ANALYSIS
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
15
Maliki weakened ahead of national vote By Mohammed Abbas rime Minister Nouri AlMaliki came out of local polls last year as Iraq’s dominant leader, but a string of bombings and alliances among rivals have weakened him ahead of a March national vote. A Shiite sentenced to death under Saddam Hussein, Maliki is likely aware of his dented popularity as he has reverted to proven vote-winning methods, like stirring up Shiite fears of a return of Saddam’s Baath party, to win the ballot, analysts say. Oil firms holding freshly signed deals to tap Iraq’s vast reserves, and the US military set to withdraw in 2011, hope for some form of political continuity after the March 7 parliamentary election, but Maliki’s former allies want change. Some voters who supported his State of Law coalition in the local election last January also seem to have second thoughts. “I will definitely not give my vote to a government that cannot provide security. Every day they take us back to square one by not stopping the merciless killing of Iraqis,” said Qassim Abdullah, a student, in the Shiite holy city of Karbala. Maliki was picked as prime minister in 2006 as a compro-
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki gestures as he delivers a speech to supporters during a visit to the Shiite holy city of Karbala yesterday. – AFP mise between feuding factions, who thought he could be manipulated. In the past two years, however, he has emerged as a strong leader credited with reducing the sectarian violence that wracked Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion. With a nationalist, non-sectarian message and a law-and-order campaign platform, his State of Law coalition swept the Shiite south last
January. Since then, huge, coordinated suicide bombings have rocked Baghdad, killing hundreds at heavily guarded sites, and shaking confidence in the security forces and Maliki. Maliki blames the attacks on Saddam’s outlawed Baath party, and on Sunni Islamist insurgents like Al-Qaeda. As the rumble of bombs rolled repeatedly across Baghdad, Maliki’s
rhetoric seeking credit for improved security receded, while anti-Baathist rhetoric escalated. He has thrown his weight behind a Shi’ite-controlled body that banned scores of poll candidates for alleged Baathist ties. His Dawa party has also led calls for a purge of suspected Baathists from the public service. The Baath party brutally
oppressed Kurds and Shiites, Iraq’s majority Muslim sect, but Iraq’s once dominant Sunnis and cross-sectarian groups see both the candidate ban and calls for a purge as a witch hunt, and a return to sect-based politics. “I thought Maliki’s provincial election campaign message was that he could move away from that to rallying voters with a message of nationalism, law-and-order and a strong state,” said analyst Toby Dodge of Queen Mary College, University of London. “It seems to me that he’s lost his nerve, partly because the law-and-order campaign has proved to be much more difficult than he thought.” Maliki still holds some powerful cards. He is not seen as corrupt, has huge brand recognition in a sea of largely unknown candidates, is able to draw on an established and experienced campaign network, and also on state resources, such as Iraqiya television. Yet he has also turned powerful allies into opponents. The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI), a major Shiite party, and followers of cleric Moqtada AlSadr once supported Maliki in parliament’s largest Shiite bloc, but analysts say they have become alarmed at his growing assertiveness.
