it by hook then they get it by crook,” said the businessman’s sister, her eyes red with tears. “We want to catch the person who did this to stop it happening again. We know we are not going to get our brother back but we are not going to lose our humanity.”

Yet while such killings made big headlines, official figures suggest that the problem is not as great as some may believe. Mr Bhagat, the Delhi police spokesman, said that five people in the city with a population of more than 16 million had been robbed or killed by their servants so far this year. Last year the total was six.

Domestic servants say they are often blamed unfairly by their employers, the first in line to be accused if something goes missing. In the aftermath of Aarushi’s death and the accusations that were made by police about the alleged guilt of the family’s servant, dozens of other domestic workers gathered outside the local police station to complain. “We become prime suspects every time there is a crime in the house or the neighbourhood we work in,” Ram Bahadur, a labourer, told journalists. “We are poor people trying to earn a living with dignity. Is it fair to suspect us without evidence?”

Sushil, the cook, said that he too was often accused of things, even though he insisted that thoughts of committing a crime had never entered his head. He said he was shocked by the murder of the businessman in east Delhi. “This is not something I think about,” he said. “How can anyone do this sort of thing if he is a servant?”

The family of the murdered businessman said that they will no longer employ a live-in servant, even if it means they will have to perform the chores that their domestic help have traditionally carried out. “The culture can change. People can learn to adapt,” said one of his sons, standing outside his father’s store, talking with friends and relatives who had come to pay their respects. “They will have to change.”

But are other Indians ready to give up their domestic staff and get down to scrubbing the dishes? Nishant Singh, a lawyer who works in Gurgaon, Delhi’s Westernised satellite city, said the flurry of recent headlines would certainly encourage more people to think carefully about the staff they hire, about getting them verified by police and perhaps opting for part-time help rather than live-in servants.

But he doubted that Indians would forgo employing servants altogether. With the upper part of India’s economy booming, more people had money to spend on help and with increasing numbers of women entering the workplace there was more demand for people to carry out the household tasks traditionally performed by women. “There has long been this concept of having staff,” he said. “It’s part of the culture.”

From:  tparsi at jhu.edu
Subject: Iran and Israel - Mismarriage of Convenience
Date: June 10, 2008

Barack Obama was treated as a rock-star at the AIPAC conference last week, but enthusiasm for the Iran portion of his speech was lukewarm. The idea that the US and Iran would negotiate makes Israeli leaders (and AIPAC) nervous – at the end of the day, America and Israel’s red lines may differ. The fear that any bargain between Washington and Tehran would come at Israel’s expense has intensified with every new centrifuge assembled and by every additional ineffective UN Security Council resolution disregarded by Iran.

But it doesn’t have to be this way – Israel can draw significant benefits from US-Iran negotiations.

In the piece below, published as a web exclusive for Foreign Policy Magazine, I explain how.

Sincerely,
Trita Parsi, PhD
 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.p…

Iran and Israel are stuck in a dysfunctional relationship that neither party can escape on its own. Here’s how to break up their fight.

Last week, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group—held its annual policy conference in Washington, and it went as you might expect. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain roused the faithful with a call to tighten the noose on Iran and mocked those who favor a more diplomatic approach. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained that negotiating with Iranian leaders would be pointless “while they continue to inch closer to a nuclear weapon under the cover of talk.” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called for “all possible means” to be used to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. A few days later, Israel’s Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz warned that an attack on Iran is “unavoidable” as long as Tehran “continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons.”
As if to underscore these arguments, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad obligingly played the role of villain, predicting ominously from Tehran that Israel will “soon disappear off the geographical scene.”

Against this backdrop, it’s safe to say that few at AIPAC were convinced by newly minted Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s call for direct U.S. talks with Iran (though the Illinois senator did win many new friends at the conference this year). In fact, AIPAC and Israeli leaders fear that any bargain between Washington and Tehran would come at their expense and have heightened their rhetoric accordingly.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Although Iran and Israel will not be signing any mutual defense pacts anytime soon, the two countries aren’t destined to be implacable foes. If anything, Israel could be a prime beneficiary of a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran.

