Taiwanese rally in support of the island's latest bid for United Nations membership in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, Sept. 15.

As the United Nations General Assembly begins its annual session later this month, it will refuse once again to confront an issue where the denial of reality intersects with a negation of the world body’s core values.
Article 4 of the U.N. Charter stipulates that membership in the international organization “is open to all peace-loving states that accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and are able and willing to carry out these obligations.“
Anomalies were present from the start, including India being a founding member even though at the time it was still a British colony. The applications for membership of many countries, for example Japan, were caught in the crossfire of the Cold War and they joined a decade later, in some cases even later.
The “peace-loving“ qualification was never applied. The “able and willing to carry out obligations“ requirement was considered briefly in the context of countries with population well under 1 million seeking membership.
In the end, the desire to have at least one international organization aspiring to universal representation of the full human family trumped all doubts and hesitations. Now the membership is 192.
This still did not solve all problems. In some cases the battle over membership took the form of representation.
An especially egregious example was Cambodia when, rather than accepting the Hun Sen regime, the Western and Southeast Asian countries preferred to recognize and deal with the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea. A grosser misnomer is hard to imagine: It was not a coalition, with the murderous Khmer Rouge being the dominant force; it had none of the essential attributes of government like territory and population; it was profoundly antidemocratic; and it was not even located in Cambodia, being based rather in refugee camps along the border in Thailand.
Another anomaly was Taipei representing China, including the permanent seat on the Security Council. The Communists controlled and ruled China. But the Cold War was raging, and the West controlled the numbers and so called the shots in the U.N. It was not until 1971 that this egregious wrong was finally righted.
But one mega-denial was substituted by another that year as values and reality were equally denied. As China took its rightful place, Taiwan was “disappeared.“
More than an international bureaucracy and a forum for engaging in intergovernmental trench warfare, the U.N. represents an idealized world in which nations work together harmoniously for the common good. Values are central to its identity. That is why corruption, fraud and sexual misconduct by U.N. personnel are so damaging. While the Iraq oil-for-food scandal was mostly a media beat-up, financial and sexual misconduct by U.N. peacekeepers is more pervasive. Because the U.N. won’t admit to the scale, it cannot get rid of the problem.
The most significant issue on which the international community of states is in complete denial is the way in which Taiwan has been “banned“ from the U.N., just like undesirables in apartheid South Africa.
Taiwan is refused membership, is not granted observer status, and does not figure in the U.N.’s statistical databases.
The refusal to permit any form of Taiwanese participation in the World Health Organization, for example, means that 23 million people are cut off from information on global health policy discussions, exchanges on technology and best practices, and the monitoring and prevention of epidemics. Japan and the United States are the main backers of increased Taiwanese participation in the WHO.
On July 19, Taiwan submitted, yet again, its application for admission to the U.N. It satisfies all the normal criteria of a state: territory, people and effective control by a stable government. Moreover, as an island it has a natural demarcation. But on July 23, the U.N. Office of Legal Affairs returned the application.
The decision has little to do with the merits of the application and everything to do with the geopolitics of China as a permanent member of the Security Council. Questioning the right of the secretariat to decide on the issue, Taiwan will try to take its case directly to the General Assembly, with little chance of success.
Where does this leave all the fine talk of democracy, human rights and self-determination in Kosovo, East Timor and elsewhere? Taiwan is better credentialed than most of them. Its population of 23 million is about the same as the combined total of Australia and New Zealand, and bigger than scores of U.N. members. Is the U.N.’s democracy fund a complete sham?
In his campaign for the post of U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki Moon made much of the fact that he is from a country that has actually made the transition from poor to high income and from an authoritarian to a democratic regime.
ASIAOBSERVER.COM

