A villager passes by an oil-pumping station, part of the "Druzhba" pipeline at a village of Ozerany, some 280 km southwest of Minsk, Belarus, Jan. 8.

The latest confrontation between Russia and Belarus over oil supplies puts the European Union in a quandary. Three key issues are at stake: energy security; the fate of Belarus, and the response to Russia’s domineering behaviour in the former Soviet Union, particularly its use of energy for political intimidation.
The Kremlin is well within its rights to stop subsidising Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, and charge market-based energy prices. But it should move in predictable ways. Its dramatic cut in oil supplies to Belarus (including EU-bound transit shipments) is a clear bid to apply political pressure on Minsk. As Angela Merkel, German chancellor, said Tuesday, it is also unacceptable of Russia to act without warning its EU customers. Such moves undermine Russia’s aim of promoting itself as a reliable energy supplier.
To be fair, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has good reason to be annoyed with Mr Lukashenko, who has consistently broken economic agreements and failed to deliver on controversial promises to prepare for a possible merger of Belarus into Russia.
But Mr Putin must recognise his own responsibility in supporting the Belarusian braggard. Without Moscow’s subsidies, Mr Lukashenko would probably have lost power long ago.
There lies the rub for the EU. On the one hand, it rightly wants Europe to be rid of Mr Lukashenko. On the other, it must not allow Russia to seize political control of Belarus, let alone annex it. Such a Kremlin triumph would set a dangerous precedent for Russia’s relations with other vulnerable former soviet republics, such as Georgia and Ukraine.
Fortunately, the EU does not yet face this difficult choice. There is no sign in the current dispute that Moscow wishes to remove Mr Lukashenko. Mr Putin probably wants him to pay his bills and to boost the Kremlin’s prestige in advance of the 2008 Russian presidential elections. While Mr Putin is not running, he wants to ensure the Kremlin’s candidate wins.
However, Brussels must be ready for possible regime change in Minsk. Western calls for Mr Lukashenko’s departure often seem to assume he will be removed by democratic means and replaced by a pro-west democrat. But what if the regime ends differently, with Moscow imposing a successor?
Assuming high energy prices continue swelling Russia’s reserves, the west may be in a poor position to influence the outcome. But it should insist on two points. First, that energy supplies remain secure; second, that, however strong Moscow’s role, Belarus remains an independent state.
The Kremlin should be happy to grant the first assurance, given that it wants to increase EU-bound exports. But Belarus’s statehood could be quite another matter. The opportunity to start rebuilding an empire could prove very tempting.
FT.COM

To borrow Mahatma Gandhi’s famous comment about a previous British government, Tony Blair is these days a bankrupt check, drawn on a failing bank. He will leave office, perhaps as soon as May, when he will have been prime minister for 10 years. But as he looks forward into 2007, one hopes Blair will use his last year on the world stage to abandon what has become an increasingly uncertain strategy in the region and replace it with something akin to a coherent long-term policy. Unfortunately, based on what he said in late 2006, British policy seems set to continue in its current mode of ad-hoc crisis management.
This was evidenced recently when Blair insisted that Britain would maintain its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 and reiterated his desire to revive the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. This is lip service at best and at worst complete nonsense.
The reality is that thousands of British troops are likely to be withdrawn from Iraq this year as they hastily transfer control of two southern provinces to Iraqi forces. For sure, some troops will remain to train and support Iraqi forces, but Britain wants to get out as many of the 7,000 troops it has stationed in southern Iraq as fast as decency will allow. Amid yet another broadside fired by the military at the government--this time by the commander of British troops in Iraq, Major General Richard Shirreff, who warned that funding for training and living conditions of troops needed to be improved--Blair may well use the withdrawn troops to support the 6,000 soldiers based in Afghanistan, now battling a resurgent Taliban in the volatile southern province of Helmand as British military resources get stretched to bubble gum proportions.
Meanwhile, Blair’s commitment to reviving the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is increasingly laughable. He appears to have only one tool to lever success here, his strong support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ call for early presidential and legislative elections in the Palestinian Authority. And that looks set to break in his hand.
The increasingly bloody mess in the West Bank and Gaza is in part due to US and British ineptitude when dealing with Hamas, as much as the sheer incompetence of Abbas. Elections are likely to make matters worse, whatever the outcome. Against the backdrop of crippling Western sanctions against the Palestinians, Blair and US President George W. Bush appear to be telling the Palestinians they must keep voting until they produce a government the West wants. And for all that backing, Abbas has failed miserably to overturn those sanctions, so the West successfully eroded the last vestige of credibility he had left among Palestinians. Abbas can consider himself more fortunate than his predecessor only in that his headquarters are not under daily siege. Politically he is just as impotent.
This and other Middle East issues are likely to be faced by Blair’s arch-rival, Gordon Brown, currently Britain’s finance minister, and the man who is all but certain to succeed Blair as prime minister later this year.
Brown, an incredibly dour Scotsman, has so far limited his foreign affairs initiatives to pronouncements on improving the plight of Third World countries and meetings with foreign finance ministers. He dipped into Middle East politics last week by condemning the way the former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, was hanged, but there has been little else. While Brown lacks Blair’s experience in world affairs, particularly in the Middle East, he is certain to distance himself from the current US administration in a bid to break the “Bush’s poodle“ image that has haunted Blair and undermined him within his Labor Party.
Blair’s commitment to the invasion of Iraq caused the spectacular collapse in his popularity and eventually led to him being bounced from office by his own party. Brown, whose popularity within Labor is not matched by his support among the electorate, will be anxious to avoid the same fate.
DAILYSTAR.COM.LB