It might sound inconceivable that Iran, whose leaders since 1979 have used the most venomous rhetoric against the “little Satan,” would ever moderate its stance toward Israel. Yet a careful review of the past three decades shows that Iran’s hostile rhetoric is more a product of opportunism than fanaticism. Iran and Israel have even been willing to work together quietly at times, despite their conflicting ideologies.
The reason is simple: When forced to choose, Tehran invariably chooses its geostrategic interests over its ideological impulses. In no other area is the decisiveness of the strategic dimension of Iran’s foreign policy clearer than when it comes to Israel. When these two pillars of Iranian foreign policy have clashed, as they did in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran’s geostrategic concerns have consistently prevailed. Tehran quietly sought Israel’s aid, and the Jewish state made many efforts to place Iran and the United States back on speaking terms. Faced with an invading Iraqi army and finding its U.S.-built weaponry starved of spare parts by a U.S. embargo, Tehran was in desperate need of help from Israel. Israel, in turn, was more than eager to avoid an Iraqi victory and to restore the traditional Israeli-Iranian clandestine security cooperation established under the shah, the mullahs’ fierce anti-Israeli rhetoric notwithstanding.
Iran never discarded its Islamic and anti-Israeli ideology, but for years it did refrain from translating that ideology into operational policy. It has been only for the past 15 years, for example, that Iran has come to play such a spoiler role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Why now? Today, the ideological and strategic currents of Iran’s foreign policy are aligned, and the results are visible in every corner of the region: a surging Hezbollah in Lebanon, a more deeply entrenched Hamas in the Palestinian territories, a radicalizing Shiite population in Iraq.
Quelling these potential threats requires understanding why Iran behaves the way it does. On a strategic level, Iran opposes Israel because it perceives the Jewish state as seeking its exclusion from regional affairs. Iran thinks Israel is working assiduously to counter its interests, whether in Washington or Ashgabat. Israel is seen as a major obstacle in initiating a U.S.-Iran dialogue and has played a critical role in putting Iran’s nuclear program atop the international agenda. Even Ahmadinejad’s highly ideological broadsides against Israel have come to have a strategic purpose. Playing the anti-Israeli card helps Iran overcome the Persian-Arab and Shiite-Sunni divide, Tehran reasons. Harsh rhetoric against Israel goes down well with the Arab street, increasing tensions between Arab governments and their publics, which in turn prevents the Arabs from signing up with Tel Aviv against Tehran.
The key to eliminating the danger Iran could pose to Israel lies in arranging these two forces of Iranian foreign policy—strategic interest and ideology—to counter each other once again. Threats of war and sanctions cannot achieve this end, however. Only through a larger accommodation—Iranian political rehabilitation in the region in return for an end to destructive Iranian behavior—will Iran let go of its open hostility toward the Jewish state. Brought in from the cold, Tehran’s cost-benefit analysis would change dramatically. The Islamic Republic would be careful not to undermine its own geopolitical status with ideology-driven anti-Israeli and anti-American behavior.
This is not a new formula, nor is it untested. China refuses to discard its communist pretense, but global integration has made it loath to put communist economic principles into practice due to the devastating impact it would have on its economic interests.

But why would Iran seek serious negotiations now, opponents of diplomacy might ask, when it appears to be having its way in the Middle East? Because the Iranians are eager to consolidate their gains through talks with the next U.S. administration and win American recognition for their role in the region. Those who would reject dialogue cannot have it both ways. They can’t argue that Washington shouldn’t negotiate because it lacks leverage (which isn’t true—for one, only the United States can lift its sanctions and support Iran’s inclusion in a new regional security architecture) and simultaneously claim that Tehran prefers the status quo and isn’t interested in talks precisely because Iran does have leverage.
In reality, the United States need not pressure Iran to come to the negotiation table; it need only demonstrate that it is serious about reaching a strategic understanding. What will induce Tehran to play ball is not a threat, but the promise of achieving a legitimate regional role without surrendering its pride. For Israel, that could be a good thing. A tamed Iran—integrated into the region’s political and economic structures and the forces of globalization—is much less dangerous than an angry and isolated Iran that defends its interests by fanning the flames of anti-Israeli extremism in the region. That’s a concept supporters of Israel and AIPAC should find useful.