ISCI and the Sadrists, who were enemies in the past, have banded together to form an election alliance while Maliki is running alone at the head of his own coalition. “They are held together by a common desire to do away with Maliki above all. They have little common ground beyond that. He’s succeeded in aligning the major Shiite players against him,” said International Crisis Group analyst Peter Harling. Many Iraqis say they are tired of sectarian politics after tens of thousands of deaths during the years of violence between Sunnis and Shiites. They are also tired of poor services under the Islamist leaders who have dominated Iraq since the invasion. By turning his back on non-sectarian nationalism, Maliki may lose the broad appeal that saw him do well in the local polls. “Back then, he managed to handle the security file in a nonsectarian way and that impressed many Iraqis,” said analyst Reidar Visser of www.historiae.org. “He has not managed to handle the de-Baathification issue in that kind of national spirit. Instead he has fallen back to the old Shiite Islamist hardliner rhetoric.” — Reuters
Lobbyists for cap and trade face daunting task By Timothy Gardner
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he US Senate’s stalled climate bill is getting a last big push from an unlikely ally - a group of energy companies who say a carbon market will help them get financing for the next generation of energy production. But intensive lobbying by these climate bill proponents - including heavyweights like Duke Energy, Shell Oil Co and General Electric Co - may not be enough to counter powerful opposition and get a bill passed before the US mid-term elections in November. President Barack Obama says he still backs a climate bill but many have written off the chances of passing legislation with the most controversial provision: a market that aims to cut pollution by letting companies buy and trade permits to emit greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, some major US companies are pushing for a bill that would include this cap-and-trade system, saying it would create a modern energy economy and thousands of jobs. As a record snowfall stunned Washington this week, stalling legislation, executives at big energy companies met lawmakers to seek a compromise deal on cap-and-trade. Duke Energy Chief Executive Jim Rogers and Shell Oil Co President Marvin Odum met moderate lawmakers, seeking ways to push such a bill in the Senate that has made little progress. One idea is to allow cap-and-trade to be implemented on power utilities first, with regulations on oil refineries and other industries coming later. Proponents from industry are lobbying with environmentalists under the US Climate Action Partnership, who still want a bill regulating emissions of planet-warming gases across all sectors of the economy. They say cap-andtrade will create a lot of jobs and boost the economy. But climate legislation has fierce opponents in the main US business lobby, the US Chamber of Commerce, and most Republican law-
makers, some of whom doubt the threat of global warming. Few climate bill proponents are confident there are enough votes in the Senate to pass the bill, especially with Democratic fortunes falling ahead of the mid-term elections. A cap-and-trade system would reward companies for adopting clean energy technologies like nuclear plants and burying carbon emissions from coal generators underground. Rogers said this would give investors confidence to finance new power plants. “We have to retire or replace every plant by 2050,” he said. “The sooner we get about the business of doing that, the better.” He said wind and solar power markets would grow faster under a cap-andtrade system, which would help the United States compete with emerging powers like China. Odum said an emissions market would create hundreds of thousands of jobs as companies race to begin building a new energy system. In such markets, governments limit pollution and let cleaner companies earn valuable credits to sell. Lobbyists for cap-andtrade, who also include General Electric Co, must find ways to bring in other energy and industrial companies that have opposed the system, said Dan Weiss, an energy expert at the Center for American Progress. Otherwise, they will not be able to secure the 60 votes in the Senate needed to avoid a Republican filibuster and pass the bill. Passage will be more difficult since Senate Democrats lost their 60-seat super majority with the election of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. The Republican campaigned against a cap-and-trade bill, citing worries about higher energy costs. With the midterm elections 39 weeks away, many lawmakers may avoid controversial climate legislation and turn their attention to campaigning. “The bottom line is it will be hard to convince the fence sitters before the midterm elections that the new green jobs will replace jobs that will be lost in
the traditional energy economy,” said Divya Reddy, an analyst at the Eurasia Group. A compromise bill being hashed out by Senators John Kerry, a Democrat, Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Joe Lieberman, an independent, is not expected to be out before March. Lobbyists for companies that support a cap-and-trade system have taken heart in signals from the trio of senators, and
