Crime and Punishment
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Dublin newspapers Thursday
urged a "yes" vote in Friday's two referendums, in Northern Ireland and the
Irish Republic, on the political settlement for Ulster. The Irish Times, reporting a resurgence in Ulster Protestant support for the
agreement, said in an editorial: "Yes gives a chance--a good chance--for peace and
stability. No leads back to despair and violence." The Irish Independent carried an
editorial page article by Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern
appealing strongly for a yea vote. "The good reputation of the island will be
immeasurably enhanced, if we can cast off the negative impression of conflict,
as President Clinton has pointed out," Ahern said.
The
Times of London said
in an editorial that, although "there are a thousand devils in the details" of
the agreement, "democrats should accept the convenient rather than insist on
the perfect: they should vote 'yes.' " The Times also warned British
Prime Minister Tony Blair that "he must stand by his pledge that there will be
no fudge between democracy and terror." If he fails to insist on the
decommissioning of weapons before paramilitaries could hold office in the new
Northern Ireland assembly, democrats will "be entitled to walk away from an
agreement which Mr. Blair had dishonoured." The conservative Daily Telegraph , which is
strongly supportive of the Ulster Unionists, highlighted the agreement's
weaknesses and, while not recommending a "no" vote, said in an editorial that
if a majority of the Unionists were to vote negative, their decision should be
respected. "Let no one outside Ulster dare accuse them of bigotry or
belligerence," it said. "In voting No, they too will be expressing their desire
for peace, and their sorrowful belief that it is not, in reality, on
offer."
As President Suharto resigned in Indonesia, a commentary
written just beforehand by Simon Beck for the South China Morning Post said that the U.S. response to
the crisis in Indonesia had been "so low-key some critics believe it to be
almost non-existent." The main reason for Washington's great caution, he
explained, was that following the end of the Communist threat, the United
States' present "biggest headache is that the collapse of a major trading
partner will cause a domino effect across the world's economies."
As three U.S. senators
prepared to hold talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, Saturday with that country's
leaders, the paper Dawn reported that a
Pakistani parliamentary delegation is also going to Washington but that "no one
on the Pakistani or the US side has any idea of what they are going to do or
say to officials and congressmen on the Hill." Predicting that the delegates
would be subjected to continuous U.S. cross-examination about Pakistan's
nuclear intentions, an unidentified "Pakistani diplomat in Washington" told the
newspaper's correspondent there that they should have chosen a better time to
come to the United States "on a junket."
"Why to
spoil the fun they want to have at this time when every American wants to know
what Pakistan is doing," the diplomat said. "And if they want to know what the
Americans are doing, sadly the Americans do not know it themselves." In an
op-ed piece in Dawn , former Pakistani Finance Minister Mahbubul Haq said
that Pakistan, which for the past 10 years has "suffered the wrath of the
global community on the nuclear issue," should now "make the international
community ashamed of itself through its nuclear restraint and ensure that it is
India that is treated as a pariah nation."
The Deccan Chronicle of India said the United States has overreacted
to India's nuclear tests with a punishment that is not merely heavy but also
"rather vengeful." In an editorial Thursday, it said there was "an element of
contradiction" in President Clinton's current policy of unleashing all
permissible sanctions against India while offering "every gift in its
possession" to Pakistan to stop it carrying out nuclear tests in retaliation.
If his aim was to prevent a nuclear confrontation between Pakistan and India,
then "the same purpose would obviously be achieved by allowing Pakistan to
conduct the tests so that the principle of mutual nuclear deterrence would
automatically come into force and nuclear confrontation can be ruled out for
ever." "However, President Clinton obviously wants to establish the point that
the US is the sole leader of the global disarmanent movement," it said.
In an editorial Thursday,
the Manila Times of the Philippines said that "the imagery of the
bomb--the mushroom cloud, the ticking clock--has suddenly re-entered the public
consciousness once more as India, in full view of the world, conducted five
nuclear tests and then proceeded to declare itself a nuclear weapons state."
The editorial described India as "an overpopulated country with a fractious,
hungry population, an unstable government, and age-old hatred with its
neighbours" and said "the world has good reason to be nervous" about that
country's new nuclear capabilities. "It looks like the bad old days are back
again," it concluded.