*Trita Parsi is the author of “Treacherous Alliance — The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S.”, a Silver Medal Recipient of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross Book Award, the most significant award for a book on foreign affairs.

************************************
Further recent updates from Trita Parsi:

Larijani’s Election Can Boost Congressional Diplomacy
Can P5+1 Offer Break the Nuclear Stalemate?
Can the U.S. and Iran Share the Middle East?
Will Naval Incident Undermine Bush’s Iran Message?
Breaking Israel’s Strategic Paralysis on Iran
Iran must be included in peace talks
Is the Iran NIE a Blessing in Disguise for Israel?
The Iranian Challenge
A sober analysis of Iran
Iran, the inflatable bogey
Long Division

————————–

But there is a further aspect to the US dilemma when it comes to Iran. The problem is that there is on the horizon not only the China example, but also the North Korea example. The fact that US rhetoric was insufficient to keep North Korea from going nuclear - it even allowed for some Pakistani deals in the nuclear arena. Clearly, Iran needs more recognition of the fact that this non-Arab oil-rich country is also part of its region and that it must not have to isolate itself under the cover of crazy extremism in order to get the world’s attention.

Iran, thanks to the US having overstayed its meaningful time in Iraq, has brought about Maliki’s visit with Ahmedi-Nejad and has just proven to the Iranian people that Ahmedinejad’s rhetoric worked. They clearly recognize the fact that the US mismanaged oil-policy has chipped away formerly Sunni Iraq from its Arab League, and is bringing it into alignment with the Iranian Shia. Further, the fact that the US insistence on keeping Iraq under one central government, by demographic necessity Shia, and continuing to let the Kurds in a state of international limbo, has had also the result of allowing the Turks and Iranians to get closer together in opposition to a perceived common enemy. So, the US policy has not isolated Iran, but allowed for its emerging from isolation. The US could have taken advantage of Iran’s geopolitical interests as it did for a short while in Afghanistan, in the immediate reaction to 9/11, but the US oil people pushed the US into Iraq and into keeping on a Sunni Iraq, and away from pursuing a meaningful dialogue with Iran. History - digging back to the 1940’s and then to CIA’s undermining of Mossadegh, the backing of the Shah, and the following litany of policies - will disclose why Iran went on its religious isolationist spree. For now, the open question is - how much recognition of Iran’s prowess will be needed in order to tame it? If this includes a nuclear Iran, like a nuclear North Korea, this is not something that the Israelis can be asked to accept. Yes, talking to Iran is better then not talking to Iran - recognizing them in the context of Muslim Asia is very important - and the price for Iran for this change in US policy must be the halt to their nuclear ambitions. The Israelis and the world cannot accept anything else.

In the meantime - IPS posted today:
“AL-MALIKI’S BALANCING ACT LEAVES IRAN COOL
Analysis by Mohammed A. Salih
WASHINGTON, Jun 10 (IPS) - As Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sought to alleviate neighbouring Iran’s increasing concerns about a security deal between his country and the United States, he strove to keep a delicate balance with the two countries which are vying for hegemony over Iraq.”

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008, The Japan Times online:

Washington and Baghdad: the treaty that isn’t.

By GWYNNE DYER
In the Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze,” the world’s most famous private detective refers to “the curious incident of the dog in the night.” “But the dog did nothing in the night,” replies his interlocutor. “That was the curious incident,” says Holmes. The dogs aren’t barking over the U.S.-Iraq treaty, either, and that is equally curious.