in recent comments from President Obama, that a compromise could pick up votes. Rogers at Duke said the lobbyists are targeting 15 to 17 Democratic and eight to 10 Republican Senators to win votes. A “hybrid” bill, that would impose cap-and-trade on power plants and an emissions fee on other industrial sources of greenhouse gases, could break down resistance from lawmakers
in states that produce oil and natural gas. Shell’s Odum said such a bill could assure the petroleum industry that traditional fuels will be around for decades to come, freeing lawmakers in oil states to vote for a bill. But time is growing short. “It’s a tough sell,” said Eurasia Reddy, who added they would also need to convince lawmakers the bill would not raise short-term energy bills. — Reuters
Domestic logjam drag on foreign policy By Steven R Hurst
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hile US President Barack Obama fights do-or-die political battles at home, his ambitious designs to overhaul US foreign policy - from the Middle East to Iran and Russia and North Korea - simmer on the back burner. A big success abroad would provide a major boost, a public distraction from his battle with a recalcitrant Congress and stomach-wrenching economic troubles that threaten to overwhelm his presidency. After a major initial thrust to improve America’s standing abroad, the domestic agenda has consumed Obama. So far, he has resisted the temptation, as many predecessors have not, to flee abroad to escape bad news troubles at home. Perhaps that’s because there soon could be a new arms control treaty with Moscow. Beyond that, the administration is talking confidently about Moscow and Beijing joining a push for new and punishing sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. Both Russia and China have, in the past three rounds of sanctions, approved measures against Tehran only after making them - in UN negotiations - almost toothless. Winning over the Chinese, especially, would be a major coup. “In terms of public attention, the president has to keep things focused on jobs and the economy, thus it appears that less is happening on foreign policy,” said Jessica Matthews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She says Obama has been hamstrung by a “broken Senate” that has frustrated him at most turns, particularly on health care reform and now jobs legislation. And with midterm elections looming in November, domestic issues cannot be set aside - particularly with the US suffering nearly 10 percent unemployment. Even so, important foreign issues languish. Obama’s pressure on Israel and the Palestinians - a bid to restart peace talks - appears stalemated. He assigned former Sen George Mitchell as special envoy to the region, but there’s
been no progress in winning Israel’s agreement to stop building settlements in the West Bank. The Palestinians refuse to return to talks until that happens. And there’s been little movement on a resumption of talks to de-fang North Korea’s nuclear program. Pyongyang has been talking positively in recent weeks, but hasn’t made any move toward the negotiating table. Relations with steadfast Asian ally Japan are moving through an uncustomary rough patch over US military installations on Okinawa. China, with its increasing economic and political clout, is peevish about US arms sales to Taiwan and Obama’s meeting this week with the Dalai Lama. Obama has taken strong action in the Afghan war, dispatching thousands more troops who are in the midst of a major anti-Taleban offensive in the south. But there is no way now to predict whether the U.S. effort in Afghanistan will crush the Islamic insurgency and deny Al-Qaeda sanctuary along the border with Pakistan. And the Islamabad government is extremely wobbly in supporting American efforts and faces its own threats from an increasingly potent Taliban at home. In Iraq, crucial national elections are finally set for next month. But the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki is throwing up obstacle to a resolution of sectarian divisions - nixing the candidacies of most Sunni Muslim candidates. The United States is still on target to withdraw combat forces from Iraq by summer’s end. Unclear, however, is whether the country will descend again into violent sectarian turmoil without the major US military presence. In the eyes of Natalie Davis, professor of political science at Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, Obama has been only able to deal “with the tips of a lot of foreign policy icebergs” while he tries “to put out domestic fires” started by the Republican opposition. There doesn’t look to be a break in the work on the domestic logjam and that’s going to make it difficult to steer out of the icebergs. — AP
Is the Copenhagen Accord already dead? By Marlowe Hood and Richard Ingham
