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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 Raskols everywhere
By Peter SnowdonTempers have been running high across the China Sea, following an interview Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui gave German World Service radio 10 days ago, in which he said that contacts between Beijing and Taipei would henceforth have to be conducted on a "state-to-state" basis. China has never recognised the sovereignty of Taiwan, where the defeated nationalists retreated following the 1949 civil war, and Washington, a long-standing supporter of the Taiwanese government, has recently come out explicitly in favour of Beijing's "One China" policy.
Not only were Chinese troops readying themselves Monday for military manoeuvres along the Formosa straits, but Beijing also chose to announce last Thursday that its scientists had mastered the technology required to manufacture the neutron bomb. While Western observers believe this to have been the case since the 1970s, China had never before made a public statement on the subject. The renewed tension between the two countries comes in the wake of the return of Hong Kong to China in July 1997 and in anticipation of that of Macao, scheduled for December this year. It also coincides with a particularly awkward period in Sino-American relations, following the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on 8 May, in which three people died.
Sino-US relations have been causing problems elsewhere in the region, too. Two weeks ago, Papua New Guinea prime minister Bill Skate resigned following a trip to Taipei during which PNG became the 29th nation to recognise Taiwan's sovereignty, allegedly in return for $2.35 billion in aid. The deal was the latest in a series of attempts to find alternative sources of funding in place of World Bank/IMF loans, which would have imposed conditions deemed too stringent.
However, both China and PNG's former colonial masters, Australia, objected violently to this ingenious arrangement. PNG's economy is largely dependent on the export of commodities, including oil, timber and minerals, with China and Australia as two of its largest markets.
Skate, who was succeeded as prime minister this week by former chief of the PNG Central Bank, Sir Mekere Moruata, had been elected on an anti-corruption ticket in 1997, but like most PNG politicians, soon found himself at the centre of a number of scandals. In the November immediately following his election, Australian television showed video footage in which he was seen to authorise a bribe, bragged of having ordered a murder, and claimed to be the godfather of PNG's notorious "raskol" street gangs.
Corruption was also a prominent theme at the three-day conference of Megawati Sukarnoputri's Democratic Party for Struggle (PDIP) which opened Sunday in Jakarta. When the final results for Indonesia's first free elections in 44 years were released at the end of last week, the PDIP came out strongly ahead with 33.7 per cent of the vote, while the ruling Golkar Party managed only 22 per cent. Incumbent President B.J. Habibie still hopes to be able to form a government, but there are strong signs that the country's major Muslim groups are ready to throw their weight behind Megawati.
Meanwhile, the north-western province of Aceh saw more serious skirmishing between government soldiers and rebels of the Free Aceh Movement, in which at least 20 people died. More than 82,000 people have fled their homes since fighting began to escalate in this resource-rich region. Elsewhere, in East Timor, government officials and anti-independence militias took time out Saturday to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of Indonesia's annexation of the island. As many as 200,000 people are alleged to have died in the subsequent two decades of resistance, whether through violence, disease or starvation. Registration of voters for the UN-sponsored referendum on the future of the island, now due to be held on 21 or 22 August, began on Friday.
It is not only in southeast Asia that the geopolitics of natural resources play a determining role in people's lives. On Saturday, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) celebrated newly-elected President Thabo Mbeki's first month in office by declaring a massive programme of strikes, in protest at what they see as a new, possibly fatal wave of retrenchment in the gold mining industry. The protest got underway with marches on the Swiss and British embassies in Johannesburg; both countries' governments plan to dispose of a substantial part of their gold reserves, with possibly disastrous effects for many highly-indebted poor countries (HIPC), as noted in this column last week.
South Africa's economy is in a parlous state, with half a million jobs lost in the last four years. The mining companies alone have laid off 350,000 men since 1987. It is estimated that the average wage earner in South Africa now single-handedly supports eight people. COSATU wants to see a comprehensive review of the government's growth, employment and redistribution strategy (GEAR), which by thrusting the country into the front rank of World Trade Organisation (WTO)-compliant nations, has won the country praise and financial aid from institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, while failing to provide any serious measures to offset the catastrophic social effects of the drastic decline in many traditional industries.
There was bad news for Mozambique, too, which on 30 June became only the fourth nation to qualify for debt relief under the World Bank/IMF HIPC initiative, as reported in this column. It has since emerged that the new Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) which Mozambique had to sign as part of the deal includes clauses which will effectively prevent the government from providing clean drinking water in rural areas on the basis of need, demanding instead that the service be run on a "cost recovery" basis by the private sector.
The ESAF also forbids the government from raising or adopting new import surcharges or export taxes and restrictions, thus destroying hopes of reviving the country's cashew processing industry, which was the nation's largest industrial employer and second source of foreign currency until the mid-1990s, when it was torpedoed by the World Bank. Soren Ambrose of the US-based "Fifty Years is Enough" network told the Inter Press Service that the IMF, by supporting the Bank's actions, "is effectively saying that the cashews should be processed by those who can do it most efficiently -- which in this case means child labourers in India."