To begin with, the Iraqi dogs aren’t barking. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki clearly doesn’t like the deal that the Bush administration is forcing on him, but will accept it because his government wouldn’t survive a week without U.S. military support. The Shiite religious authorities will not issue a fatwa against it, because their first priority is to preserve the Shiites’ newfound domination of Iraq. But in fact most Iraqis who know about it, hate it.

That includes most of the Iraqi Parliament’s 270 members, who recently sent a letter to the U.S. Congress asking it to reject any U.S.-Iraq security agreement unless the White House agrees to a timetable for pulling troops from Iraq. But Congress will not get to vote on the deal, because the White House has defined it not as a treaty (which has to be ratified by the Senate), but as an alliance (which doesn’t).

Equally curious is the lack of outcry in the U.S. media.

Last week the Middle Eastern correspondent of “The Independent,” Patrick Cockburn, published two leaked reports about the terms of the “alliance” and the tactics that the Bush administration is using to get the Iraqi government’s approval by the end of July. Nobody denied them, but hardly any mainstream outlet in the U.S. media reported them as a major story, either.

Cockburn revealed that the United States will retain more than 50 military bases in Iraq as part of the “strategic alliance” it is pressuring Baghdad to sign. They will not be defined as U.S. bases, however, since U.S. negotiators insist that a perimeter fence with a few Iraqi soldiers on it is a sufficient fig-leaf to make it an “Iraqi base.”

However, those American soldiers on “Iraqi bases” will be able to carry out arrests of Iraqi citizens without prior consultation with the Iraqi authorities, if U.S. negotiators get their way. U.S. soldiers, and American civilian contractors as well, will enjoy full legal immunity for their actions. So it will remain the case, as it has been since the invasion, that any American employed by the U.S. government in Iraq can kill any Iraqi without having to explain and justify his or her actions to Iraqis.

The Iraqi government will probably accept the U.S. demands after some protests, because its survival depends on American troops.

Washington is also threatening to allow $20 billion of outstanding U.S. court judgments against Saddam Hussein’s regime to be executed, wiping out 40 percent of Iraq’s foreign exchange reserves, if the government in Baghdad does not cooperate on the treaty.

The trickier question is what happens if President George W. Bush’s successor is not the like-minded John McCain. To the extent that these two can successfully pretend that the U.S. has won the war in Iraq, they can attach a very high political cost to Barack Obama’s pledge to pull U.S. troops out of the country, and this treaty also serves as part of that charade. But it does not oblige U.S. troops to stay in Iraq forever. It just says they can if they want to.

This game is not over, nor is the war.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based journalist.

 UN food summit hammers out plan for world’s hungry.

From Times Online, June 4, 2008 - Richard Owen in Rome.

President Lula da Silva of Brazil defended the use of biofuels, of which his country is a major producer.

Delegates to the UN summit on the world food crisis today began hammering out an emergency plan to reduce hunger and help Third World farmers despite often testy disagreement behind the scenes over the future of biofuels.

The three-day summit, convened by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which is based in Rome, ends tomorrow, when the final communique will be issued outlining both short-term and long-term solutions.

A draft declaration vows to eliminate hunger and secure “food for all, today and tomorrow”. The leaders undertake to “stimulate food production and increase investment in agriculture” while “addressing obstacles to food access and using the planet’s resources sustainably for present and future generations”.

The draft document calls for a reduction in trade barriers and food export restrictions, emergency food aid, increased crop yields and guidelines on the use of biofuels.

Related Links from Times Online  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo…
What leaders are eating at the UN food summit
Mugabe: UK trying to topple me
Quick fixes will not solve deeper food crisis

FAO officials said 850 million people already faced famine or malnutrition, and rising food and fuel prices would push that figure over the one billion mark, with the risk of further riots and instability in affected nations. Prices of staples such as rice, corn and wheat have soared.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said it was rolling out an additional US$1.2 billion in food assistance to help tens of millions of people in more than 60 nations hardest hit by the food crisis.

