The World
To Jaw-Jaw Rather Than War-War?
Look who's talking now. The Bush administration is engaging with the two surviving members of the "axis of evil" in ways that seemed, well, unlikely not so long ago. Most remarkably, the United States this week will begin talks with North Korea about normalizing relations, assuming that the secretive Pyongyang regime follows through on the multination deal reached last month to end its nuclear program-including clearing up questions over what the Bush administration charges is a clandestine uranium enrichment operation. Now, though, U.S. officials are backing away from the intelligence behind that U.S. allegation, which had triggered a tense four-year standoff during which North Korea churned out plutonium and tested its first nuclear bomb. Expect more questions about what the intel community didn't know on this subject and when it didn't know it.
In the case of Iran, the diplomacy is even more tentative. The United States will participate in a regional security conference March 10 in Baghdad, which will also include officials from Iraq's neighbors, notably Iran and Syria. The United States can count on some protective cover from the growing list of invitees, which includes U.N. Security Council members Britain, France, Russia, and China. Plans call for a follow-up session a month later in the Mideast or Europe that would bring together the foreign ministers, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Crimes Against Humanity in Sudan
After a 20-month investigation, the chief prosecutor of International Criminal Court named his first two war crimes suspects for atrocities committed in Sudan's Darfur region: Ahmed Haroun, the former interior minister in charge of Darfur (now a minister for "humanitarian affairs" and member of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's inner circle), and Ali Kushayb, a senior commander of the murderous desert militia known as the Janjaweed. They stand accused of a total of 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In moving against them, Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo ties the government of Sudan to the arming and directing of the Janjaweed-which Bashir has consistently, if unconvincingly, denied. Haroun dismissed the charges as politically motivated, but the prosecutor's statement makes for a horrifying read, citing eyewitness accounts that tie both men to heinous acts-including torture, murder, and mass rape. Since 2003, the conflict in Darfur has killed some 200,000 people and displaced nearly 2 million others. The case now goes to a panel of pretrial judges at The Hague-based court, who will decide whether to issue arrest warrants. Ideally, this kind of action will pressure Bashir to green-light a long-delayed deployment of U.N. peacekeepers, but there is a risk that he will retaliate by hindering even the current humanitarian aid operations in Darfur.
Ignorance and Fear Trump Kids' Health
The effort to eradicate polio in one of the last regions where the disease remains endemic, Pakistan's tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, is being hindered by fears that the oral vaccine is part of an American conspiracy to sterilize Muslim children. The disinformation, spread by conservative Muslim clerics, is leaving thousands of children vulnerable. Pakistan recorded 40 cases of polio last year, ranking No. 3 in the world behind Nigeria (1,116) and India (672).
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