Foreign Press Review - December 29 2005 1229-2005f
FOREIGN PRESS REVIEW (FPR) - ‘Relevant news, views, comments and analysis from all around the world’ Compiled by Şanlı Bahadır Koç / e-mail : sbahadir@bilkent.edu.tr - Subscribe to FPR
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H1 Christian Science Monitor Iraq's micro parties could play key role Shiites and Kurds look to be the big winners of this month's vote, but tiny parties could emerge as power brokers.

New Yorker American Viceroy Zalmay Khalilzad’s mission Jon Lee Anderson Issue of 2005-12-19
LA Times Bush alters 'dooms- day' succession line Military chiefs demoted, civilians from Rumsfeld inner circle move up.
Washington Post Three Lessons From Vietnam By Dale Andrade, Vietnam is the most recent example of American counterinsurgency -- and our longest -- so it would be a mistake to reject it because of its complex and controversial nature.
BBC First year report Condoleezza Rice's diplomacy abroad wins praise at home

UPI Analysis: Corridors of Power - After Annan

IHT Behind the smiles, trans-Atlantic bile REGINALD DALE Behind the positive talk, deep tensions still threaten trans-Atlantic relations.
New York Times U.N. Observer in Baghdad Calls the Voting Valid
UPI Analysis: India's promising year By KRISHNADEV CALAMUR India's future role on the global stage will depend on its relations with other nations and with its own disadvantaged citizens.

WSJ The Rise of China's Soft Power It would be foolish to ignore the gains Beijing is making. By JOSEPH S. NYE, JR.

Newsweek The Oval: Did Bush Spread Democracy in 2005?

The Times Nato facing a critical test of its resolve from resurgent Taleban



H2 NYT Kurds Are Flocking to Kirkuk, Laying Claim to Land and Oil

Washington Times Turkey, Iraq and the Kurds (Tulin Daloglu)

The Prospect Happy ending Robert Jackson The opening of accession talks with Turkey and the new EU budget settlement add up to a resoundingly successful British EU presidency

Guardian Turkey admits charges against author tarnish its imageTurkey's foreign minister says laws that limit freedom of expression may be changed.

BBC Turkey insult law 'may be dumped' Turkey's foreign minister indicates that a law being used to prosecute people for insulting the state could be scrapped.

Turkey Eases Restrictions on Kurdish Language Broadcasts

What Turkey can teach us about IraqRedState.org

Keeping Iraq Intact CBS News

Khalilzad : America and Kurdistan alliance will make a new world

SlateToday's Papers / Blogometer realclearpolitics – ABC’s The Note - Early Bird thru GovExec - antiwar.com / Wikipedia / technorati

The Prospect Reading IranTom PorteousOver the past decade, Iran's clerical conservatives have defeated their reformist rivals. But the summer election of populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is generating new conflicts among the networks that control the state. How will this affect Iran's relations with the west? Is liberalisation really dead?

Financial Times COMMENT: Let Mozart's spirit guide Vienna at the helm of Europe

Leader Here comes the rising sun again – Japan back on the radar -

Rise of Asian powerhouse challenges economic order


H3 Turkey and Europe

Turkey and the U.S.

Greek press on Cyprus and Turkey

Turkey and the Middle East

Turkey, Russia, Caucasus, C. Asia

Ext links-Google News Turkey –Turquie- Türkei - Dış Basında Türkiye - İç Basında Türk Dış Politikası - Kurdish Media - FPR Archive - Quickread - Google News - Iraq -Iran - Syria – Kurdish - Greece - Cyprus – Azerbaijan - Israel - BBC Turkish 0700 -TurcoPundit - Mideastwire.com -
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Time ripened to ask for independence By Baqi Barzani The Treaty of Svres, signed Aug. 10, 1920, between Ottoman Empire and the Allied powers (including the United States), provided for the formation of an autonomous Kurdistan.

US official to Iraq: Kurdish leadership are carpet sellers Barzani promised that he would not compromise of a number of fundamental issues to the Kurdish question. He drew a number of read-lines. However, when the constitution was produced, these read-lines were breached.

International Community needs to rethink and address Kurdish question By Kamaran Kurdi

The arrest of Dr Kamal Sayid Qadir emerges as a key test of KRG By Dylan Alan

BBC First year report Condoleezza Rice's diplomacy abroad wins praise at home

UPI Analysis: Corridors of Power - After Annan

Der Spiegel GALILEO SATELLITE LAUNCH First Step Towards a European GPS Competitor
H4 New York Times U.N. Observer in Baghdad Calls the Voting Valid The assertion brought bitter denunciations from some Sunni Arab political leaders who swore to continue pressing their claims of fraud.