She said that WFP was “helping the world to weather the storm” by tripling the number of people who receive food in Haiti, doubling those who will receive food in Afghanistan, and delivering assistance to people in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. “We have mobilised our 10,000 employees and every dollar and Euro given to us to reach as many hungry people as we can at this critical time,” she said.

The first day of the summit was dominated by controversy over the presence of the President Ahmadinejad of Iran and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Today, however, delegates got down to the nitty-gritty of the food crisis, with the United States and Brazil - the world’s largest producer of sugar-cane ethanol - defending the diversion of crops for energy in the face of growing criticism.

The US plans to use 25 per cent of its corn crop for ethanol production by 2022, and the European Union aims to obtain 10% of its car fuel from bio-energy by 2020. The US Agriculture Secretary, Ed Schafer, insisted that “the use of sustainable biofuels can increase energy security, foster economic development especially in rural areas and reduce greenhouse gas emissions without weighing heavily on food prices.”

He said the US was “deeply concerned by the current crisis…..We are now projecting to spend nearly five billion dollars in 2008 and 2009 to fight global hunger”.

But Jacques Diouf, director general of the FAO, said: “Nobody understands how $11-12 billion-a-year subsidies in 2006 and protective tariff polices have had the effect of diverting 100m tonnes of cereals from human consumption, mostly to satisfy a thirst for fuel for vehicles.”

Mr Schafer responded that biofuels had contributed under 3 per cent to food price increases. However FAO officials said biofuels accounted for 59 per cent of the increase in global use of coarse grains and wheat between 2005-2007, and 56 per cent of the increase in vegetable oils. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that biofuels are responsible for up to 30 per cent of the price rises overall.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil, accused critics of biofuels of hypocrisy. “It offends me to see fingers pointed at biofuels, which produce clean energy, when those fingers are soiled with oil and coal,” he said. “It is frightening to see attempts to draw a cause and effect relationship between biofuels and the rise of food prices”.

But he took a swipe at the US version of biofuel, saying that corn-based ethanol was less efficient than fuel produced with sugar cane, and could only compete “when it is shored up with subsidies and shielded behind tariffs”. Yasuo Fukuda, the Japanese Prime Minister, added: “In some cases, biofuel production is in competition with food supply…..We need to ensure that biofuel production is sustainable.”

The Rome summit will be followed by the G8 summit in Japan next month and the final stages of the stalled World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha round of talks on global trade. Pascal Lamy, the head of WTO, said a Doha deal “would reduce the trade-distorting subsidies that have stymied the developing world’s production capacity”.

Douglas Alexander, Britain’s International Development Secretary, said that Western farm subsidies were also responsible for food price rises. “It is unacceptable that rich countries still subsidise farming by $1 billion a day, costing poor farmers in developing countries an estimated $100 billion a year in lost income,” he said

‘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.

“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.

NEPAL’s RECENT ELECTIONS ONLY ONE MILESTONE IN PEACE PROCESS - Ban Ki-moon

16 May 2008 – Despite last month’s landmark Constituent Assembly elections in Nepal, the South Asian nation still has a long way to go in completing the peace process, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a new report made public today.
Characterizing the polls as historic, Mr. Ban said that “the desire and commitment of the people of Nepal for peace and change was the driving force behind this success.”
But he warned that “the election is only a milestone in the peace process,” noting that “the real work of addressing the nation’s deeper socio-economic difficulties and drafting a constitution that reflects the will of the entire nation only begins now.”
The Secretary-General wrote that he is encouraged by the commitment and cooperation that the Maoists, who performed well at the elections, and called on the other political parties to remain focused on Nepal’s long-term interests.
“Short-term differences should not distract them from governing by consensus and from cooperating in the vital task of constitution-making,” he said.
Although Mr. Ban noted that he does not anticipate the extension of the mandate of the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), he said the UN is prepared to offer continued support for the conclusion of the peace process and for the country’s lasting development.
Additionally, he wrote that both his Special Representative and Resident Coordinator will provide whatever the new government, once formed, may request.
“These are critical times for long-term stability in Nepal, and the United Nations will remain by the side of the people and leaders of Nepal in the historic tasks of political and social transformation on which they have embarked.”

