GERMANY DELIBERATES MILITARY ROLE IN IRAQ/DW--New WMW

[Gloria]

Full excerpts, links up now at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical/current.htm

Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com

WORLD MEDIA WATCH For August 22, 2003

1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--IRAQ AND THE ONE-EYED LIAR (Yaqubi was the favorite student of Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, an important proponent of the hawza natika who was killed by agents of Saddam in 1999, and thus achieved the status of a revered martyr. His son, the young Muqtada Sadr, has used his father's reputation to galvanize a mass movement that now holds key Shi'ite neighborhoods and mosques throughout Iraq and who has ambitions for national control. Muqtada and Yaqubi are now bitter rivals seeking to embody the hawza natika and eventually rule Iraq.)



2//Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK--IRAQ: QUELLING SUNNI MILITANCY(Sunni Arabs, who were privileged under the old regime, were left without leadership or any alternative reference point. Their leadership melted away with the regime, and there was nothing to replace it. One immediate - and worrying - consequence is that they are not adequately represented on the ruling council. Since Saddam’s departure and the arrival of US forces on their home ground, the Sunnis have moved in several directions…It is this explosive combination of Saddam loyalists, disgruntled tribesmen and Islamic fundamentalists that now forms the core of what is today known as the “Iraqi resistance”. They lack a strong centralised leadership, and appear to attack random targets whenever the opportunity arises.)



3//Deutsche-Welle/DW-World.de, Germany--GERMANY DELIBERATES MILITARY ROLE IN IRAQ (The German government is coming under mounting pressure to rethink its attitude towards military involvement in Iraq following Tuesday's attack on the United Nations in Baghdad. In the past months, Berlin has used every opportunity to emphasize that it would not send German soldiers into post-war Iraq, unless there was a clear U.N. mandate…Despite this stance, the German government was among the first to condemn Tuesday's bloody attack on the U.N. in Baghdad. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called it an act that was directed not only against the U.N., but against the international community as a whole.)
http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1430_A_952795_1_A,00.html


4//The Independent, UK--SONIA GANDHI STAKES CLAIM FOR TOP JOB WITH DENUNCIATION OF VAJPAYEE (But India's political pundits gave Sonia Gandhi unusually enthusiastic reviews yesterday after her blistering performance in a no-confidence vote in India's parliament. Their verdict was that she might at last have cemented her leadership…Sonia Gandhi and her allies were always certain to lose the no-confidence vote. The result, 312 to186, was a formality. What was significant, though, was the new forcefulness that she displayed as she laid into the government as "incompetent, insensitive, irresponsible and brazenly corrupt"… Another analyst, Mahesh Rangarajan, said her performance was "a major milestone in her evolution as a political leader. She was staking a claim for the top job.")

5//Inter Press Service, Italy--NEW DEMOCRACY BRINGS ROYALTY BACK (The royalty of former Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania and Bulgaria is returning to their homelands after decades spent in exile after the end of World War II. The homecoming is not always a return to a palace. Careful not to wake up ghosts of the distant past, they are trying to return as a part of societies they know so little about. Only one, Simeon II of Bulgaria, has access to power. But in a way different from his ruling predecessors. He has a party, a political one. ”Simeon II” as it is called, won the parliamentary elections in Bulgaria in 2001. The heir to the throne is now the Bulgarian Prime Minister…”Monarchies were taboo in former communist countries,” says analyst Filip Radojicic. ”For decades, communists led smear campaigns against them. Only the future will tell whether people in the Balkans really want monarchies.” )