Editorial Hosni Mubarak's Democracy The sentencing of a prominent liberal opposition leader in Egypt shows that President Hosni Mubarak doesn't have the stomach for competitive elections.

David Brooks The Sidney Awards, 2005 An award, named after the philosopher Sidney Hook, honoring the best political and cultural essays of the year.

Editorial The Mounting Powers of Secrecy
The open government law that guaranteed greater freedom of information to the public will soon be 40 years old and desperately in need of legislative overhaul, thanks to the Bush administration.
New Twist in Iran on Plan for Nuclear Fuel An official said Iran would study a proposal aimed at breaking the deadlock on efforts to block Iran from enriching nuclear fuel.
Ukraine's Talks With Russia Fail to Resolve Gas Dispute
Vice Axes That 70’s ShowBy Maureen Dowd - Dowd writes that Vice President Dick Cheney, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are driving the obsession with secrecy and Presidential power in the current Bush Administration in response to their bitter experiences in the Executive Branch in the post-Watergate 1970s. She writes that both Rumsfeld and Cheney were White House Chiefs of Staff during the Ford Administration and chafed against the limits placed on executive power after the Nixon Administration. Dowd says Rumsfeld and Cheney regard checks and balances as antiquated. Historians must turn to the Ford Presidency to understand the motivation behind this administration?s decisions. Link to full text in primary source.
Report on Russia Massacre Faults Officials
Muslim Women in Europe Claim Rights and Keep Faith Young European Muslim women claim the same rights as their Western counterparts, without renouncing Islamic values.
H5 Washington Post Three Lessons From Vietnam By Dale Andrade, Vietnam is the most recent example of American counterinsurgency -- and our longest -- so it would be a mistake to reject it because of its complex and controversial nature.

Foreign Affairs to Remember By Jim Hoagland, An eclectic list of foreign affairs books, many that didn't get much attention ths year, struck Jim Hoagland's fancy in 2005.

With Satellite Launch, E.U. Positions Itself To Compete Navigational System Aims To Break U.S. Monopoly

U.N. Official Endorses Iraq Vote Special Commissioner Sees No Need to Rerun 'Credible' Election

U.N. Asks Belgian to Take Over Assassination Inquiry

Report Criticizes Police In Beslan Siege "A whole number of blunders and shortcomings," plagued efforts to prevent, then end, the three-day siege that left 331 people dead
Editorial Stand Up to Mr. Mubarak IT HAS BEEN 24 days since the Egyptian democracy activist Ayman Nour was unjustly imprisoned by the government of Hosni Mubarak; 18 days since he began a hunger strike to protest his treatment; and five days since he was actually convicted and sentenced by a state security court judge to a term of...

My '05 Hits and Misses By David S. Broder,
When I sat down to review the past year's columns for my annual accounting of errors and misjudgments, I realized that the politicians I cover had set an impossibly high standard in 2005.

Abramoff's Fall Is Surpassing His Rise: How a Well-Connected Lobbyist Became the Center of a Far-Reaching Corruption Scandal

H6 Guardian Russia's autocrats must feel the weight of world opinion David Clark: Putin was welcomed into the G8 after promising to turn his country into a democracy - now it is time for him to deliver.
Leader A lot can happen in three years From 9/11 until the start of 2005, President George Bush succeeded in setting the political agenda for America and the world almost without effective challenge.
In Praise of ... Galileo Europe's best-laid plans have a depressing habit of not working out, but one of its biggest ambitions got off to a flying start with the launch of the first demonstrator rocket for the Galileo global satellite navigation system from a Kazakhstan cosmodrome.
Bearing the cross Christians in Iran face constant surveillance by the Islamic republic
MPs blame Beslan officialsPolice ignored repeated warnings, says inquiry into school siege where more than 330 people died.
H7 BBC First year report Condoleezza Rice's diplomacy abroad wins praise at home

UPI Analysis: Corridors of Power - After Annan

Anti-Imperialists Beware – Bush Is Reading Again by Jim Lobe

Weekly Standard The Inventor of Modern Conservatism Disraeli and us. by David Gelernter
The Prospect After Iraq's election 1 Bartle Bull The parliamentary elections in Iraq represent the conclusion of one of the most successful processes from tyranny to pluralism in history

After Iraq's election 2 Tamara Chalabi The election managed to mobilise all Iraqi groups into political participation. But it also entrenched the country's increasing ethnic polarisation
H8 MEMRI Dec 29 SD# 1059 - The Alleged Torture of Saddam Hussein

Daily Star In failure, a year of Arab achievement By Michael Young

Bush's Iraq plan is welcome, but leaves questions unanswered By Edward S. Walker, Jr.