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ess than two months after it was hastily drafted to stave off a fiasco, the Copenhagen Accord on climate change is in a bad way, and some are already saying it has no future. The deal was crafted amid chaos by a small group of countries, led by the United States and China, to avert an implosion of the UN’s Dec 7-18 climate summit. Savaged at the time by green activists and poverty campaigners as disappointing, gutless or a betrayal, the Accord is now facing its first test in the political arena - and many views are caustic. Veterans say the document has little traction and cannot pull the 194nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) towards a new global pact by year’s end. Political momentum is so weak that so far only two negotiating rounds have been rostered in 2010, one among officials in Bonn in mid-year, the other in Mexico at ministerial level in December. Worse, the Accord itself already seems to have been quietly disowned by China, India and other emerging economies just weeks after they helped write it, say these sources. “Publicly, they are being bubbly and supportive about the Copenhagen Accord. In private, they are urinating all over it,” one observer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP. The Accord’s supporters say it is the first wide-rang-
In a file picture taken on Dec 12, 2009 Nobel peace prize winner with his organization and Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri gives a press conference at the Bella centre on the sixth day of the UN Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) in Copenhagen. – AFP ing deal to peg global warming to two degrees Celsius and gather rich and poor countries in specific pledges for curbing carbon emissions. And it promises money: $30 billion
for climate-vulnerable poor countries by 2012, with as much as $100 billion annually by 2020. Critics say there is no roadmap for reaching the warming target and point out the pledges are vol-
untary, whereas the Kyoto Protocol which took effect five years ago next Tuesday - has tough compliance provisions for rich polluters. Anger among small countries sidelined from the crazed huddle in Copenhagen was so fierce that the paper failed to get approval at a plenary session. That meant the Accord’s credibility rating is based on what happened on Jan 31, a self-described “soft” deadline set by the UNFCCC. Under it, countries would register their intended actions for tackling carbon emissions and say if they wish to be “associated” with the agreement. The roster on actions is nicely filled, but there are glaring gaps in the “association” side. China (the world’s No. 1 polluter), India, Brazil and South Africa, as well as Russia among the developed countries, have all failed to make this endorsement. The US sees this as backsliding which could return negotiations to the finger-pointing and textual nitpicking that brought Copenhagen so close to disaster. Its climate pointman, Todd Stern, said last Tuesday that he believed the big four developing countries “will sign on”. “The consequences of not doing so are so serious - in a word, leaving the accord stillborn, contrary to the clear assent their leaders gave to the accord in Copenhagen.” The Chinese and Indian governments, questioned by AFP, declined to comment on specifics of their positions. Michael Zammit Cutajar, former chair-
man of a UNFCCC negotiating group, said the Copenhagen Accord was flawed by “incoherence” as to how it should dovetail with the overall UNFCCC forum and parallel talks on extending Kyoto. “Beyond the lack of clarity in its drafting, its main weakness is the lack of ambition and identifying responsibilities,” he said in an interview. “Who should do what, and when, in order to limit warming to 2C?” Saleemul Huq with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London, said the developing majors, by refusing to endorse the Accord, “are clearly signalling their view that the UNFCCC process is still the only game in town.” “This means that any impressions that anyone might have had that the Accord had succeeded in hiving off the ‘main players’ into a separate process to the UNFCCC are just a delusion.” So does the Copenhagen Accord have any real future? Or is it doomed to be consigned to a desk drawer? “It’s still too early to know,” said Elliot Diringer of US thinktank, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Seeking to breathe life into its provisions, the United States and others may launch a “friends of the Accord” process, running in parallel to the UN negotiations. But in the likelihood that China and India will snub this move, the document may end up as “a political reference point” within the UN process, said Diringer, who summarised: “It’s a messy situation.” — AFP
focus
Currency union showing strains By Matt Moore and Arthur Max
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an the frugal and the profligate cohabit the euro zone? With Greece overdrawn and no one eager to foot the bill, Europe’s messy debt crisis has exposed a fundamental weakness among the 16 countries that share the euro: different and often diametrically opposed approaches to spending don’t make for a happy union. By telling Greece they stand shoulder-to-shoulder as it struggles to rein in a runaway deficit and impose severe austerity measures, but offering little more than moral support, the European Union’s biggest hitters Germany and France - only slowed the market contagion afflicting Greece, and did not cure it. As a result, analysts, politicians and observers contend, that may brake momentum for countries like Latvia adopting the beleaguered euro. More broadly, it could force Europe, already in a winter of growing discontent, to reconsider how much of a union it really wishes to be. Its spending rules - limiting deficits to 3 percent of economic output have turned out to be more an honor system than a fiscal anchor. Can they be toughened to stop funny business like that in Greece, which faked budget numbers for years? Who