Nepal still faces challenges after successful election, UN envoy stresses

Ian Martin, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Nepal
22 May 2008 – The political parties in Nepal will have to reach agreement on how to form a new government and then successfully draft a new constitution to give the country a chance of lasting stability and economic development, according to the United Nations’ top envoy to the country.
The Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Nepal Ian Martin briefed the Security Council on the situation in the country today and afterwards told reporters that Nepal still faces “very considerable challenges” following the elections for a new Constituent Assembly last month.
“The most immediate challenge is to reach agreement among the political parties on the basis for forming a new government, which ideally should provide stability and economic development while the new constitution is drafted,” Mr. Martin said, adding that it was widely accepted that the Maoists would lead the new administration.
The Constituent Assembly will hold its first meeting next week, but the UN envoy said that drafting a new constitution would be a “profound challenge” since “the positions that the political parties put before the electorate are far apart,” especially on the question of what kind of federalism the country should adopt.
Mr. Martin also said that the peace process in Nepal remains incomplete, noting that there are still two armies in the country and that there has been no agreement so far on “what is referred to in the peace agreement as the integration of the Maoist army and the democratization of the Nepal army.” He added that other political parties were insistent that they would not join a Maoist-led Government unless violent attacks from the Maoist Young Communist League were halted.
The UN envoy listed a number of important commitments of the peace process that have not yet been implemented: compensation for victims of the conflict, investigation of disappearances and the return of property and of displaced persons to their homes. “When you combine those with some of the fresh wounds of election violence, they require an active process of local reconciliation,” Mr. Martin stressed.
“Public security, which is one of the deepest wishes of people throughout the country, is not going to prevail until Nepal’s consistent pattern of impunity is brought to an end,” he added, saying there has not been a single prosecution in civilian courts of even the most egregious human rights violations on either side of the armed conflict, or of many killings since.
Mr. Martin deplored the recent beating to death of businessman Ram Hari Shrestha by members of the Maoist army.
In a related development today, the Maoist army’s Vice-Chairman said that the army would cooperate fully with the police and a Government commission of inquiry into the businessman’s death.
The United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) is due to wrap up its operations in the country in July. Mr. Martin said he would be engaging with political leaders on his return to the country to see whether there was a continuing need for a UN role beyond the normal activities of world body’s agencies in Nepal.
After today’s briefing, Ambassador John Sawers of the United Kingdom, which holds the rotating Council presidency this month, said it was clear that UNMIN had contributed significantly to helping Nepal end its long-standing conflict and enter a democratic transition.
Mr. Sawers said the mission’s future remains to be considered, given its mandate is due to expire so soon.
“We’ll need to consider whether there is a role for the UN after that, but we will first look to the Government of Nepal to let us have their views and their requests for a role for the UN in that country well in advance of the 23 July date for the end of the mandate,” he said.
“If there is no request, then the mandate for the UN Mission in Nepal would come to an end, but there may be scope for a scaled-down role for the United Nations there.”

We have here the UN release of May 16, 2008 in which the UNSG says that he does not anticipate an extension of UNMIN. The the Statement by the UNSG specia representative in Nepal, Mr. Ian Martin
as per the UN News of May 22, 2008, but we also have our own impressions from what Mr. Martin said at the Asia Society a day earlier, and the Q&A exchange with the audience.

The two armies in Nepal - the regular and the Maoist - are both restricted to their baracks. The State will have to see the democratization of the two armies and to form a future sustainable army.No progress was made during the previous provisional government and on the subject of the constitution. They will also have to investigate disappearances and private compensation for the victims and the property lost in the period of the conflict. There was a single prosecution and there was not a single conviction ina criminal case yet. There are still many minors in the army despite UN efforts to get them out.