Israel should respond to the majority will for negotiated peace

The Politics and Liberation of Lebanon Middle East Review of International Affairs

New Republic Accessories to genocide Both the African Union and the Arab League have chosen the genocidal Sudanese regime to host their upcoming summits. Could there be a clearer indication that African and Arab leaders don't care what happens to Darfur?
H9 Ha’aretz – Aluf Benn Votes for Fatah, targets for Qassams Four months after the disengagement, it turns out the right was correct. We left Gaza and got Qassam rockets on Ashkelon. Hamas is becoming stronger and Fatah is disintegrating.

Olmert: No limitations in Sharon's war on Qassams

Religious Zionism sets sights on leading Israel

Major Challenges For Likud - David Makovsky, Wash Inst. For Near East Policy

Boston Globe Constituting Israel
(By David B. Green) Israel, like Britain, has no written constitution. Most Israelis today say the country should have one. But can Israel ever agree on how to define itself as a nation?

Jerusalem Post Nuclear Iran wouldn't benefit Russia Russia offers to oversee Iranian uranium enrichment production.

BBC Israel bombards Gaza no-go zone Israeli forces shell a newly declared no-go zone for Palestinians along Gaza's northern border.

Now Israeli Spies Blast Spielberg's MUNICH..
H10 Christian Science Monitor Iraq's micro parties could play key role Shiites and Kurds look to be the big winners of this month's vote, but tiny parties could emerge as power brokers.

Nationalism splits China, Japan
Though trade between the two nations grew in 2005, this could be 'worst Sino-Japanese relations since World War II.'

2006 economy looks solid
Experts see growth of at least 3 percent, which means more jobs and higher pay.
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Why energy prices are cooling off

Israeli-Palestinian skirmishes take to air Israel has formed a 'no-go' zone to prevent Palestinian militants in northern Gaza from firing rockets.

Americans divided on feds listening in
Half of Americans say Bush has the right to OK the secret NSA program.



H11 IHT Behind the smiles, trans-Atlantic bile REGINALD DALE Behind the positive talk, deep tensions still threaten trans-Atlantic relations.

Ways to wage peace in 2006 JONATHAN POWER War, the tactic of the weak, does not always have positive outcomes.

Europeans criticize U.S. sanctions as potential risk to Iran talks

Letter from China: Japan and China head on a collision course

Der Spiegel GALILEO SATELLITE LAUNCH First Step Towards a European GPS Competitor The European Galileo program, the Old World's answer to the US navigation system GPS, launched its first satellite on Wednesday. When completed in 2010, it will be even more accurate than GPS -- and won't be controlled by the military.

Washington Times Nervous in Afghanistan Afghanistan's parliament recently convened for the first time in 30 years. The jockeying for positions, tribal politics and testy exchanges attest to its authenticity as an Afghan institution, not a rubberstamping government organ.


H12 RFE/RL No Result In Ukraine's Talks With Gazprom
Iraq President Takes Lead To Resolve Political Crisis
BBC Mixed fortunes Russia emerges strong from 2005 but not without a bumpy ride
Slate So Much for Glasnost: Will we ever know what happened in Beslan?

The Year in Asia, 2005 - Todd Crowell, Asiacable

UPI BMD Watch: Japan confirms BMD coop with US

Der Spiegel GROWING JAPANESE ISOLATION Koizumi's Obsession with the Past Makes for an Uncertain FutureAsia is not amused by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's obsession with the past. Slowly, the once powerful nation is becoming isolated internationally -- both politically and economically. China and South Korea are the main beneficiaries as the balance of power in the Far East shifts.

Analysis: Russia-Ukraine on the brink





H13 The Times Nato facing a critical test of its resolve from resurgent Taleban

WSJ The Rise of China's Soft Power It would be foolish to ignore the gains Beijing is making. By JOSEPH S. NYE, JR.

American Conservatism: The Burke Habit By Jeffrey Hart - Hart explores the major ideas of the American conservative mind today in the tradition of Edmund Burke. He touches on hard and soft utopianism, national defense, constitutional government, religion, abortion and free-market economics. Regarding free-market economics, he says conservatives shouldn?t overlook the importance of fostering beauty in their zeal to see the market triumph, for it ranks high among the needs of the civilization they seek to better. It should embarrass conservatives that stewardship of the environment is now left mostly to liberal Democrats. Link to full text in primary source.