David Petraeus

US commander in Iraq Gen David Petraeus expressed long-term interest in running for the US presidency when he was stationed in Baghdad three years ago according to a senior Iraqi official who knew him at that time.
Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser and spokesman at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, says that Gen Petraeus discussed with him his long term ambition to be president when the general was head of training and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-5.
“I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said ’no, that would be too soon,“ said Mr Khadim who now lives in London.
Gen Petraeus has a reputation in the US army for being a man of great ambition. If he succeeds in reversing America’s apparent failure in Iraq he would be a natural candidate for the White House in the presidential election in 2012 or beyond.
His able defence of the ’surge’ in US troop numbers in Iraq as a success before Congress this week has made Gen Petraeus the best known active soldier in America, an articulate, intelligent and energetic man he has always shown skill in managing the media and impressing politicians.
But Gen Petraeus’ open interest in the presidency expressed during his previous job in Iraq may lead critics to suggest that his own political ambitions have influenced him in putting an optimistic gloss on the US military position in Iraq.
Mr Khadim, a long term opponent of Saddam Hussein, was a senior adviser in the Iraqi Interior Ministry in 2004-5 when Iyad Allawi was prime minister of Iraq.
“My office was in the Adnan Palace in the Green Zone which was close to Gen Petraeus’ office,“ recalls Mr Khadim which meant that they met frequently.
In addition he had meetings with Gen Petraeus because the Interior Ministry was involved in vetting the loyalty of Iraqis recruited as officers into the new Iraqi army.
Mr Khadim was critical of the general’s choice of Iraqis to work with him.
For a soldier whose military abilities and experience are so lauded by the White House Gen Petraeus has had a surprisingly controversial career during the war in Iraq. His critics hold him at least partly responsible for three important debacles: The capture of Mosul by the insurgents in 2004, the failure to train an effective Iraqi army and the theft of the entire Iraqi arms procurement budget in 2004-5.
Gen Petraeus came to Iraq during the invasion of 2003 as commander of the 20,000-strong 101st Airborne Division and had not previously seen combat. He first became prominent when the 101st was based in Mosul, a largely Sunni Arab city in northern Iraq, where he pursued a more conciliatory policy toward former Baathists and Iraqi army officers than was US policy in Baghdad.
His efforts were deemed successful and were highly publicized in US newspapers and on television at the time. When the 101st departed in February 2004 it had lost only 60 dead in combat and accidents. Gen Petraeus had build up the local police force by recruiting, to the anger of the Kurds in Mosul, officers who had previously worked for Saddam Hussein’s security apparatus.
Although Mosul remained quiet for some months after Gen Petraeus left the US suffered one of its worse setbacks of the war in November 2004 when insurgents captured most of the city.
The 7,000 police trained and recruited by Gen Petraeus changed sides or went home, 30 police stations were captured by the anti-US resistance, 11,000 assault rifles were lost and $41 million worth of military equipment disappeared. Iraqi army units also abandoned their bases.
The debacle in Mosul was little noticed because the American media was absorbed by the storming of Fallujah west of Baghdad by the US Marines which happened at the same time.
Gen Petraeus’ next job was to oversee the training and equipment of a new Iraqi army to replace the one dissolved by the occupation authorities a year earlier. As head of the Multinational Security Transition Command, commonly called ’Minsticky’, Gen Petraeus claimed that his efforts were proving highly successful.
COUNTERPUNCH.COM

European Union is again entering stormy seas. Like a ship with a mutinous crew it is drifting dangerously while above and below decks arguments rage about how Europe should be run.
The EU has weathered past crises and often emerged stronger, but this time the rocks ahead are very large, and blinkered policies being steered by some of Europe’s leading statespersons have made the chances of striking them very substantial.
Fingers are once more being pointed at Britain as being at the heart of the trouble, and it is undeniable that British objections to parts of the currently proposed European Reform Treaty are causing much of the tension.
But this time it is not the British who are wholly to blame. The real cause of all the aggravation is the determination of certain EU leaders to push ahead with plans that transfer substantial further powers away from member states and into the hands of central EU institutions.
This was tried before, a few years back, when EU leaders put forward what was labeled a new constitution for the EU--which received a resounding “no“ from both French and Dutch voters when it was put to a referendum (and would have done so from the British as well if the whole project had not then been dropped).
This time the EU’s leaders--or some of them--have tried the same thing again with the new “reform“ treaty, but carefully dropping the constitution label while leaving most of the contents within it unchanged.
Predictably, growing numbers of voices are calling for the treaty to be subject to a referendum, like the last one which it so resembles--and not just in Britain but in several other member states.
So far, new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has resisted the referendum pressure on the grounds that Britain’s sovereign powers in vital areas such as foreign policy, social policy and the administration of justice are protected by legally watertight “opt-outs“ from the proposed treaty.
But the pressure on him is growing daily from all sides, not just from his political opponents and not just from those who were always opposed to EU membership.
The claim that this is a different treaty from last time, and that therefore a referendum is not needed, is sounding thinner and thinner, especially when leading European figures are all saying the opposite and insisting that it is 90 percent the same as before. And many respected legal authorities have claimed that the opt-outs are not so watertight after all.
To handle the situation Brown has made a skillful but risky move.
He has told the other EU leaders that there must be big additional concessions to Britain by diluting further the integrating aspects of the new treaty. If these are not granted he has hinted that he may be pushed into a referendum after all.
This has infuriated the treaty’s chief architects, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The scene is thus set for a shipwreck. Either these key concessions are made--which would probably include dropping the idea of a powerful figure to conduct EU foreign policy collectively, and many other provisions as well.
Or the British will hold their referendum and will unquestionably vote no to the new treaty. This would then take the EU straight on to the rocks, leading to disorientation and possible breakup.
This would be a tragedy, and one that would have been unnecessary and completely avoidable, had Europe’s leaders been ready to settle for a more modest tidying up treaty to adapt the EU to its ever-growing membership (now 27 nations).
JAPANTIMES.COM

