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| APC-SA NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2002Warning to PM on missile shieldBy Mark Forbes, Defence Correspondent, Canberra Our ongoing opposition to the United States' Missile Defence system has been justified by the Australian Government's own advisors, the Office of National Assessment. See the following article: The Federal Government backed the proposed US missile defence shield last year despite intelligence agency warnings that the system was not in Australia's diplomatic or security interests. Classified documents produced by the Office of National Assessments, which reports directly to Prime Minister John Howard, say the US National Missile Defence system could provoke a regional arms race. Marked "for Australian Eyes Only", the material also says Pine Gap would be a key component of the system. The ONA is Australia's peak intelligence assessment body and coordinates the national intelligence effort. The briefing and issues paper on the missile proposal was produced by senior analysts last year while Australia's response was being debated. "The introduction of an NMD system in the US would not be in Australia's diplomatic or security interests," it says. "Even if the NMD technology could be made to work, the reaction that such a system would provoke in Russia, China and perhaps in other countries in the Asia Pacific region would have a direct bearing on Australia's strategic outlook." Introducing such a system could provoke an adverse reaction from countries vital to our regional security, with Russia and China moving to build up nuclear and missile forces. "In particular, Australia's regional security outlook would deteriorate as countries neighbouring China sought to acquire stronger military capabilities in response," it said. Developing an NMD system would require the US to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, a pillar of arms control, the ONA paper warns. "Any weakening of international arms control regimes would have a negative impact on Australia's security," it says. In December, US President George W.Bush announced the withdrawal. Mr Howard said Australia "recognised strategic circumstances had changed" and was "sympathetic to US interests in missile defences". Mr Howard said the US missile defence plans could enhance global strategic stability. The issue was important to the Australia-US alliance, the ONA paper says. While the direct threat of a ballistic missile attack was low, further conflicts in Asia or the Middle East could see Australian forces threatened by missiles. Australia would have a role in NMD, as the "joint facilities at Pine Gap will be a key component of the early warning system for any US missile defence system", the paper says, "and Australia should encourage the US to avoid any unilateral decisions that would have broader implications for arms control and international security". International non-proliferation agreements remained the only real guarantee of Australia's long-term security interests and, "most importantly, it is in Australia's direct strategic interest that China is made aware of US missile defence plans." Publicly at least, the government fell in behind US NMD proposals last year, with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer saying: "A missile defence system is not going to kill anyone, missiles will." According to the ONA, missile defence systems alone would be insufficient to meet the threat posed by the spread of short and medium-range ballistic missiles. The assessment also says the threat of long-range ballistic missiles is evolving more slowly than the US claims and that diplomatic and political factors have played an important part in moderating the threat. "The main strategic threat is not from long-range missiles, but from the proliferation of short and medium-range missiles into regional security environments where nuclear, biological and chemical weapons are also a factor," it says. Negotiations with North Korea over its missile program had demonstrated how "diplomacy and political compromise can be effective in dealing with emerging security threats". There were real security concerns over Iran and Iraq and the paper advocated better diplomatic relations with Iran to reduce the threat. The Palestinian vision: a peace between equalsBy Yasser Arafat -- The Age, 5 February 2002 Back to Top For 16 months, Israelis and Palestinians have been locked in a catastrophic cycle of violence, a cycle that promises only more bloodshed and fear. The cycle has led many to conclude that peace is impossible, which is a myth born out of ignorance of the Palestinian position. Now is the time for the Palestinians to state clearly, and for the world to hear clearly, the Palestinian vision. But, first, let me be clear. I condemn the attacks carried out by terrorist groups against Israeli civilians. These groups do not represent the Palestinian people or their legitimate aspirations for freedom. They are terrorist organisations, and I am determined to put an end to their activities. The Palestinian vision of peace is an independent and viable Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, living as an equal neighbour alongside Israel, with peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians. In 1988, the Palestine National Council adopted a historic resolution calling for the implementation of applicable United Nations resolutions, particularly Resolutions 242 and 338. The Palestinians recognised Israel's right to exist on 78per cent of historical Palestine, with the