Washington Times Is the trade deficit sustainable? Probably the biggest parlor game on Wall Street, at the Federal Reserve and inside think tanks and university economics departments in recent years has centered on answering this question: Just how large can the U.S. current-account and budget deficits grow before either or both become ...

H14 Financial Times COMMENT: Let Mozart's spirit guide Vienna at the helm of Europe By Donald Bandler and Peter Rashish Austria is well placed to build on the UK’s presidency efforts to revive the EU’s stalled Lisbon strategy of reform.

Leader Here comes the rising sun again – Japan back on the radar - Amid all the excitement over the modernisation of China, the growth of India and the surprising resilience of the US, investors have tended to ignore thevaliant...

Rise of Asian powerhouse challenges economic order The pre-Christmas news that China's economy was 17 per cent bigger than previously reported had resonance far beyond its...

Iraqis look to raise oil output next year Iraq hopes to boost oil production by 25 per cent in 2006 in line with a government plan that sees rising oil revenue reinvested in the petroleum sector but also requires foreign investment, the country’s finance minister said

Rocky road to democracy Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president, recently compared elections in his country with a London bus - you wait forever for one, and then three come at once.



H15 Los Angeles Times Iraqis Pummeled at the Pumps Iraq's government has sharply raised the price of fuel and other petroleum products this month, sparking discontent and protests and worrying international observers who say the increases could hurt millions of poor Iraqis
Bush alters 'dooms- day' succession line Military chiefs demoted, civilians from Rumsfeld inner circle move up.
FT EU presidency seeks to calm fears on gas The Austrian government attempted to calm fears of gas shortages across Europe as Ukraine’s fuel and energy minister arrived in Moscow for emergency talks to find a solution to a row over prices that could see Russia cut exports

Merkel enjoys ratings boost amid recovery

Storm over Katrina batters Bush

COMMENT: The lesson from catastrophe By Quentin PeelThere is no doubting the desire of millions in the wealthy countries of the world to help those hit by natural catastrophes and abject poverty. The challenge is to spend their contributions well and wisely.

H16 '05's Big Five - Peggy Noonan, OpinionJournal
Decline of Congress - Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times

BBC Bush aides reveal the president's Christmas break reading list

CIA vet: Renditions began under Clinton
H17 Daily Telegraph China's pollution crisis Nine in 10 of Chinese cities rely on polluted groundwater, the government has said after a year in which its devastated environment has been under constant scrutiny.
H18 Independent Galileo blasts Europe into new era of space competition with US

Terrorism cases in US may be reopened after scandal Defence lawyers in several terrorism cases in the United States are planning to appeal against the convictions of their clients on the ground that evidence may have been garnered from illegal wiretapping

Hamish McRae: The shocks may happen, but still I see encouraging signs for the world in 2006
H19 China ranks 6th in world economy By Chinaview China has overtaken Italy as the world's 6th biggest economy. China on Tuesday revised its GDP for 2004 to 15.9878 trillion yuan (about 2 trillion US dollars), up 2.3 trillion yuan, or 16.8 percent from the preliminary figures. The growth of the service sector output accounted for the largest part--93 percent--of GDP growth. Along with economic reforms, China has overseen a diversified economic development in ownership, in particular private and individual-run service activities. Still, although many new services are booming, data on their activities are often underestimated. Link to full text in primary source.
H20 WSJ Oh, Has Uncle Sam Got Mail The rapid adoption of electronic communications has created a major crisis for the National Archives, which is struggling to devise a system for storing the enormous amount of digital information in a format that can be accessed 20, 75, even 200 years from now.

The Prospect We are all complicit Noam Chomsky The world's top public intellectual responds to accusations of dishonesty
H21 FT COMMENT & ANALYSIS: Screened out: life online is widening choice but risks a surrender of serendipity Amid an electronic blizzard of facts and entertainment, new tools are helping people find the material that is likely to be of most interest. Perversely, this ‘personalisation’ involves others in deciding what the user gets

NSA Web Site Puts 'Cookies' on Computers...


Ext links Blogs - memeorandum - Slate's Today's Blogs - Blogometer - Juan Cole - Kevin Drum - Belgravia Dispatch - Thomas P.M. Barnett
Joshua Marshall - Daniel Drezner - Laura Rozen - the washington note - Syria Comment - David Corn - William Arkin - Phil Carter - Helena Cobban - Matt Yglesias - Oxblog - Brad DeLong
winds of change - - CounterterrorismBlog OutSide the Beltway - InstaPundit - Kausfiles - andrewsullivan.com - Becker Posner-- armscontrolwonk - Registan   ¶ 10:54