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Critics say the UN's narcotics policies have fuelled organised crime

The UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) is meeting in Vienna to review the effectiveness of drug control over the past decade.

The conference will also set the agenda for international drugs policies for the next 10 years.

Critics say the policies are flawed, contributing to organised crime, violence and instability in the developing world.

But the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says there has been progress.  It says the number of drug users, about 5% of the world’s population, has stabilized over the past few years.

An EU report presented before the meeting suggested that international policies had failed to reduce the global drug problem over the past decade.

The head of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa, acknowledged that drug control policies had, as an unintended consequence, led the growth of organized crime.

Mr Costa said the focus of discussions would be on organised crime and the fact that much of it generated by the narcotics control regime.

“The important answer I am expecting from member states is what are they planning to do to control mafia and thus to control crime, not only because of the violent dimension, but also because organised crime is starting to undermine a number of smaller countries,” he said.

The complexity of the drugs issue – which spans health policy, law enforcement and international relations – means no two countries tackle the problem in the same way.

Some European and Latin American countries want to put more emphasis on public education and the treatment of addicts, rather than criminalising addicts and drug farmers in the developing world.

But other countries, including the United States and Russia, favour a more traditional approach to the problem of drugs.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, left, shakes hands with President Mahmoud Abbas as he submits his resignation at Abbas' headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Saturday, March 7, 2009. Fayyad says the resignation would take effect after the formation of a Palestinian unity government, but no later than the end of March. Fayyad's announcement comes just before the resumption of power-sharing talks between Abbas and his rivals from militant group Hamas.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian Prime Minister submitted his resignation Saturday, a move that could help pave the way for an elusive power-sharing deal between Palestinian moderates and militants.

Salam Fayyad was appointed prime minister by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007, in response to the violent takeover of Gaza by the militant Islamic Hamas in June 2007. Mr. Abbas and the Fayyad government control the West Bank, while Hamas continues to rule Gaza, despite a recent three-week Israeli military offensive there.

Mr. Fayyad’s decision was meant as a confidence-building measure ahead of the resumption of Palestinian reconciliation talks on Tuesday in Cairo. Negotiators from Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah movement are trying to form a transition government that is to prepare for presidential and legislative elections by January 2010.

Mr. Abbas said Saturday that he hoped a transition government could be formed by the end of March, suggesting that power-sharing talks have moved into high gear, following failed attempts in the past.

Mr. Fayyad’s resignation “comes to enhance and support the national dialogue to reach a national unity government,” Mr. Abbas said.

Mr. Fayyad said he would step down after the formation of a new government but no later than the end of March.

However, Hamas seemed dismissive Saturday, arguing that the Fayyad government had been unconstitutional from the start.

“This government did not work for the sake of the Palestinians, it worked for its own agenda. This end was expected for a government that was illegal and unconstitutional,” said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza.

Mr. Fayyad, a respected economist and political independent, had won widespread international support as prime minister. He carried out government reforms, including making government spending more transparent and deploying Palestinian security forces in former militant strongholds in the West Bank.

The support for the U.S.-educated Mr. Fayyad also translated into massive sums of foreign aid for the Palestinians. In 2007, donor countries pledged $7.7 billion over three years for the Fayyad government. Last week, another pledging conference, convened in the wake of Israel’s Gaza conference, yielded $5.2 billion over two years.

It was not immediately clear whether the pledges would be affected by a change in the Palestinian government. Donors had said at the pledging conference that much of the aid would be funneled through the Fayyad government.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad,left, sits next to President Mahmoud Abbas after submitting his resignation letter at Abbas' headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Saturday, March 7, 2009. Fayyad says the resignation would take effect after the formation of a Palestinian unity government, but no later than the end of March. Fayyad's announcement comes just before the resumption of power-sharing talks between Abbas and his rivals from militant group Hamas.

Mr. Fayyad said in a statement on Saturday that he was hoping to pave the way for a unity government. “This step comes in the efforts to form a national conciliation government,” Mr. Fayyad said.

The political split between Abbas and Hamas broke out into the open in January 2006 when Hamas won parliament elections, defeating Fatah, which had dominated Palestinian politics for decades.

Arab mediators repeatedly attempted to bridge the gaps but failed, and Mr. Hamas seized power by force in Gaza in 2007. In response, Mr. Abbas fired Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and replaced him with Mr. Fayyad, while Israel and Egypt responded by closing Gaza’s borders.  In 2008, Abbas conducted peace talks with Israel, but the negotiations ended without progress.

