Musharraf suggests Pakistan willing to give up Kashmir claim (The Associated Press, December 5, 2006)
Pakistan is willing to give up its claim to all of Kashmir if India agrees that the disputed Himalayan region should become self-governing and largely autonomous, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday, according to an Indian television report.
Why should Kashmir be any different than Palestine, South Lebanon, Chechnya, etc….
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‘Nation’ motion passes, but costs Harper (GLORIA GALLOWAY and BILL CURRY AND ALEX DOBROTA, 11/27/06, Globe and Mail
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s plan to outmanoeuvre separatists with a motion to recognize the Québécois as a nation has cost the government a cabinet minister and exposed fractious divides within both the Liberals and Conservatives.
The vote Monday night passed by 266 votes to 16. The only MPs who stood to oppose the motion were newly Independent member Garth Turner and 15 members of the Liberal caucus — including leadership candidates Ken Dryden and Joe Volpe.
Missing from the Conservative bench was Michael Chong, the man who had just resigned as minister of intergovernmental affairs over his inability to recognize the Québécois as a nation, even when framed within a united Canada.
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Will the Union see its 300th birthday? (Alan Cochrane, 25/10/2006, Daily Telegraph)
Is the United Kingdom heading for fragmentation with the secession of Scotland from the Union, even as it prepares to celebrate its 300th anniversary next year? And if it is, should those who make up the vast bulk of its population – the English – give a damn?
The questions arise following a series of astonishing events, beginning 10 days ago when nearly 1,200 delegates packed the new Concert Hall in Perth – the biggest gathering at a political conference that Scotland has seen in recent memory – to hear Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party, deliver his keynote address to his annual conference. His strident call for the break-up of the United Kingdom was cheered to the echo by his adoring audience.
Nothing new there, but what was surprising was what happened next. Two days later, Sir Tom Farmer, the founder of the Kwik Fit chain of exhaust and tyre depots, told the world that Scottish independence was “inevitable”.
His words followed hard on the heels of the announcement by this self-same self-made man that he was donating £100,000 to the SNP’s coffers to help it fight next year’s elections to the Edinburgh parliament. He is not alone. Thanks to big donations from emigré Scots, the most famous of all being Sir Sean Connery, the nationalists reckon that they will have at least as much to spend next May as Labour.
On the same day as Sir Tom’s prediction came another extraordinary intervention, not from a captain of industry, but a prince of the church – Cardinal Keith O’Brien, spiritual leader of Scotland’s 800,000 Roman Catholics. The Ulster-born cardinal said that he would have no problem with an independent Scotland, if that was the will of its people and, significantly at least in the eyes of this observer, he pointed out that other small nations – such as Ireland – had done exceptionally well since gaining their independence.
Although they insist that it is not entering the political arena, the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Scotland enjoys a decidedly rocky relationship with Scottish Labour, lambasting the devolved administration for what it sees as the Scottish Executive’s “anti-family” policies, such as those on same-sex “marriages”, gay adoption and contraceptive advice to under-age schoolgirls. Neither Sir Tom nor Cardinal O’Brien has endorsed the SNP, but their espousal of independence has confirmed the growing trend towards separatism.
The interesting thing is not the truism that separation is inevitable, but that this is the exact opposite of the sort of European Union that intellectual elites thought was inevitable.
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Catalonia votes on autonomy plan (BBC, 6/18/06)
The Spanish region of Catalonia is voting on a new charter that would declare it a nation within Spain.
If the “yes” vote for greater autonomy is successful, Catalonia, in the north-east, would become one of Europe’s most independent regions.
The draft plan allows for more independence in areas such as how tax is spent and immigration policies.
Latest opinion polls suggest most Catalans favour the plan, but more than half of all Spaniards reject it.
Yeah, but the Spaniards don’t matter.
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China Easing Its Stance On Taiwan: Tolerance Grows For Status Quo (Edward Cody, June 15, 2006, Washington Post)
Gradually and without fanfare, China has substantially softened its stand on Taiwan, according to senior officials and diplomats. President Hu Jintao, they said, has begun to play down China’s long-standing vow to recover the self-ruled island by force if necessary and shifted the focus to preventing any move toward formal independence.
The adjustment, which has become clearer in recent months, has brought China’s policy on the volatile Taiwan issue closer to that of the United States. Washington has long maintained that the island’s half-century-old status quo — independent in fact but not in law — should not be changed until Beijing and Taipei can work out a mutually acceptable peaceful solution.
“Before, we never said ‘status quo,’ ” said a Chinese academic who advises Hu’s government on Taiwan. “Now we say it all the time.”
As Confucius said, if independence is inevitable, sit back and enjoy it.
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The coming of the micro-states (Fred Weir, 6/05/06, The Christian Science Monitor)
The United Nations Charter mentions both the right of “self-determination” of peoples and the “territorial integrity” of states as bedrock principles of the world order. But these principles come into conflict when a separatist minority threatens to rupture an existing country. Russia, which has a score of ethnic “republics,” including an active rebellion in Chechnya, has long championed the “territorial integrity” side of the equation. But the Kremlin’s emphasis, at least regarding some of its neighbors, appears to be shifting.
