What they're saying…

Editorials about current events from around the world

Dec. 12

Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, on resuming beef imports:

Beef imports from the United States and Canada will resume for the first time in two years since the outbreak of mad cow disease in North America. ...

The commission added an unusual condition, demanding regular on-site inspections of beef-processing facilities in the United States and Canada. The commission recommends the Japanese government temporarily stop imports if evidence of inadequate management arises.

... Needless to say, it is the U.S. and Canadian governments that are responsible for observing the conditions.

At the same time, BSE has highlighted the weaknesses in Japan's food safety management.

While the food safety panel has been praised for being transparent and for disclosing all discussions, the secretariat is mostly made up of bureaucrats sent by the agriculture and health ministries, and is susceptible to external influence.

The process for communicating risks and exchanging opinions between consumers, producers, researchers, media and other parties is still immature. Continuing efforts are essential, including training specialists to explain difficult issues in plain language.

Dec. 13

Berlingske Tidende, Copenhagen, Denmark, on the EU budget:

The budget dispute paints a picture of a European Union with problems finding the common ground on anything. Individual nations and groups of countries are so busy clinging to their narrow agendas that they don't consider what a united Europe could be.

The EU should use the break it took after the European constitution stalled this summer to do just that. The debate (on a broader European agenda) seems to have largely been absent. Instead, the union's political leaders have seized on one of the few issues not stalled by the 'stop button' and turned it into another miserable affair for the EU.

One should never say never. Maybe the EU countries will agree this week on a new budget. Maybe the result will be good.

But unfortunately, it so far seems that any great European willingness is sorely lacking.

Dec. 11

The Jerusalem Post, on the Rafah agreement:

By signing -- under intense pressure from the Quartet -- the post-disengagement Rafah agreement on November 15 with the Palestinian Authority, Israel committed itself not only to an international crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border, but to facilitating the movement of goods and people between the Palestinian territories.

Specifically, Jerusalem promised that by Dec. 15 it would allow bus convoys to transit Gaza and the West Bank. ...

Sure enough, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is having second thoughts about the Thursday deadline -- and for good reason. The daily prospect of some 1,800 Palestinians traversing between Gaza and the West Bank is worrisome in the context of the grim security situation and Israel's sense that the PA is not living up to the spirit of Rafah.

Israel entered into the Rafah agreement with trepidation. But Washington's arm-twisting convinced Jerusalem that cameras and computer data streams would give Israeli security personnel capability to monitor what was happening at the Gaza-Sinai crossing.

The World Bank complains that Israel's repeated closures have made it difficult for Palestinians to do business among themselves and with the outside world. The Bank argues that the Palestinian economy has not bounced back to its 1999 pre-intifada levels, and blames Israel.

But the Bank's complaint is misdirected. Had the PA fulfilled its road map obligations and dismantled the terrorist infrastructure, the Palestinian economy and population would not be hampered by closures. Like the security fence and checkpoints, closures are self-inflicted by Palestinian violence.

Dec. 14

La Repubblica, Rome, on the death penalty:

There is no more decisive issue than the death penalty ... separating Europe from the United States. Even more than the use of torture or preventive war.

If an explanation, rather than a justification, can be put forward for the American tenacity, this lies within the nature of the U.S. democracy, so profoundly different from European democracies. In a direct democracy, in which the relationship between elected and electors is far more immediate than it has been in Italy until now, if the citizens are in favor of the gallows, their representatives do not have much choice. They can be, and many are in private, horrified. But very few ... have sufficient courage to offer resistance.

Naturally, the key to direct democracy does not help us understand why two-thirds of Americans, and the large majority of those who claim ... to be devoted Christians, continue to believe in the punishment.

Dec. 11

The Observer, London, on the Montreal climate talks:

It would be foolish not to see hopeful signs in the conclusion of the Montreal climate talks this weekend. Any agreement backed by the Bush administration that is also hailed by green groups, including Friends of the Earth, clearly has something going for it. No concrete proposals were debated in Canada. None the less, it is significant that the United States, India and China - some of the world's main carbon dioxide producers - now seem prepared to talk about controlling their emissions beyond 2012, when the current Kyoto climate deals run out. If nothing else, it gives the world a platform on which to build better, more meaningful deals. We should not let our optimism run out of control, however. For a start, any reduction in carbon dioxide emissions achieved by 2012 are destined to be painfully small. Each signatory nation has agreed to reduce emissions by 5.2 per cent of its 1990 output. But given that the US, the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, as well as India and China, refused to sign up to Kyoto, there will be no halt in atmospheric change and little chance Earth will stop warming in that period. ...

On the other hand, it is clear the world is hardening in attitude to carbon emissions -- even in the US. There, 192 cities and 10 states, including California and New York (both with Republican governors) have introduced curbs on greenhouse gases. And there are signs of similar changes in public perception in Europe and Asia. The world -- thankfully -- is slowly waking up to the danger of global warming.

Whether it does so in time, is a different matter.