understanding that we would be allowed to live in freedom on the remaining 22per cent, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967. Our commitment to that two-state solution remains unchanged, but unfortunately, also remains unreciprocated. We seek true independence and full sovereignty: the right to control our own air space, water resources and borders; to develop our own economy; to have normal commercial relations with our neighbours; and to travel freely. In short, we seek only what the free world now enjoys and only what Israel insists on for itself: the right to control our own destiny and to take our place among free nations. In addition, we seek a fair and just solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees who for 54 years have not been permitted to return to their homes. We understand Israel's demographic concerns and understand that the right of return of Palestinian refugees, a right guaranteed under international law and UN Resolution 194, must be implemented in a way that takes into account such concerns. However, just as we Palestinians must be realistic with respect to Israel's demographic desires, Israelis too must be realistic in understanding that there can be no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if the legitimate rights of these innocent civilians continue to be ignored. Left unresolved, the refugee issue has the potential to undermine any permanent peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. How is a Palestinian refugee to understand that his or her right of return will not be honoured but those of Kosovar Albanians, Afghans and East Timorese have been? There are those who claim that I am not a partner in peace. In response, I say Israel's peace partner is, and always has been, the Palestinian people. Peace is not a signed agreement between individuals - it is reconciliation between peoples. Two peoples cannot reconcile when one demands control over the other, when one refuses to treat the other as a partner in peace, when one uses the logic of power rather than the power of logic. Israel has yet to understand that it cannot have peace while denying justice. As long as the occupation of Palestinian lands continues, as long as Palestinians are denied freedom, then the path to the "peace of the brave" that I embarked upon with my late partner Yitzhak Rabin will be littered with obstacles. The Palestinian people have been denied their freedom for far too long and are the only people in the world still living under foreign occupation. How is it possible that the entire world can tolerate this oppression, discrimination and humiliation? The 1993 Oslo Accord, signed on the White House lawn, promised the Palestinians freedom by May, 1999. Instead, since 1993 the Palestinian people have endured a doubling of Israeli settlers, expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land and increased restrictions on freedom of movement. How do I convince my people that Israel is serious about peace while over the past decade Israel intensified the colonisation of Palestinian land from which it was ostensibly negotiating a withdrawal? But no degree of oppression and no level of desperation can ever justify the killing of innocent civilians. I condemn terrorism. I condemn the killing of innocent civilians, whether they are Israeli, American or Palestinian; whether they are killed by Palestinian extremists, Israeli settlers, or by the Israeli Government. But condemnations do not stop terrorism. To stop terrorism, we must understand that terrorism is simply the symptom, not the disease. The personal attacks on me currently in vogue may be highly effective in giving Israelis an excuse to ignore their own role in creating the current situation. But these attacks do little to move the peace process forward and, in fact, are not designed to. Many believe that Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, given his opposition to every peace treaty Israel has ever signed, is fanning the flames of unrest in an effort to delay indefinitely a return to negotiations. Regrettably, he has done little to prove them wrong. Israeli Government practices of settlement construction, home demolitions, political assassinations, closures and shameful silence in the face of Israeli settler violence and other daily humiliations are clearly not aimed at calming the situation. The Palestinians have a vision of peace: it is a peace based on the complete end of the occupation and a return to Israel's 1967 borders, the sharing of all Jerusalem as one open city and as the capital of two states, Palestine and Israel. It is a warm peace between two equals enjoying mutually beneficial economic and social cooperation. Despite the brutal repression of Palestinians over the past four decades, I believe when Israel sees Palestinians as equals, and not as a subjugated people upon whom it can impose its will, such a vision can come true. Indeed it must. Palestinians are ready to end the conflict. We are ready to sit down now with any Israeli leader, regardless of his history, to negotiate freedom for the Palestinians, a complete end of the occupation, security for Israel and creative solutions to the plight of the refugees while respecting Israel's demographic concerns. But we will only sit down as equals, not as supplicants; as partners, not as subjects; as seekers of a just and peaceful solution, not as a defeated nation grateful for whatever scraps are thrown our way. For despite Israel's overwhelming military advantage, we possess something even greater: the power of justice. Yasser Arafat is