17 - 23 May 2001
Issue No.534
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 17 - 23 May 2001 Issue No.534 |
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New lease on life
STUNNED relatives of victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing -- America's worst terrorist incident to take place in the country -- learned last Friday that Timothy McVeigh, who has admitted to the bombing and was scheduled to be executed on 16 May, has been given another month to live. A dejected US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that following the last-minute revelation that documents from the investigation failed to be turned over by the FBI, he was postponing McVeigh's execution.
McVeigh, a decorated Gulf War veteran, was convicted in 1997 of masterminding the devastating truck bombing that killed 168 people. The unusual stay clearly pleases nobody and has served to further embarrass the FBI, which has suffered a series of debacles, most notably the bungled espionage case against Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee and the identification of FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Hanssen as a long-time Russian informer.
It was McVeigh himself who requested that a date be set for his execution and most insiders agree that there is little reason to believe that 3,000 pages of documents and recordings will bring the verdict into question. Ashcroft, however, felt compelled to see that no stone was left unturned.
Stemming the tide
SIGNIFICANT pressure on the Macedonian government from Western powers finally yielded fruit on Sunday when parliament overwhelmingly approved a shaky new national unity government that includes all political parties, notably the two main ethnic Albanian parties. The crucial deal was deemed essential to staving off an outbreak of civil war sparked by an increasingly resilient ethnic Albanian insurgency in the north.
The Macedonian army has been carrying out a heavy bombardment of areas held by the militant National Liberation Army (NLA), but a rebel spokesman dismissed claims that some 30 rebels had been killed in the fighting, saying that they "haven't had a scratch". The rebels are demanding a change in the constitution that would give ethnic Albanians -- who make up a third of the country's population -- equal rights and recognition. They were not, however, part of the negotiations that hammered out the new government and, consequently, put little faith in the development.
Keeping the status quo
VOTERS in Spain's semi-autonomous Basque region went to the polls in record numbers on Sunday to elect a regional parliament. A 5,000-man police force was dispatched to keep order under the threat of attacks by the violent separatist group ETA, whose brutal campaign for a sovereign Basque state has resulted in some 800 deaths over the last three decades. Pro-independence Basque President Juan Jose Ibarretxe was forced to call early elections when an alliance with the ETA-backed Euskal Herritarrok fell apart, but initial results indicated his job was safe.
Though Ibarretxe's Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) has held power since the region gained its semi-independence in 1980, early polls had indicated that a coalition between the anti-independence Popular Party (PP) and the Socialist opposition could unseat the PNV. Brash PP leader and former Spanish interior minister Jaime Mayor Oreja -- running his fourth presidential campaign -- promised a sweeping crackdown on terrorism and closer ties to Madrid for the prosperous region, but the PNV's centre-right self-determination position pulled through in the end.
A taste of heaven
LONG-TIME Cuban leader Fidel Castro was given a hearty welcome on Friday in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, where his defiant anti-globalisation positions find a highly receptive audience. On an unusual tour of developing nations outside the Western hemisphere, Castro has already stopped in Algeria and Iran -- countries that he praised for their revolutionary spirit and anti-imperialist stances.
Castro and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, the maverick leader who snubbed the IMF following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, share a similar hostility to a world economic system dominated by the major West. The two leaders met repeatedly during Castro's three-day visit, but the fervid consultations did not keep Castro from playing tourist. On Saturday, he strolled the city's famous Petronas Towers, greeting a few curious fans and declaring that a trip to the top of Asia's largest building had brought him "closer to heaven".
Though Castro graciously dubbed Malaysia the "rebel of the East" (Cuba, of course, being the rebel of the West), the difference between the two countries is marked. Malaysia thrives on trade with the US, while Cuba's economy has shrivelled under a four-decade embargo.
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