If indeed investors prefer certainty in making their investment decisions, then Thailand is arguably not the best place for your money over the short or medium term. With the return of democracy later this year, Thailand is nonetheless headed toward a highly uncertain political period, one likely to be plagued by intense factional and political party infighting and the incessant shadow threat of another military intervention.
Although the ruling Council for National Security (CNS) will follow through on its pledge to hold democratic polls in December, the military has no intention of fully relinquishing its hold on political power.
Knowledge of the inner workings, personalities and proclivities of the opaque institution, as it was before last September’s coup that ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, will be crucial to understanding Thai politics and policy in the months and years ahead.
The new and less democratic constitution passed at last month’s national referendum, which contrary to many commentators’ predictions was endorsed by 57% of voters, in effect provides for a future role for the military in day-to-day politics. Appointed military proxies or outright representatives will make up nearly half of the 150-member Senate, which will have extraordinary new oversight powers to censure and potentially remove elected politicians with a mere three-fifths majority of the Upper House.
It’s one of many new political circuit-breakers the military has installed to weaken the executive branch and avoid a recurrence of the political juggernaut of Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party.
Only one-fifth of the members of Parliament will be needed to file a no-confidence motion against the prime minister (it was previously two-fifths) and only one-sixth to file a motion against a minister. These new measures, meant to improve oversight of elected politicians, will also likely hobble the parliamentary process, resurrecting complaints from the 1990s that slow-moving and fractious democracy is bad for business and investor confidence.
The military-influenced Senate will have powers to delay legislation and must be consulted through a joint session with the Lower House to amend the constitution.
The Council of State, meanwhile, is readying new national-security legislation, which in times of national crisis could entail a breakdown of the parliamentary order, and will give the military legal protection to launch future coups.
Questions about the legality of last year’s military intervention still loom heavily over the CNS--despite a blanket amnesty the military wrote into the new constitution to protect itself, its investigative committees and legislature from future prosecutions.
Pro-Thaksin politicians, including new People’s Power Party (PPP) leader Samak Sundaravej, have already indicated they plan to raise legal challenges in Parliament, including in relation to TRT’s dissolution in May and the five-year bans on its 111 executive members, including the exiled Thaksin.
In response, a government led by the Democrat or the Motherland Party could pursue with vigor lingering corruption charges against Samak, potentially knocking the newly formed party’s leader from politics.
ATIMES.COM

Geopolitical risk in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M.) is on the rise after ethnic clashes involving the Albanian minority broke out last week. Ethnic tensions and rivalry over territory are threatening to destabilize the young republic, complicating the political situation in the western Balkans.
Kosovo, which is seeking independence from Serbia, and other southern territories in Serbia near the villages of Bujanovac and Konculj are likely to suffer from a new wave of Albanian-Slavic inter-ethnic conflict in the F.Y.R.O.M.
On Monday, September 10, a policeman and an armed man were killed during clashes in the ethnic Albanian region that borders Kosovo. Such events prompted official statements from Skopje’s politicians.
While government officials have qualified the killings as criminal-related incidents, opposition leaders from the Social-Democratic party warned about the political significance of the recent clashes. The reason is that in 2001 ethnic conflict between Albanians and Slavic citizens erupted in the region.
For the moment, it is difficult to predict the exact nature of the recent clashes. One fact, however, is clear: if the ongoing turmoil transforms into a perpetual conflict, Skopje’s promising economic outlook will be dealt a serious blow, and international economic players may cool down their interest in new investments.
Macedonia is currently a candidate for E.U. integration and is also expected to join N.A.T.O. in 2008, and the last development its rulers and citizens need is a revival of ethnic conflict.
Skopje’s rigorous monetary policy, its goodwill in implementing E.U. directives for economic policy, cheap labor and foreign investments have created a quickly improving economic environment during the past few years.
Investors were confident, political stability was more than acceptable for a country that confronted the risk of ethnic conflicts, and the march toward Euro-Atlantic integration seemed unstoppable. Now, as the Kosovo question is heading toward a crucial breakthrough in November and December (with elections and new decisions by the E.U. and the U.N. expected), and as Serbia confronts its Albanian question once again, Skopje’s political destiny is more than ever linked to its geopolitical context.
Macedonia’s political geography is complex. Its relatively small territory is the home of different national identities, which have often been on opposing sides of each other during conflicts.
After the demise of the former Yugoslavia, ethnic rivalry has been dramatically revived from Slovenia to Macedonia and was one of the main causes of the bloody Bosnian and Kosovo wars.
PINR.COM