President of the Palestinian Authority. This article First appeared in The New York Times. India-Pakistan letter leads to motion in British Parliament Back to TopThe News International (Pakistan)- February 3, 2002 India-Pakistan letter leads to motion in British ParliamentKarachi: Up to 297 members of parliament in the British House of Commons have signed an Early Day Motion tabled on February 1 urging India and Pakistan to resolve their problems through dialogue -- the most support received by any Early Day Motion tabled in this house, according to information received here from Malcolm Savidge, who tabled the motion. The motion reads: "That this House urges the governments of India and Pakistan to seek to resolve their differences peacefully and to reduce the risks of nuclear conflict." Though the motion is fairly cautiously worded, it does reflect the depth of concern there is across the party spectrum and from well-known supporters of India, Pakistan and Kashmir, wrote Savidge in an e-mail to John Hallam, spokesman of Friends of the Earth (Nuclear Campaign), Sydney, Australia. Hallam had last month initiated a letter addressed to the Indian and Pakistani governments, with a copy to the UN secretary general, urging them to exercise restrain and resolve their problems through dialogue. The letter received a huge response when it was circulated, with over 250 members of parliament, organisational representatives and individuals from around the world signing it. It was this letter, says Savidge, that encouraged him to put forward the Early Day Motion in the House of Commons, to such a huge response. Bush's billion-dollar arms bill Back to TopBy Gay Alcorn, Washington, 9 February 2002 The Age -- When President George Bush pledged that "whatever it takes, whatever it costs", America would "win the first war of the 21st century," he meant it. The mammoth defence budget Mr Bush proposed this week - a $US48 billion ($A94 billion), or 12 per cent increase after inflation - comes at the expense of road spending and food-for-the-poor programs, and has been given priority over action on long-standing problems such as universal health coverage. This was a "guns before butter" budget, and not just for 2003. Military spending will hit $US451 billion in 2007. The world's only superpower, unchallenged since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, now accounts for about 40 per cent of the world's military spending, up from about 36 per cent a few years ago. Just the proposed increase is more than the total military spending of countries such as Britain, France and Italy. As for Mr Bush's designated "axis of evil" states - Iran, Iraq and North Korea - the increase alone is more than four times their combined budgets. The first response is simple awe that one nation so bestrides the globe. Paul Kennedy, history professor at Yale University and author of The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, wrote in the Financial Times of London this week that he had scrutinised the British and Roman empires and found that historically, there had never been a military giant to compare with the United States. The British Empire was run "on the cheap"; Rome was huge, but it had a rival in Persia. "Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing," he says. The $378 billion defence budget Mr Bush has asked Congress to approve for 2003 is 15 per cent higher than the average Cold War budget in today's dollars according to the US Center for Defence Information. That the US, with such superiority, would seek to increase defence spending beyond Cold War levels (the proposed increase is the largest since former president Ronald Reagan began his build-up against the Soviets 21 years ago) is a signal, first, that the White House sees the struggle against terrorism as potentially as long and tension-filled as the Cold War. Judging by the confused and angry reactions from many European nations to Mr Bush's "axis of evil" speech, it appears they do not yet realise that the US sees the world utterly differently since September 11. "The defence budget is cheap when one compares it to putting our security at risk, our lives at risk, our country at risk," Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld told a congressional hearing this week. During the 2000 election campaign, Mr Bush accused the Clinton administration of neglecting the military and promised that "help was on the way". But his first budget last year disappointed those who wanted a big increase in defence spending. The Republican Party, traditionally more obsessed with national security than the Democrats, now feels vindicated. "We are defending not just the vital interests of the nation, but really the nation as we know it," said Jack Spencer, a defence analyst at the influential conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. America's faith that its military might would deter any attack was shattered on September 11 and it is now preparing, not just to retaliate against a missile attack, or against biological or chemical terrorism, but to launch a pre-emptive strike if necessary, possibly against Iraq. A decade after the Cold War ended, America's military reach is expanding into Central Asia countries such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. According to The Washington Post, President Bush has granted the spy agency, the CIA, authority to undertake covert and lethal action in 80 countries to root out terrorist group al Qaeda, the broadest power bequeathed in the CIA's history. All that takes money. Few question the need for more money for