Gloria R. Lalumia's World Media Watch for June 4, 2007

WORLD MEDIA WATCH

Summaries are excerpted from the source articles; the featured article follows the summary section. A recommended "site of the day" will also appear occasionally following the summaries.

1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong
RICE DEMAND NUKES KOREA ‘PEACE REGIME'

The concept of a "peace regime" has come into vogue as the favorite catchphrase of Korean negotiators and think-tankers as they plan for a future of reconciliation and pan-Korean unification once they've done away with a few lingering annoyances to do with US bases and North Korean nukes. But this idyllic vision of peace and goodwill clashed with hard realities in ministerial-level North-South Korean talks that ended in bitter dispute on Friday. The sticking point was the North's demand for rice and the South's refusal to send anything until the North shuts down the five-megawatt reactor at its nuclear complex at Yongbyon. The failure to paper over differences marked the worst setback so far in efforts to get North Korea to live up to the terms of the six-nation agreement of February 13 in which the North promised to turn off the reactor within 60 days, by April 14. ... The problem is that US$25 million in North Korean accounts lingers on in Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macau, and the North Koreans see no reason to haul it out in cash even though Macau authorities have lifted the freeze imposed on the account after the US Treasury Department said any firm dealing with the bank could not do business with the US. While the US has removed that stricture, North Korea wants to retrieve the funds through the international banking system - and no bank, including the Bank of China, wants to touch the stuff. Pyongyang will not act on its nuclear promises until it gets the money.

(AN EXPANDED EXCERPT OF THIS FEATURED ARTICLE FOLLOWS THE SUMMARIES)

2//The Russian News Room, Russia
RUSSIA WILL HOLD A COUNTERTERRORISM MILITARY EXERCISE WITH CHINA AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE "SHANGHAI SIX" IN AUGUST

Russia will hold a counterterrorism military exercise with China and other members of the "Shanghai Six" in August, the Ground Forces commander said Friday. "The main [of the six international counterterrorism exercises planned for the year] will be a joint exercise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in August," a regional grouping dominated by Russia and China, Army General Alexei Maslov said. The exercise will be held in the Russian Urals and will involve 500 vehicles from Russia and China, about 2,000 Russian and 1,600 Chinese personnel, a company (around 100 men) from Tajikistan, and smaller units from other members, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, the general said. While China has yet to decide how its troops would be transited through Kazakhstan, he has already suggested an alternate route directly across the Sino-Russian border in the Far East. Officially, the SCO focuses on fighting drug and arms trafficking, terrorism and separatism. Although it has conducted a number of joint military exercises since 2003, Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov earlier this month reassured critics concerned about SCO countering U.S. and NATO influence in resource-rich Central Asia, saying the grouping would not turn into a military bloc.

3//The Scotsman, UK
‘A TICKING NUCLEAR TIME BOMB'

Suspended from the ceiling, they are covered in deadly radioactive material that drops off them in lumps to the wet floor beneath. The 20,000 fuel rods contained in three tanks at the Andreeva Bay storage site once held enough nuclear energy to power Russia's entire submarine fleet. Now, cracks in the concrete walls of the dilapidated tanks have allowed seawater and rainwater to seep in and corrode the lethal contents. The situation is so bad Russia's nuclear agency has warned rods at the site could explode in an "uncontrolled chain reaction", according to a Norwegian environmental group, which says it has a leaked copy of a report. Experts say that could set off an explosion scattering radioactive material across northern Europe, reaching even as far as Britain, in an environmental catastrophe worse than the Chernobyl disaster. "We are sitting on a powder keg with a fuse that is burning, but we don't know how long that fuse is," said Alexander Nikitin, a former Russian navy officer and Bellona environmental activist who first revealed the existence of the dump at Andreeva Bay, on the Kola peninsula of north-western Russia. The nightmare scenario, identified by Russia's Federal Nuclear Agency, raises new fears that Moscow is failing to properly manage the potentially deadly nuclear legacy of the Cold War, which has left the country with tonnes of plutonium and uranium and millions of tonnes of nuclear waste to deal with. The report, leaked to the Norwegian group Bellona, centres on Andreeva Bay, only 30 miles from the Norwegian border. "Ongoing degradation is causing fuel to split into small granules. Calculations show that the creation of a homogenous mixture of these particles with water can cause an uncontrolled chain reaction," reads Bellona's translation of the document.

4//Middle East Times, Cyprus
EGYPT ARRESTS 52 MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD MEMBERS

Egyptian authorities have detained 52 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, a security source said Saturday, ahead of elections for parliament's upper house in which the Islamist group is fielding candidates. "Fifty-two supporters of Muslim Brotherhood candidates in the elections have been arrested between Friday and Saturday in five provinces," the source said. "They were caught hanging up posters with Islamic messages, which is unconstitutional." Supporters for candidates running in the June 11 elections for the Shura Council were detained when hanging up posters and handing out leaflets which read "Islam is the solution," the Brotherhood's slogan, the source said. But constitutional amendments approved in March have banned any political activity based on religion. According to a report by Human Rights Watch citing lawyers for the Brotherhood, 87 members were arrested between May 12 and May 19. Sixty-four came from districts where the group is fielding candidates. "In the week that Egypt boasted about its election to the UN Human Rights Council, it was arresting scores of people solely for exercising their right to free association and free speech," said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East division.