pays if someone defaults? If countries that obey the rules pay for those that don’t, won’t more countries misbehave, knowing someone will protect them from the consequences of their behavior? If the answers mean moving authority from national capitals to the EU executive in Brussels, will people go along with that? In Greece, the flashpoint for the debate, Stavros Lygeros, a columnist for the Kathimerini daily newspaper, wrote Friday that the financial crisis brought “not only the collapse of our model of kleptocracy, but also the EU’s innate failings.” Lygeros wrote that while a union of states presupposes solidarity, “a monetary union without fiscal union, that is without political union, is a contradiction in terms.” Five years ago referendums in the Netherlands and France overwhelmingly rejected a proposed EU constitution that the public saw as further expanding the EU’s authority over its members. That deep reluctance to surrender sovereign power is one factor that has kept Britain, for instance, from abandoning the pound and joining the 16-nation euro zone. For opponents of the euro, Greece, and the lack of cohesion among the EU is a case of “I told you so”. “Greece is a living example of why you should never give up control of your own currency,” said Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the British Taxpayers’ Alliance. “The British economy and public finances are in a bad enough state as it is, without dishing out yet more of our money to solve the EU’s self-inflicted problems.” Rolf Englund, a Swedish economist who campaigned vigorously against the euro in a 2003 referendum whether to adopt it there, said the current crisis underscored why Swedes resoundingly decided to keep the krona. “It will crack sooner or later, because it’s impossible to have a common currency for such a big, and diverse area,” he said. “There’s no real EU solution for Greece. They’re helpless now, and they have no instruments to fend it off.” For newer EU members who have committed to eventually join the monetary union, feelings are split. Morten
Hansen, an economist at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia, says the debacle could give citizens there pause. “Should they go into a zone where there are countries not following the rules and then have to bail them out?” he asked. Yet the leadership in Latvia, whose economy the last two years has undergone the sharpest decline in the EU, remains resolved to adopting the common currency. “The Greek crisis has not dented Latvia’s determination to adopt the euro in 2014,” Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis told AP, adding that he regards the euro zone as “the key to economic stabilization and growth and to improving Latvia’s competitiveness.” But what happens if Greece’s woes spread and the bigger economies on shaky ground - Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland encounter similar problems? “Greece in itself is not a big thing,” said Sveder van Wijnbergen, of the Free University of Amsterdam, who says Athens’ budget shortfall of Ä54 billion ($75 billion) is small change by European standards. “I’m worried about what sort of message we give to other governments.” While the euro zone is unlikely to fall apart, a failure to stand together and protect one of its members would be a striking failure for the EU. That, the Financial Times opined in its lead editorial Friday, cannot be permitted to happen. “Euro members must start to build an explicit framework to govern their fiscal interdependence,” the paper said. “This crisis is a result of failed policies - but it presents an opportunity for setting them right.” Still, the hastily convened EU summit Thursday did not get beyond a vague statement of support for Greece. The leaders pledged to “take determined and coordinated action, if needed, to safeguard financial stability in the euro area as a whole,” but they left out any detail about what they might do to prevent Greece from defaulting on its massive debt. Greece is the test case that the euro was always going to face, said Sergio Romano, a leading Italian political analyst. “This crisis is an occasion for strengthening the European monetary union, for closing the gaps that existed from the very beginning. It had to come, and it finally came,” he told The Associated Press. “And if we make the right decision we can proceed from here to strengthen the monetary union. It has been what we have expected all the time.” At a time of financial hardship, most Europeans are worried about their own problems, and don’t like the idea of their tax money going to help Greece. “I’m going bankrupt due to this recession, so I really don’t care about Greece,” said Michele Fenizia, 55, who runs a takeaway kosher pizza place in Rome. “I don’t think we should focus on helping Greeks, we should mainly think of ourselves.” “If they take money out of France’s state cash box, I’m afraid people won’t accept it and will revolt,” said Parisian travel agent Brigitte Briard. But it’s not just the size of Greece’s deficit that has angered its European partners, but also the fact that previous Greek governments cooked the books to hide the losses. “It is not very reassuring that Greece has cheated not just once,” but several times, said Vladimir Gligorov, a researcher at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies. “This is not something that makes people happy with Greece.”—AP