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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 July 1999 Issue No. 438 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 July 1999 Issue No. 438
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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A week in the world
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Skinning the president
By Peter SnowdonSaturday saw a further escalation in hostilities between Colombia's security forces and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's major left-wing guerrilla movement. The guerrillas have stepped up their offensive in advance of peace talks with Andres Pastrana's government, which were to have kicked off last Wednesday, and are now due to resume on 20 July.
Although the actions of the last 10 days have included an unprecedented push into the hills southwest of Bogota, many observers believe the rebels' main goal is not to occupy the capital, but to convince sceptics that there can be no military solution à la Fujimori (see below), and that only a negotiated settlement can bring peace.
The FARC has about 15,000 men under arms, and controls a "demilitarised zone" -- or state within the state -- roughly the size of Switzerland. The guerrillas are demanding the complete dismantling of Colombian society, in order to erase the discriminations and injustices inherited from colonialism and perpetuated since by force. Civil war has raged in Colombia since the middle of the 1960s. In the last decade alone, 35,000 people have lost their lives and a million been made homeless. However, the guerrilla armies continue to enjoy strong support in rural areas and among the urban poor.
Meanwhile, the Congress of Peru approved a motion Thursday to withdraw from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), after the court ruled the same day that four Chileans convicted of terrorism by military courts in 1994 had been denied due process and must be retried in civilian courts.
President Alberto Fujimori, whose "military solution" to armed insurgency has won him a cult following in hawkish Colombian circles, introduced the bill himself, claiming the court's ruling constituted a direct threat to Peru's national security.
Local human rights groups countered that the decision would turn the country into a pariah state. Fujimori's government is already widely viewed as an "elected dictatorship".
IACHR rulings are binding on member states, and the court is the hemisphere's leading human rights court. Peru had previously agreed to accept all IACHR rulings, but now wants to demote the court to "consultative" status.
The US, though a member of the court's parent body, the Organisation of American States, has never accepted the IACHR's authority.
On Tuesday 6 July, the Bank of England upset world markets by selling 25 tonnes of gold at close to the market price of $258 an ounce. Many observers have interpreted this move as the final nail in the coffin of the gradually demonetising metal. In the early 70s, gold was pegged at $35 an ounce, but with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, it became the subject of much speculation by investors in search of a "safe haven" against inflation and stock market volatility, surging to a peak of $850 in 1980. The Bank of England's auction is to be the first in a series of quarterly sales, for a total of 415 tonnes. Switzerland, for its part, plans to unload 1,300 tonnes of gold onto the market in the near future.
The IMF, meanwhile, has proposed disposing of 300 tonnes, or 10 per cent of its reserves, in order to fund debt relief for 41 highly-indebted poor countries. However, as often with the IMF's clever plans, this move may already have backfired. Five thousand jobs were lost in the gold mining industry in South Africa alone last week, due to falling prices. Gold exports are crucial to the economies of 30 of the 41 countries due to benefit from the IMF initiative, which is expected to raise $120 million a year. A further fall of $20 in the price of gold would be enough to reduce the export earnings of affected HIPC countries by exactly the same amount.
Gold ore covers 97 per cent of Ghana's debt servicing costs, 48 per cent of Uganda's and 45 per cent of Zimbabwe's. More than half the male labour face of Lesotho and Swaziland are employed in the gold mines of South Africa.
Elsewhere, Africa's continuing dependency upon the North was once again evident in the fall-out from TotalFina's hostile takeover bid for rival French oil-producer Elf-Aquitaine. The move comes in the wake of a year which has seen unprecedented consolidation in the world oil industry, sparked off by the collapse of the price of oil in 1998, which at one point was trading at under $11 a barrel.
Following the mergers of BP-Amoco and Exxon-Mobil, the proposed TotalFina-Elf would be the fourth largest oil company in the world.
The bid comes at a bad time for Elf, its image tarnished by managing director Philippe Jaffré's decision to expose through the courts the corruption that had flourished under his predecessor Lo•c le Floch Prigent, and its labour relations strained by a three-month-old strike in its exploration-production division, where Total's raid has been greeted with open jubilation.
The move has also been well-received in Congo-Brazzaville, where President Gen. Denis Sassou N'Guessou has been suing his democratically-elected predecessor, Pascal Lissouba, for entering into contracts with Elf by which he effectively traded all the country's oil rights until the year 2010 against the funds which allowed him to launch a pre-emptive civil war against his unseated rival.
Elf, which was privatised in 1993, but in which the French state still holds a "golden share" which allows it to veto any decision which is contrary to the "national interest", was long the major instrument of French foreign policy in Africa. N'Guessou, for his part, is father-in-law to Omar Bongo, president of Gabon, as well as a close ally of the Angolan government. Between them, the three countries contain the greater part of Elf's African operations.
Sources close to N'Guessou told the French daily Libération last week, "Elf have been trying to skin the President. We'd be very happy to see them get swallowed up by Total."
Last week also saw the signing of a controversial UN-brokered peace deal in Sierra Leone, where more than two and a half million people have lost their homes and tens of thousands have died in a vicious civil war. The deal gives the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) an amnesty for its members accused of human rights atrocities. RUF soldiers have been charged with using systematic mutilation of prisoners and civilians in their campaign of terror.
A tentative cease-fire agreement was also adopted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where rebel groups supported by Uganda and Rwanda have been trying to overthrow the regime of president Laurent-Désiré Kabila.
Meanwhile, the definitive results of the recent election in Indonesia, which were to have been announced this week, will now be delayed until at least 18 July. As of 10 July, Megawati Sukarnoputri's PDI-P was still in the lead by 36 per cent of votes counted, as against 19 per cent for the ruling Golkar Party.