There is a fuel crisis - it is self imposed - and it is because they do not subsidize anymore the fuel they import from India. The elections was the easy part - now people want to se results.

The Maoists contend they want to move Nepal from feudalism to capitalism. They have a commitment to land-reform. They will move fast to talk to bussiness people.

Both armies have high percentage of minors in the cantonments.

The first question was about the withdrawal of the UN troops - if it will not be too early like it was in Cambodia.

A federation may be in the cards as suggested by NGOs.

Our question was he fact that Nepal is one of the largest suppliers of troops to the UN - that was done previously for reasons of creating an income for the State - an export - will the UN now lose these troops?
Also we wanted to know were did the 13 members of Parliament from among the Dalits come from - the Mao or Dalit parties? Also, with the Maoists the leading party to create a government, how will this impact the two neighboring States - China and the West Bengal State of India?

A detailed answer assured us that the UN will not lose Nepal troops from its peacekeeping missions because sending these troops will reduce the number of troops in containment. There was no Dalit party as such - most came from the ranks of the Maoists. Also, Dalits came from the tribal regions. We understand that in those regions, on the India border, there is little difference between Nepal and India. People sort of move around freely. In the end there will probably be some form of federation within Nepal that will allow for autonomy for the regions - even though these regions are not pure anymore when it comes to ethnicity - the people mingled. As of now, there does not seem to be a reaction from the neighbors in regard to the Nepal Maoists. It seems as if they are regarded as different from the other Maoists. In effect, one of the participants in the Asia Society breakfast told me that the West Bengal State leadership - Maoist - did extend an invitation to capitalists to come and invest. They are business oriented. Eventually the same will happen in Nepal. The tradition in West Bengal is not really of Maoism as it was practiced in China, but as Communism of the old Indian Communist party that was not a militant party. We found all of this very interesting and are not convinced at all that changes in Nepal will not have impact on development beyond its borders.
Whatever - Nepal is a work in progress. Will the UN drop it now as they dropped Cambodja, and later see a much worse situation?

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In Nepal, Killing in Cantonment Site Called Criminal by UK, Child Soldiers “Put to the Side.”

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, May 22 — Protests have shut down Kathmandu following the killing of businessman Ram Hari Shrestha in a Maoist cantonment site in Nepal. These sites are monitored by the UN Mission in Nepal, but UNMIN chief Ian Martin on Thursday said that all the UN is monitoring is the weapons storage facilities, not those who wielded and may wield the weapons.

When Inner City Press asked Security Council President John Sawers about the protests and the killing, he said it is not surprising that in Nepal there is “occasional violence, criminal violence.” But abduction and killing in a military camp overseen by the UN is not the ordinary crime. Martin says the Maoist are cooperating with the investigation.

            Inner City Press asked Martin about the UN’s own investigation of the deadly crash of its helicopter earlier this year, and UN personnel’s blocking of journalists from filming, and seizure of their film. Martin said this was only to stop the photographing of remains before they were covered, and that the work of the UN Board of Inquiry is still ongoing. He stated that an earlier emergency landing which Inner City Press asked about had been “minor,” and had been reported to Nepal’s Minister of Civilian Aviation. Video here, from Minute 38:10.

UN copter in Nepal: this photo survives, investigations pend

            Asked about UN reports of continued failure to release child soldiers, Martin acknowledged that the issue had been “put on one side during the election” in Nepal. But now UNMIN is winding down. Who will follow up? Inner City Press asked Amb. Sawers about child soldiers in Nepal, but this part of the question was not answered. Video here, from Minute 3:45.

            Martin said that consideration of Nepal by the UN Peacebuilding Fund will have to await the formation of the new government. Video here, from Minute 42:33.  If Nepal, as UK Ambassador Sawer said, is to be a UN success story, the funds and proper investigations better be forthcoming. We’ll see.