the CIA (although some question whether more money should be spent on people rather than technology) or for special forces, which proved so vital in Afghanistan, or for relatively cheap, unmanned planes that don't risk pilots' lives. But does the US military need more money to be "agile and quick to move", as Mr Bush put it, or does it need to spend its already massive budget better? Some analysts say more money has been given to weapons designed to defeat an old foe, the Soviet Union, and that the budget has failed to "transform" the military into a future-oriented force. The defence budget is certainly a boon for the big military contractors - Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman Corp - and it looks after Congress members with a military base or depot in their district. Dan Koslofsky, legislative director the for arms control group Council for a Liveable World, said spending $US12 billion on Cold War-era fighters such as the F-22 was a defeat for reformers in the Pentagon, who wanted such acquisitions scrapped or scaled back. The present F-15 jet remained the most advanced fighter in the world and "there's never going to be a situation in the near future where the US doesn't have complete air dominance". "We're spending just $1 billion on unmanned aerial vehicles. We're spending 12 times as much on past technology as future technology," Mr Koslofsky said. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine this week accused the White House of a "simplistic approach" to terrorism that ignored root causes such as poverty. The White House's approach is overwhelmingly to tell countries to get out of the business of terrorism or weapons of mass destruction, or face America's might. What of political solutions? The administration's chief diplomat, Secretary of State Colin Powell, was asked several times in Congress this week why his department's budget would get a meagre 4 per cent increase, to $28 billion, compared with $379 billion for defence. If Afghanistan had received more American aid and attention, asked Tom Lantos, senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, could it not have helped prevent the rise of alQaeda? "I deplore the fact that as the President presents an enormous increase in our defence budget, there is nickelling and diming on international aid and development assistance," Mr Lantos said. Mr Powell could do little but shrug, and remind the members that when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he argued exactly the opposite. Iraq logical next target, says US adviser Back to Topby Mark Forbes, 9 February 2002, The Age -- A former senior American politician, Newt Gingrich, has singled out Iraq as the probable target of a decisive, new US military offensive. Mr Gingrich, a member US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's policy board, said the case against Iraq was the clearest of the three countries named by President George Bush as an "axis of evil". A military offensive to topple Saddam Hussein's regime would be faster and more effective that most would expect, Mr Gingrich said. The former Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, said if Saddam did not halt efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, "we will not be passive while risking thousands of our fellow citizens". "It would be a smaller effort than Desert Storm (the repulsion of the invasion of Kuwait)," he told The Age during his Australian visit. "We defeated them decisively 11 years ago and they have seen our performance in Afghanistan." Advances in military technology meant the campaign would have a decisive impact. Saddam had been given a choice for survival without violence if he opened his borders to weapons inspectors. In Iran, Mr Gingrich said, the US should support groups in the community opposed to the ayatollahs and accelerate their ability to replace the current government. With North Korea, the third member of the "axis of evil", diplomacy could produce results and the US had offered to negotiate, he said. September 11 made the existing danger from terrorism "tragically obvious", said Mr Gingrich, who had warned of a major terrorist attack on the US as part of a presidential commission on security which reported last March. Weapons of mass destruction were so dangerous they went beyond the scale of an airliner crashing into office towers. The US had to act pre-emptively and take whatever steps necessary to avoid the deaths of thousands of civilians, Mr Gingrich said. It also had an obligation to re-engage the establishment of order around the planet. Three strikes and you're in Back to TopBy Fdebra Jopson, 9 February 2002 The Age -- Hazel Lalara was distraught two months ago when her 16-year-old son, Harold, appeared before a Darwin magistrate on a break-and-enter charge. Two years ago today at the age of 15, the orphan grandson she had raised hanged himself in the Don Dale Detention Centre. He was there for stealing about $50 worth of Textas, paints and liquid paper, imprisoned under harsh mandatory detention laws. It was a death that reverberated around the world, leading eventually to three United Nations committees condemning the Northern Territory's mandatory sentencing regime and to Cherie Booth, barrister wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, taking a complaint to Geneva on behalf of Top End Aborigines. Now famous in the media as "Johnno", the 15-year-old Aborigine's family wants him to be remembered as "Benjamin", after his father. Lalara did not want her son, still depressed by Benjamin's death, to follow in his footsteps. She