5//The Korea Herald, South Korea
NEW FAMILY SYSTEM TO TAKE EFFECT IN 2008

Korea's male-oriented family system will meet significant changes beginning Jan. 1 next year, following the controversial abolishment of the age-old patriarchal family headship known as "hoju." The Supreme Court yesterday disclosed the finalized details of the new registration law, promulgated last month to replace the hoju system beginning in 2008. Under the revised family registration law, each family member will be separated from hoju - the head of the family and usually the father -- through an individual register book. Children will no longer be obliged to go by the father's surname and can follow the mother's. While the new system is expected to greatly enhance the right of Korean females, the public is bracing for confusion as it will have far-reaching influence on both family life and the nation's concept of a family. The National Assembly passed the revision of the Civil Law last year after the Constitutional Court ruled the hoju system unconstitutional, citing violation of the right to gender equality. The current hoju system places only a male member as the legal head of the family with all family members listed under the hoju. The status of each family member is defined in terms of his or her relationship to hoju. When a husband dies, he is usually succeeded by his first son, not by his wife. When a daughter gets married, she is removed from her father's hojeok -- family register -- and transferred to her husband's. Children are automatically added to the father's hojeok. Even when a couple divorces and the mother retains custody of children, the children keep the father's surname and remain in his hojeok unless he gives permission to transfer. A family without a son naturally means the end of a lineage. Under the new system, the core concept of a hoju will be discarded, as will the hojeok. Every family member will be registered under his or her own new individual record book containing information on the person's birth, death, marriage and adoption, along with basic information on his or her spouse, parents and children.

FEATURED ARTICLE

1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong June 1, 2007

RICE DEMAND NUKES KOREA ‘PEACE REGIME'

By Donald Kirk

SEOUL - The concept of a "peace regime" has come into vogue as the favorite catchphrase of Korean negotiators and think-tankers as they plan for a future of reconciliation and pan-Korean unification once they've done away with a few lingering annoyances to do with US bases and North Korean nukes.

But this idyllic vision of peace and goodwill clashed with hard realities in ministerial-level North-South Korean talks that ended in bitter dispute on Friday. The sticking point was the North's demand for rice and the South's refusal to send anything until the North shuts down the five-megawatt reactor at its nuclear complex at Yongbyon.

The failure to paper over differences marked the worst setback so far in efforts to get North Korea to live up to the terms of the six-nation agreement of February 13 in which the North promised to turn off the reactor within 60 days, by April 14.

The South Korean side, talking up a "peace regime" for the whole peninsula, was fortunate to have come out of the talks with a less-than-face-saving joint statement in which North and South agreed to "continue to study the issues to promote peace, reconciliation and cooperation".

(SNIP)

Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung, criticized for showing a propensity for yielding to North Korea's demands, seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief, only "thankful we can hold a closing meeting", after the North Korean side seemed to have decided to walk out of the whole show without so much as a polite concluding handshake.

Lee, in four days of talks, persisted in telling his North Korean counterpart, State Councillor Kwon Ho-ung, "It's important to establish a peace regime." Kwon, however, got the sessions off to an inauspicious start on the first day by blaming "the intervention of foreign powers" for all that's gone wrong with fulfilling the nuclear agreement.

South Korean negotiators embellished on the concept of "a peace regime" with talk about "confidence-building measures", including the opening of rail services on the newly laid track to the Kaesong economic zone in the west and the Kumgang tourist zone in the east, but Kwon puts his own spin on that theme. Without saying a thing about the railroad, he advocated "inter-Korean cooperation" in what is widely viewed as just another call for the South to do away with close military ties to the US.

That's a view that finds wide acceptance in South Korea among those who have been forming government policy as President Roh Moo-hyun casts about for a dramatic event, possibly a summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-il, before the December presidential election. Chances of a summit appeared bleak, however, after Roh clearly decided one can only go so far in granting concessions and said no way was the South going to send rice as promised as long as that reactor was still humming away.

While North and South Korean negotiators were talking past each other, Lim Dong-won, the architect of the "Sunshine Policy" formulated by Roh's predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, talked up the "peace regime" idea at a symposium featuring a lineup of leading advocates of reconciliation.

At the core of his concept, at least for starters, is "normalization" of relations between Washington and Pyongyang, by which, he said, "Mutual enmity will be defused and North Korea will gain economic benefits and security guarantees." Lim professed to have been heartened by what he saw as "a new approach" by the US toward North Korea with Washington deciding "to pursue resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue in parallel with normalization of relations between the US and the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]".

He showed no doubts about implementing the six-nation agreement "in a thorough tit-for-tat approach" of "action for action"- admittedly "a time-consuming process" - before ending in "a complete resolution".

Just how much time and patience will be needed was clear not only from the talks in Seoul but also from the gyrations of the US's chief envoy, Christopher Hill, as he traipsed around the region, winding up finally in Beijing where he plaintively remarked that he believed the North Koreans "want to get going on their obligations" since there is "no purpose in their nuclear [facilities] being in operation today". There is, however, a very obvious purpose, as North Korea's Kwon made clear, telling the South Koreans, "The US is responsible for the delay, not our side."

The problem is that US$25 million in North Korean accounts lingers on in Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macau, and the North Koreans see no reason to haul it out in cash even though Macau authorities have lifted the freeze imposed on the account after the US Treasury Department said any firm dealing with the bank could not do business with the US. While the US has removed that stricture, North Korea wants to retrieve the funds through the international banking system - and no bank, including the Bank of China, wants to touch the stuff. Pyongyang will not act on its nuclear promises until it gets the money.

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Copyright 2007, Gloria R. Lalumia

WORLD MEDIA WATCH

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