The rival camps appear to have stronger reasons now than in the best to reach a power-sharing deal.

A negotiated deal with Israel seems out of reach, particularly now that a right-wing government is about to be formed in Israel. Hamas, meanwhile, survived Israel’s Gaza offensive, but has failed to lift the border blockade.

In other developments Saturday, a member of an Islamic Jihad rocket squad was killed and two others were wounded in northern Gaza in what a Palestinian medic said was an Israeli air strike.

However, the military said it did not carry out any operations in Gaza on Saturday.

The Islamic Jihad squad was targeted as it fired rockets toward Israel, according to Palestinian health official Dr. Moawiya Hassanain and Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Ahmed. The Israeli military confirmed that at least five rockets were fired from Gaza toward Israel on Saturday, causing no injuries or damage.

Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers separately declared a cease-fire Jan. 18, after the Israeli offensive. However, talks on a durable truce have hit a snag, and rocket fire and airstrikes continue.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives to address a news conference after a NATO foreign ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, March 5, 2009.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO agreed on Thursday to resume formal ties with Russia, suspended after Moscow’s war with Georgia, in the hope of winning greater Russian support for its struggle to stabilize Afghanistan.

“We can and must find ways to work constructively with Russia where we share areas of common interest, including helping the people of Afghanistan,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

Russia immediately welcomed the move agreed at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.  “This decision is positive,” its ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told a news conference, calling it “promising in terms of stability and security in Afghanistan.”

But he regretted that ties would only be formally resumed after an April 3-4 NATO summit.

“Russia is in no hurry on Afghanistan but NATO indeed should be hurrying and we are just surprised that this issue of the resuming of practical work is postponed for another month.”

Before the NATO meeting, Russia had said it would allow transit of non-lethal U.S. military supplies for Afghanistan. With its supply lines under pressure from militant attacks, NATO hopes that in future such help could be extended to air transit, air lift and routes for lethal aid.

It also hopes to see Russian cooperation in encouraging Central Asian states to allow the passage of NATO supplies, and in keeping open bases used by NATO forces, one of which is about to be closed down by Kyrgyzstan.

Alliance member Lithuania had blocked quick agreement to resume cooperation with Moscow through the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), the body that directs dialogue between the two sides on security issues, but later dropped its objections.

NATO had suspended cooperation in protest at Russia’s war last August with Georgia, an aspiring member of the alliance.

NEED TO TALK

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said ministers agreed to resume formal NRC sessions, including at ministerial level, as soon as possible after the summit. “Russia is a global player. Not talking to them is not an option,” he said.

NATO said differences remained with Moscow and de Hoop Scheffer urged Russia to fully meet its commitments on Georgia.

NATO members say a build-up of Russia’s military presence in breakaway Georgian regions and violates Georgian territorial integrity and goes against a French-brokered ceasefire deal.

“We have quite a number of areas where we have fundamental differences of opinion and where we think that Russia should really change its position,” de Hoop Scheffer said.

Clinton, while pressing for a fresh start with Russia, said the door to alliance membership must be kept open for ex-Soviet Georgia and Ukraine. Moscow strongly opposes their entry bids.

Clinton is set to hold her first substantive talks with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Friday and agreement on resuming ties with NATO will help the atmosphere.

The United States, the biggest force contributor in Afghanistan, is carrying out a review of its strategy, and Clinton proposed an international conference for March 31 to map out future strategy to tackle the insurgency.

So far Washington’s appeals for more troops for Afghanistan have generated only a limited response from Europe.

But Clinton said there had been “broad agreement” on a new strategy, including a regional approach, better coordinated civilian and military commitments and intensive efforts to promote governance and economic opportunities.

“All the participants recognized the need for increased resources and manpower,” she told a news conference.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 5, 2009.

MOSCOW – In some of his strongest criticism of his successors, Mikhail Gorbachev on Thursday likened Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party to the worst of the communists he once led and helped bring down, and said Russia is today a country where the parliament and the judiciary are not fully free.

In an interview with The Associated Press some 20 years after the Soviet empire started its rapid collapse on his tumultuous watch, Gorbachev also said the global economic crisis showed capitalism should be tempered with elements of the socialist system he played such a critical role in sweeping away.