Bangladeshi police beat leaders and activists of the 14-party opposition alliance during clashes on the third day of the three-day-long transport blockade in Dhaka, Jan. 9.

A prospective collapse of democracy in predominantly Sunni Muslim Bangladesh is raising concerns reaching far beyond the politically divided south Asian nation of 145 million people. A state of emergency and intervention by the army are distinct possibilities if already delayed elections fail on January 22. There are precedents aplenty: two presidents have died in military coups since independence from Pakistan in 1971 and the restoration of democracy in 1991 has if anything deepened the destructive enmity of the two main party leaders.
The main beneficiaries of institutional failure could be violently militant Islamist fringe groups such as the Jagrata Muslim Janata and the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, opposed to the country’s secular liberal tradition. The International Crisis Group links these organisations to an upsurge in terrorist violence in 2005, including the country’s first suicide bombings. A crackdown brought respite last year--although at a high price to civil liberties, according to a Human Rights Watch investigation into alleged “death squad“ activities of the feared paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion.
“This may only be a temporary suspension, with sponsors of the militants worried that violence was becoming an electoral and diplomatic liability,“ the Crisis Group report warned. “The issues of foreign funding of extremism and the growing madrassa system are concerns for the long term ... circumstantial evidence, as well as cold political logic, suggests underground terrorist groups have been cultivated and sheltered by those in power.“
Increasingly influential, too, is the more moderate Jamaat e-Islami, part of the coalition administration led by Begum Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP), which left office last October. “The Jamaat is well placed to take advantage of continued political wrangling, though at present electoral success seems implausible,“ said Gareth Price in Chatham House’s World Today magazine.
With an electoral boycott threatened by the main opposition party, Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s Awami League (AL), and troops deployed on the streets amid escalating protests, the outlook was worrying, Price said. “The use of violence as a form of political negotiation seems certain to continue as polling day approaches. It is likely that whoever loses will claim the poll was rigged and protests will continue.“
Disputing poll results is a bipartisan tradition in Bangladesh. The difference this time is that an AL-led boycott would destroy the election’s credibility, guaranteeing further instability. The interim government overseen by President Iajuddin Ahmed insists the polls take place on time for constitutional reasons. But Sheikh Hasina is demanding prior changes to the electoral roll. She also says the election commission is biased and Mr Ahmed should resign. The BNP demands that the polls proceed.
Worried for the economy, the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry has called for a state of emergency if no compromise can be reached. But extra-constitutional intervention was not the answer, the New Age newspaper said. “The prescribed remedy is undoubtedly more dangerous than the malady.“
The deepening crisis in one of the world’s few Muslim democracies is causing alarm abroad. The US has urged a deal on the parties despite the system’s “many imperfections“. The EU warned that “a failure of the current electoral process would be a major setback for democracy and for the international credibility of the country“.
But the Crisis Group said such hand-wringing was not enough; more active political engagement by western countries was required. “Short-term counterterrorism issues should not overwhelm the long-term issues of meeting standards in terms of elections, of improving oversight of security forces, and respect for human rights. Improving democracy is the best guarantee against the growth of extremism.“
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

