Excerpts, links up now at
http://www.zianet.com/insightanalyticalTomorrow at Buzzflash.com
WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR DECEMBER 19, 2003
1/Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany--BLOW TO GERMAN INVESTIGATORS (A single letter sent to a Hamburg courtroom has delivered a serious blow to Germany's huge anti-terrorism effort, while implicitly raising the difficult question of whether the courts have relaxed their standards of proof in cases involving suspected terrorists. Within minutes of Abdelghani Mzoudi being freed by the Hamburg State Court on Thursday, a lawyer for the only other suspect in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to be found guilty in a German court, Mounir Motassadeq, predicted that the same lack of evidence that led to Mzoudi's release would result in a reversal of his client's conviction.)
2//The Guardian, UK--SCRAP ANTI-TERROR LAWS, SAY MPs AND PEERS (Controversial laws allowing the home secretary to indefinitely intern foreigners suspected of international terrorism should be scrapped, a committee of Britain's most senior parliamentarians said today… The report states: "Other countries have not found it necessary to have any such derogation and we have found no obvious reason why the UK should be the exception.")
3//The Jordan Times, Jordan--VETERAN FRENCH ICONOCLAST READY TO DEFEND SADDAM (Veteran French lawyer Jacques Verges — a 79-year-old iconoclast with half a century of experience defending unpopular causes — confirmed on Wednesday that he was willing to act for captured Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein when he comes to trial. Speaking to AFP before leaving by plane for Jordan, Verges said he has already been asked to act for Iraq's former vice-premier Tareq Aziz and that he was also ready to defend Saddam Hussein. He said he was to meet members of Aziz's family in Amman…A quintessential devil's advocate who has made a career of arguing what most choose not to hear, Verges defended Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie…)
4//The News International, Pakistan--NORTH KOREA VOWS TO BEEF UP N-DETERRENCE (North Korea will continue to build nuclear weapons until Washington drops its hostile policy and accepts the Stalinist state’s terms for an end to the nuclear crisis, Pyongyang’s official media said on Thursday…In Seoul, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun said South Korea was trying to stop the United States from "using fists" to unilaterally resolve the nuclear crisis with North Korea, according to Yonhap news agency…The president, promising to take a leading role in ending the crisis when elected one year ago, said the initiative was now held by Washington and Pyongyang, even though "it is a life-or-death matter to us.")
5//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--CENTRAL ASIA’S GREAT BASE RACE (And so the rivalries of the great powers, Russia and America, India and Pakistan - and China as well - now fully embrace Central Asia. There is a distinct possibility that the former Soviet Union will be divided into staging grounds for rival blocs that ultimately are enmeshed in conflicts triggered by or for their proxies with another great power - or its proxies…Add the influx of weapons, the drug trade, the rise of terrorism and the pervasive misrule in these states, and it is easy to see that the combustible elements that can explode into conflict are gradually being assembled and readied for use.)
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