“If such precedents are possible [in the former Yugoslavia], they will also be precedents in the post-Soviet space,” President Vladimir Putin told journalists Friday. “Why can Albanians in Kosovo have independence, but [Georgian breakaway republics] South Ossetia and Abkhazia can’t? What’s the difference?”
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New star power for Hong Kong’s democracy struggle (Robert Marquand, 5/23/06, The Christian Science Monitor
Audrey Eu] comes out of a grass-roots protest movement that rose in 2003 to demand self-rule and rights. Eu articulated why it made good business sense for Hong Kong to govern itself; indeed, she linked the idea to the survival of Hong Kong’s special identity.
Now, a central question is whether that spirit can be translated into an effective political party. The Civics want genuine democracy, not the watered-down version where Beijing controls the levers of power. That puts party leader Eu and her compatriots at uneasy odds with Beijing, despite their moderate nature.
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New statute of autonomy approved by 128 votes in the Senate (eitb24, 05/11/2006)
Against a fierce fight from the opposition Popular Party (PP), the upper house of parliament approved the text by 128 votes to 125, with six abstentions.
The Spanish government squeezed a controversial new statute for Catalonia through the Senate on Wednesday, clearing the latest hurdle before Catalans to vote on the document which grants the region greater autonomy.
The statute includes a much-disputed phrase, which says Catalonia perceives itself as a nation. Conservatives say this is the beginning of the end of Spain as a unified country.
It’s not a particularly good idea, but self-determination is an inevitable democratic norm now.
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Sudanese, Rebels Sign Peace Plan For Darfur: U.S. Pressured Parties; Doubts Remain on Deal (Glenn Kessler, May 6, 2006, Washington Post)
With a prod from the United States, the government of Sudan and the biggest Darfur rebel faction signed a complex peace plan yesterday that diplomats and experts said would require careful implementation to ensure an end to a conflict that has left as many as 450,000 people dead and 2 million homeless. [...]
U.S. officials say an accord is essential in order to persuade the Sudanese government to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force that would include logistical assistance from 400 to 500 NATO officers. The African Union currently has a 6,000-person force with a limited mandate in place. Many experts say it has been ineffective at stopping the fighting.
As the negotiations in Abuja stretched into the wee hours, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told the rebel leaders that they would miss a historic opportunity if they did not accept the agreement.
Zoellick said that at some time between 2 and 4 a.m. Friday, he pulled out a letter from President Bush to Minnawi pledging to “strongly support” implementation of the deal and make sure anyone who broke it would be “held accountable” by the U.N. Security Council. Zoellick read the letter to the assembled gathering. One problem, he said, was that it was clear that many rebels had not read the tentative agreement and did not realize that issues they kept raising had already been addressed.
In the past year, Zoellick has become the administration’s point man on Sudan, making four trips to Khartoum, the capital, and the Darfur region to press the two sides to agree. He also has shepherded efforts to implement another peace deal, signed last year, that ended a 20-year conflict between the Muslim government and rebels in the southern part of the country, which is largely animist and Christian.
The Darfur agreement is an amended version of a draft document produced earlier in the week by the African Union, which mediated the talks.
One faction that refused to sign is led by Abdel Wahid al-Nur, who founded the movement that launched the revolt against the government but has since split. The other rebel group is the Justice and Equality Movement.
“We won’t sign it because the deal does not protect the people of Darfur. We don’t have any real power in this deal,” Ahmed Tugod, a JEM negotiator, said in an interview. “It only answers part of our problems, and we reject partial solutions.”
Analysts yesterday were divided on the prospects for success.
Prod? First we told The Sudan it had to give autonomy to its South, now its West. That’s a bit more than prodding.
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Sudan rebels hold key to peace pact: Seek concessions as deadline looms Government ready to disarm militia (BASHIR ADIGUN, 5/02/06, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
With a midnight tonight deadline approaching after more than two years of talks here, Sudan’s government said it was ready to sign a peace accord with rebels from Darfur.
But the western rebels, suspicious of government intentions, rejected the draft by the African Union. They said it did not guarantee enough political power for Darfur or give enough detail on how it would be implemented. [...]
Rebels in the arid region the size of France have fought since 2003 what they see as neglect by the Arab-dominant government. Militias allied to Khartoum, known as Janjaweed and drawn mainly from Arab tribes, have worked to crush the rebellion. [...]
AU mediator Salim said the pact would create a transitional authority for the region, including rebel representatives, and proposes that Darfuris vote by 2010 on whether to create a single entity out of its three states. The AU has 7,000 peacekeepers in Darfur.
The draft calls for the president to include a rebel-nominated Darfur official, among his top advisers, with “all the attributes of a vice-president, except the name,” Salim said, noting the constitution, under the treaty ending the north-south war, permits two vice-presidents.
Yesterday marked the first day of the World Food Program’s cut in food rations by half for about 3 million refugees in Darfur because of a shortage of money. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick is expected to arrive in Nigeria’s capital today, in a bid to break the talks’ stalemate. Washington calls the Darfur violence “genocide.”
The Sudan has already accepted the loss of its Christian/Animist South; losing the black West is inevitable.
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