Is China taking over Africa in preparation for taking on Europe and the United States? That was the main subtext of a conference I attended just before Christmas in Beijing. “The Chinese economy is going great guns--it would be a shame if the Commies took over,“ joked one delegate. But, except perhaps for South Africa, no African state is strong enough to deal equally with the neocapitalist China. On a divided, demoralized continent, Beijing can cherry-pick almost at will.
The West’s approach to Chinese expansionism has been dubbed “hedged integration“: working with the emerging superpower, but also preparing for the worst, including military threats. Pessimists argue that China’s outreach is part of an exclusionary policy, working with illiberal and rogue states. Its trade ignores all human-rights issues. This undermines Western conditionality strategies which aim to improve conditions in autocratic states, especially in Africa. China’s trade with Africa has risen fourfold in the last four years. It is now said to be $40 billion. Because its oil needs are expected to double in 15 years, China has invested in particular in Sudan, Angola and Nigeria.
Beijing involved itself in Africa for ideological reasons in the 1960s and 1970s. But this time the motivation is primarily about business, not politics. Some Western experts argue that the Chinese are now “voracious capitalists“ who are generating a new scramble for Africa. This is a two-way street. China may be pushing its Africa policy hard, but African leaders, increasingly scornful of Western conditionality, are welcoming the far less judgmental Chinese way of doing business.
Forget about Western campaigns about “making poverty history“; instead “make lecturing African leaders history.“ Western aid hasn’t worked. Giving more aid to Africa is like telling an alcoholic he needs a stiff drink to help kick his addiction.
What Africa needs is not liberal kindness but investment by business. But at present only very big Western companies--and the Chinese--take the risk. After more than a trillion dollars of Western aid, many African citizens are poorer than ever. There is simply no correlation between aid and economic growth. Africans don’t need to be told that aid merely saps initiative. Africa, like any other region, wants to finance its recovery though its own resources and through direct foreign investment.
During the visit of 40 African heads of state to Beijing in November, African leaders were thrilled that China wanted to talk about trade, investment and brotherhood rather than, to quote China-watcher Lindsey Hilsum, “pesky subjects Western leaders like to bring up like human rights, good governance, corruption, genocide and all that.“
African leaders are generally much happier to deal with the Chinese. President Festus Mogae of Botswana admitted: “I find that the Chinese treat us as equals. The West treats us as former subjects.“ Because the Chinese are not imposing any ideology, it’s willing buyer, willing seller. Above all, the phenomenal growth rates in China and the fact that hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty make an attractive model for Africans.
Africa needs trade, not aid. And China, for all its immediate self-interest, is providing just that. More Chinese live in Nigeria now than Britons during the height of the empire. Africa is not attractive to European settlers any more. If China’s energy shortage and population surplus can help rebuild a largely derelict continent, then Beijing should be applauded.
Paul Moorcraft
is the director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Analysis in London
WASHTIMES.COM

Last week, German officials said they were divorcing themselves from the French government’s effort to develop a European rival to Google, the Internet’s leading search engine. The secretive, multimillion-dollar effort had been hailed two years ago by French President Jacques Chirac, who said France was “engaged in a global competition for technological supremacy.“
But French and German researchers apparently split over how best to challenge Google, Yahoo, MSN and other products of Yanqui ingenuity. Some reports suggested that German researchers didn’t share Chirac’s zeal for replacing U.S.-made technologies with European ones. That zeal springs from Chirac’s eagerness for France to get a cut of the multibillion-dollar advertising bounty that search engines generate. Chirac also trots out the well-worn argument that France needs to protect its culture against foreign (read: U.S.) domination online, as if a French-made search engine would necessarily lead Internet users to more French websites, blogs, online services and the like than one developed in Silicon Valley.
Memo to Chirac: Google and its competitors have already noticed that the French market is different. That’s why they have French versions of their sites that respond to search queries in a, well, more Continental way than do their U.S. versions.
Granted, Internet search technology is still young, particularly when it comes to searching for audio, video and pictures. For example, none of the leading search engines offer a way to input a picture or sound instead of a word, then look for matches online. A new, French-funded entrant may be able to seize that opportunity.
But as Microsoft has demonstrated, pouring millions of dollars into research won’t guarantee France or any other entity a big following--particularly if the technology aims to serve a cultural or political objective instead of raw market demand. The market is highly competitive, notwithstanding Google’s popularity, and Internet users are notoriously fickle. A company that tries to prejudice its results or steer its users in a direction they don’t want to go will lose its audience in a hurry.
After all, the expectations of Internet users could be boiled down to a phrase that Chirac may be familiar with: libertŽ, ŽgalitŽ, fraternitŽ.
LATIMES.COM