told her lawyers that officials from Don Dale must be instructed that if he also were to be locked up, they must watch him constantly. She wept in court and begged the magistrate not to allow family history to repeat itself. He listened. Instead of sending Harold to the detention centre for three days on remand, he allowed bail. Further, when it came to sentencing, Harold was sent to a diversionary program, not the lock-up. The crucial difference was that the magistrate Harold stood before had a choice. He had just been released from an obligation to incarcerate repeat offending juveniles for property crimes. The new Territory Labor Government repealed the laws in October. For Benjamin, mandatory sentencing laws allowed no other option. "It made me happy, especially for the people in the communities. I wish mandatory sentencing never happened," Lalara said. But, as a Senate inquiry, due to table its report by March 21, found in hearings in Perth and Darwin late last month, the controversy surrounding mandatory sentencing in Australia is far from over. In Western Australia, the inquiry heard, the government is locking up juveniles under its "three strikes and you're in" mandatory sentencing laws for burglary. Government representatives told a panel from the Senate's legal and constitutional references committee that the youngest child locked up was 12. But, said Clare Thompson, president of the Law Society of WA, which opposes mandatory sentencing: "As recently as December an 11-year-old was sentenced to a term of imprisonment." Neil Morgan, director of studies at the University of Western Australia's crime research centre, told the Senate inquiry that the laws "impact almost exclusively on children ... The Northern Territory's discredited laws only ever applied to people aged 15 and above". The previous state Coalition government introduced three-strikes mandatory sentencing laws for repeat home burglars in November, 1996, as part of a fevered law and order response to WA's burglary rate - the highest in Australia. The Gallop Labor Government pledged to stick with the legislation as it romped into office last February. Three months ago, after a government review of the laws, Attorney-General Jim McGinty said they would remain. The legislation had "high acceptance by the people" and "bipartisan political support", he said in a statement to the Senate committee's Perth hearing. Nationally, WA still had the highest rate of reported burglary, he said. Only 143 juvenile cases have been dealt with under the three-strikes provisions, McGinty said. Juvenile repeat offenders had an average 50 offences, of which 20 were burglaries. For the very young, or in "important mitigating circumstances such as where the reason for the burglary was to obtain food because the offender was hungry", courts could grant a conditional release order instead of detention, he said. However, a damning report by Morgan's crime research centre recently described the laws as "a national and international embarrassment" and called for their repeal, or at least for the age at which they apply to be lifted from 10 to 16. Juvenile Aborigines made up 80 per cent of the cases, it was revealed in the report, written after studying 110 cases involving 73 juveniles. Nine in 10 of those aged under 15 were Aboriginal. Every child caught by these laws under the age of 13 was Aboriginal. Most were from the country and were placed in detention in Perth, "creating further family and cultural dislocation". "Our study revealed that only 5 per cent of cases involved any threats of violence or actual violence to inhabitants of a home, despite the fact that the laws were said to be about so-called home invasions," Morgan said. In defending the laws, WA Department of Justice policy director Andrew Marshall admitted he "could find no evidence for the legislation having an impact on the rate of burglary", even though that was why it was introduced.. John Prior of the Law Society of WA said "the fundamentally frightening thing about this legislation is the minimum period of 12 months' imprisonment". "If an 11-year-old is going to jail for 12 months ... something has gone horribly wrong in the first 11 years of their life and everyone should be asking the question: what could have been done besides sending them to jail?" The Senate committee, chaired by WA Labor Senator Jim McKiernan, has begun drafting its report. The inquiry focus is on Greens Senator Bob Brown's bill that seeks to federally override all mandatory sentencing laws for property offences. Meanwhile, Cherie Booth's complaint to the UN Commission on Human Rights is still alive. The Federal Government has challenged it, both on the grounds of admissibility and merit, but it is likely to be a year before Geneva reports. This week, Lalara said that to stop further loss of young life in custody, she wanted Benjamin's death remembered. And to Australia's embarrassment it is, even in Switzerland. Black Rain Back to Top"From the Hill of Flash" a personal anthology, by Sachiko Kondoh, of Hiroshima. Part 1 (1972-1980)
How cursed our human history
"The eyes of the bombed before death"
Chanting of the sutra
At the coming of summer
August 6th, Funairi
The lightness of the purple on this althea
Visitors to Hiroshima strike the bell
Nuclear testing still continues
Turquoise evaporating
An autumn day
One by one ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Further verses from this anthology will be published each month. Sachiko Kondoh was born in Hiroshima on 15 February 1922 |
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