Breifs

---

Boot on the other foot

HUNGARIAN security services thwarted a plot Tuesday to bomb a Jewish museum, according to Attila Petofi, deputy director of the National Bureau of Investigations. A Palestinian- born Hungarian dentist was arrested while two Syrians are being detained on the suspicion that they may have been procuring explosives for an attack.

The alleged terrorist activities were originally reported by the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz to have been an assassination attempt against Israeli President Moshe Katsav. Although Katsav is currently in Budapest, Petofi did not specify the timing of the planned attack or whether the Jewish museum referred to was the Holocaust Museum. He did, however, clarify that there was no attempt to assassinate Katsav.

Katsav arrived in Budapest Tuesday for a three-day visit and is attending today's inauguration of the state-funded Holocaust Museum -- the first of its kind in Central Europe. Today marks the 60th anniversary of the day when Hungary's pro-Nazi regime began to herd Jews into ghettos. Roughly 600,000 Hungarians, mostly Jews but also large numbers of Roma, homosexuals and other minority groups, died during the year-long Nazi occupation of Hungary.

Keeping an eye on East Asia

US VICE President Dick Cheney arrived in Japan on Saturday in the first leg of a week-long trip to East Asia. While Cheney had reportedly intended to focus on economic issues while pressing Japan's Prime Minster Junichiro Koizumi to increase its military contribution in Iraq, the kidnapping of three Japanese civilians in Iraq on 8 April forced modifications in his plans.

Cheney instead offered much-needed public support for Koizumi's current position on the war, praising him for "refusing to bow to the efforts of these terrorists to intimidate or change the policy of the Japanese government".

Despite renewed anti-war demonstrations and emotional pleas from the hostages' families, the Japanese public has been largely supportive of Koizumi's refusal to bargain, though traumatised by disturbing footage of masked gunmen with their terrified captives. The kidnappers, belonging to the previously unknown Mujahidin Brigades, demanded a full withdrawal of Japanese troops from Iraq by 11 April. As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press the fate of the hostages was still unclear.

Japan has 530 soldiers in Samawah in southern Iraq performing reconstruction tasks, while their total deployment is scheduled to reach 1,100 soldiers. This is the first time Japan has sent troops abroad without a UN peace-keeping mandate since 1945, and some critics have argued that this move violates Japan's pacifist constitution.

In discussions with leading Chinese officials on Tuesday and Wednesday, Cheney pressed for the devaluation of the yuan, which has been pegged at 8.28 to the dollar for a decade. Last year China racked up a $124 billion trade surplus with the US, and has maintained a fixed exchange rate by building up its foreign currency reserves. He also reportedly encouraged Beijing to buy three nuclear reactors from US-based Westinghouse for $1.5 billion each. China is seeking to double its energy production by 2020.

North Korean nuclear development merited attention in Japan and China, and is expected to take centre stage when Cheney visits South Korea on Thursday to meet with Prime Minister Goh Kun. The US position is that Pyongyang must completely and irrevocably dismantle its nuclear programme.

South Korea currently has 460 medics and military engineers in Nasseriya, and will become the third-largest contributor to the coalition later this year when 3,600 of its troops enter northern Iraq. Seven South Korean evangelical missionaries were kidnapped though promptly released on 8 April near Baghdad.

For fear of truth

INDIA'S supreme court ordered a retrial in a case of multiple murder committed as part of the Gujrat massacre of 12,000 people last year. In one of the atrocities that took place during the anti-Muslim rampage, 12 people were burnt to death in a bakery. The case has come to be known as the Best Bakery case. This week's order for a retrial exposed the Bharatiya Jananta Party's (BJP) implication when a key witness said that senior party officials had threatened to kill her and her family if she told the truth.

The case has been consistently referred to by international human rights organisations as symbolic of the BJP's failure to implement justice. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly sought to expose the party for sabotaging evidence, condoning rape and murder -- by reducing charges to "rioting" -- and arbitrarily freeing suspects.

Key witness Zahira Sheikh, 20, will provide a new testimony on the basis of her recent statement. According to one of her lawyers, this is "a historic judgement". The trial has also been moved to a neighbouring state.

The massacres began last year after 58 Hindu extremists were burned alive on a train by Muslim insurgents on their way home to Gujrat. Seeking revenge, Gujrati Hindus turned on the Muslim population and began a massacre that sparked international outrage. The government failed to intervene effectively to thwart the killings.

Return of Golkar

GOLKAR, the Indonesian party that backed the dictator Suharto until his ouster six years ago, has inched ahead in the 5 April general elections with 65 per cent of the vote counted.

While Golkar now has 20.73 per cent of the vote, incumbent President Megawati Sukarnoputri's People's Democratic Justice Party has fallen behind with 19.95 per cent, a bad omen for her prospects on 5 July, when Indonesia holds its first-ever direct presidential elections.

Analysts say that the lacklustre economy and continuing corruption were the major campaign issues. While Golkar is now committed to democracy, voters may yearn for the stability and booming economy of the Suharto days.

Final election results are slow in coming in due to computer glitches and the difficulties inherent in conducting elections across the Indonesian archipelago. Golkar's lead may widen as results trickle in from its traditional strongholds in remote rural regions.

Licensing execution

EIGHTY-FOUR per cent of the world's executions carried out last year were licensed by just four states: the United States, Iran, China and Vietnam, according to an Amnesty International report. China alone carried out two thirds of the executions.

The US and China were cited by the report to have been the only two countries to have executed prisoners for crimes committed when they were minors.

Although, as the report noted, fewer judicial killings took place last year than in 2002, there has, on the other hand, been a dramatic increase in extra-judicial killings since September 2001. Israel is one case in point, whose most outrageous assassination in recent months has been that of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Caught in the middle

TRADITIONALLY an ally of the country's social movements, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva finds himself in a difficult position as he seeks to attract foreign capital while Brazil falls deeper into a social, political and economic crisis with urban and rural populations are growing increasingly impatient.

On the rural front, along with an ultimatum issued by the agrarian movements at the end of last month to the government, promising no end to confrontation should the age-old problem of landlessness not be resolved, there has been a sharp escalation in the seizures of farmland over the past few weeks. Indeed, since mid-March more than 50 properties have been taken over, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation. Nearly half of Brazil's farmland is owned by one per cent of the country's population.

Meanwhile, as street violence escalates in Rio de Janeiro, the government has announced a plan to construct a three-metre wall closing off slum areas particularly affected by drug-related crime. This plan has been met with outrage from international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Global Watch, the latter saying the wall would create "social apartheid".

Since coming to power with massive popular support, Lula has found it very hard to meet expectations amid pressure to implement International Monetary Fund policies and service Brazil's massive international debt load.

Compiled by Paul Wulfsberg and Serene Assir