The last Soviet leader was interviewed in the offices of his Gorbachev Foundation, a think tank founded in 1992 to promote “democratic values and moral, humanistic principles” — as well as, some say, Gorbachev himself. A little aged and more heavyset perhaps, Gorbachev, 78, seemed feisty, friendly and often reminiscent of the man who once ruled one of two superpowers on Earth.

Wanted to keep Soviet Union
Gorbachev is a paradoxical figure even after all these years — widely credited around the world with a historic convulsion he admits he did not intend. He sought to fix communism, not destroy it, and in the interview said that while he was willing to let Eastern Europe go its own way he very much hoped the republics that formed the Soviet Union would stay united.

“I was a resolute opponent of the breakup of the union,” said Gorbachev, who was forced to step down on Dec. 25, 1991, as the country he led ceased to exist.

He still holds out hope that one day Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus will join with Russia in forming a new union.

He seemed to view the global meltdown as partly the result of years of Western hubris and excess.

“The American media trumpeted … about the victory in the Cold War, that socialism is down. This disease of extreme self-confidence led to it — the (belief) that things would always go on this way. And it did last long … I think that now everyone is learning a hard lesson.”

“It is necessary to overcome these mistakes of super-consumerism, of super-profits.” he said. “We have to think about finding — through the G20 or other institutions — new models of development (and) cooperation.”

The world should look for a composite system, he said, which incorporates “the past experience of all that the capitalist system brings, like competitiveness, and what socialism gives — especially a social safety net.”

Good time for improved relations with U.S.
Gorbachev also said the moment was right for improved U.S.-Russia relations, expressed skepticism about the wisdom of Ukraine joining NATO, and called on the world community to head off the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon not with confrontation but rather “a maximal dialogue.”

“Let (Iran) integrate itself into the global community, build normal relations,” he said.

Gorbachev had harsh words for the current Russian leadership, singling out United Russia, the party Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has built into a political juggernaut at the center of a tremendously centralized — albeit popular — power structure.

‘Worst version of the CPSU’
“I criticize United Russia a lot, and I do it directly,” the last Soviet leader said. “It is a party of bureaucrats and the worst version of the CPSU” — the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. “Regarding our parliament, I cannot say that it is independent (and) also our judiciary does not fully comply with the provisions of the constitution.”

Is the world waiting for such advice? If there are takers, most will be outside Russia, where he has become a rather marginal political figure: For every Russian who appreciates his role in ending communism there are certainly many more inclined to blame him for the privations of the process he unleashed: the impoverishment many suffered in the 1990s, the vastly unequal distribution of wealth that bedevils society even today, the failings of Russian democracy — and the humiliating loss of the once-vast empire ruled from the Kremlin.

Asked about the fateful Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, Gorbachev said that he never contemplated force to stop the process that within months saw most of the Warsaw Pact break free. He said it was inevitable that the states of that region would be free to do as they wished.

Gorbachev gets little credit
Yet even in Eastern Europe, as the region gears up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, Gorbachev gets only the rarest of mentions and he is forced to share credit for the revolution with a slew of others — Poland’s Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Ronald Reagan and the late Pope John Paul II.

“We live more freely now than in the communist era because of what he did and achieved,” said Peter Nagy, a 37-year-old public employee in Budapest. “However, he was still the leader of a dictatorial system, not a democrat. I would not accept him today as a leader.”

Havel, the former Czech president, in his memoirs “To the Castle and Back” described Gorbachev as both a special and tragic case and said the collapse of communism would have been much more violent without him.

In Warsaw, former anti-communist dissident Adam Michnik said he feels “great gratitude” toward Gorbachev. “I don’t have the slightest doubt that it was Gorbachev and his policy of glasnost and perestroika that opened the gates for the great changes that first took place in our country and then in this part of the continent,” Michnik said.

In the interview, Gorbachev was philosophical about his declining political fortunes.

“Personally, as a politician, I lost. But the idea that I conveyed and the project that I carried out, it played a huge role in the world and the country. But now the situation is such that more and more people are starting to understand what Gorbachev did …

“But anyway, we have gone far, and there’s no return.”

Gorbachev laughed when asked whether his recent appearance in Louis Vuitton ads might not cheapen such a momentous legacy, saying his foundation needed the money. He noted that he had also once appeared in Pizza Hut ads, and asked if any other offers might be forthcoming.