Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
UN sends mixed signals on civilian deaths in Libya
The United Nations has been sending mixed signals lately about NATO’s record with civilian casualties in the alliance’s sixth month of air strikes against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s troops and military sites. U.N. officials and diplomats said it was hardly surprising that different senior officials at the world body are finding it hard to keep a consistent line on the conflict, which, back in March, most of them had hoped would be over in a few weeks.
But it has dragged on. Now Gaddafi’s government is complaining about what it says are mounting civilian casualties caused by NATO bombs, many of them children. Diplomats from alliance members acknowledge that there have been some civilian casualties, which they regret. But they question some of the figures that have been coming out of Tripoli. Libya’s state television, which was targeted by NATO late last month, regularly broadcasts gory images of blood-soaked bodies it says are civilians being pulled from rubble after NATO bomb attacks.
Last week the head of the U.N. cultural and scientific agency UNESCO, Irina Bokova, issued an unusually sharp rebuke of the alliance for its July 30 air strikes against Libyan state television, which she said killed several “media workers.”
“I deplore the NATO strike on Al-Jamahiriya and its installations,” Bokova said in a statement. “Media outlets should not be targeted in military actions.”
from Afghan Journal:
United States begins a new war, what happens to Afghanistan?
The United States has said the scope of its military intervention in Libya is limited, but it nevertheless raises questions about what happens to the two other wars that it is waging, especially in Afghanistan. The last time Washington took the eye off the ball in Afghanistan was in 2003 when it launched the Iraq war and then got so bogged down there that a low level and sporadic Taliban resistance in southern Afghanistan grew into a full blown insurgency from which it is still trying to extricate itself.
The question then is will the U.S. attention again shift away from Afghanistan and to Libya and indeed other African and Middle East countries where revolts against decades of authoritarian rule are gaining ground, and unsettling every strategic calculation. Already U.S. Republicans are saying they are concerned that U.S. forces may be getting drawn into a costly, long-running operation in Libya that lacks clear goals. If it ends in a stalemate - a possibility recognized by Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen - how focused can America be on Afghanistan where you can argue that the stakes are arguably less now that al Qaeda has largely been pushed out, and the fight is almost entirely with the Taliban.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
From Afghanistan to Libya; rethinking the role of the military
In a report this month calling for faster progress on a political settlement on Afghanistan, the influential UK parliamentary foreign affairs committee was unusually critical of the dominance of the military in setting Afghan policy.
"We conclude that there are grounds for concern over the relationship between the military and politicians. We further conclude that this relationship has, over a number of years, gone awry and needs to be re-calibrated ... we believe that problems in Afghanistan highlight the need for a corresponding cultural shift within Whitehall to ensure that those charged with taking foreign policy decisions and providing vitally important political leadership are able to question and appraise military advice with appropriate vigour," it said.
Read the Lockerbie bombing verdict
A former Libyan agent jailed for life for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people flew home on Thursday after Scottish authorities released him on compassionate grounds because he is dying of cancer.
Read the original verdict against Abdel Basset al-Megrahi below, from FindLaw.com
from Africa News blog:
Africa back to the old ways?
The overthrow of Madagascar’s leader may have had nothing to do with events elsewhere in Africa, but after four violent changes of power within eight months the question is bound to arise as to whether the continent is returning to old ways.
Three years without coups between 2005 and last year had appeared to some, including foreign investors, to have indicated a fundamental change from the first turbulent decades after independence. This spate of violent overthrows could now be another reason for investors to tread more warily again, particularly as Africa feels the impact of the global financial crisis.
from Africa News blog:
Gaddafi keeps African leaders talking
Despite the extremely tight security at this week's African Union summit in Ethiopia, one brief lapse gave some journalists covering the meeting a very rare glimpse behind the scenes.
Reporters at the annual meeting in Addis Ababa are normally kept well away from the heads of state, except for the occasional carefully managed press conference, or a brief word thrown in our direction as they sweep past in the middle of a phalanx of sharp-elbowed, scowling bodyguards.
from Africa News blog:
Will Gaddafi bring change to African Union?
Libya's often controversial leader, Muammar Gaddafi, has finally won the top seat at the African Union and promised to accelerate his drive for a United States of Africa, but it seems doubtful that even his presence in the rotating chairmanship will do anything to overcome the reluctance of many African nations to accelerate moves towards a federal government.
Gaddafi, a showman whose fiery, often rambling speeches, sometimes unconventional behaviour and colourful robes are always a scene stealer at international gatherings, has been pushing for a pan-regional govenrment for years. But like his previous, three-decade drive to to promote Arab unity, it has not aroused much enthusiasm in many quarters. All the AU's 53 states have said they agree in principle but estimates for how long this will take vary from nine years to 35.
Austria’s Haider: a hero beyond the grave?
He may have died in a car crash last month whilst drunk, but Austrian rightist Joerg Haider is not gone.
Haider, who was enmeshed in nearly every part of Austrian political life, is now being hailed for his efforts to help two Austrian hostages being held in the Sahara months before his death.
Gaddafi and Lukashenko – coming in from the cold?
Posted by Andrei Makhovsky and Salah Sarrar
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi found they had plenty in common when they met in
Minsk this week.
Both their countries have started to come in from the cold after years of
international isolation and sanctions that were imposed on their
countries because of their policies.
They also share a vision of a multi-polar world to
counterbalance U.S. influence.
Gaddafi – No longer “Mad Dog” of Middle East
Once called the “mad dog of the Middle East” by President Ronald Reagan, Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi will meet U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week.
Senior State Department official David Welch told reporters he had met Gaddafi — “a person of personality and experience” — several times.
