China's New Rulers: The Secret Files
Richard B Khoe. SAIS Review. Washington: Summer 2003. Vol. 23, Iss. 2; pg. 239, 5 pgs
Abstract (Article Summary)
Khoe reviews "China's New Rulers: The Secret Files" by Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley.
Full Text (1632 words)
Copyright Johns Hopkins University Press Summer 2003
China's New Rulers: The Secret Files, by Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley. (New York: The New York Review of Books, 2002). 237 pp. $22.
China long has conjured up a sense of mystery and intrigue among Western observers. Just thirty-five years ago during the Cultural Revolution, Western intelligence analysts were starved for knowledge about the insular country and reportedly relied on Hong Kong's market stalls as a vital information source. They eagerly scoured through trash piles to retrieve the newspapers wrapped around vegetables grown nearby in China's Guangdong Province, hoping to find precious bits of information about that country's basic living conditions, government policies, and political leadership. Of course, China has been fundamentally transformed since that time. Communism as an economic system now exists in name only, replaced by a rapidly expanding market-based system. Information about China and its people is now plentiful, perhaps to the extent of analytical paralysis.
One thing that has not changed, however, is the relative lack of information about China's political system and its leaders. At the Sixteenth Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress in November 2002, an entire bloc of younger cadres known as the "fourth generation" was elevated to the party's highest leadership positions. At the head of this group is Hu Jintao, who now holds two of the three key leadership positions-President and CCP General Secretary-that constitute supreme power in China. Hu is expected eventually to assume the third main position as Chairman of the Central Military Commission from Jiang Zemin. Remarkably little is known about Hu and his fourth generation peers, such as Wen Jiabao, Zeng Qinghong, and Wu Bangguo, who have assumed greater prominence in this era of increased collective leadership. Thus, China's New Rulers: The Secret Files, by Andrew J.. Nathan and Bruce Gilley, is a significant contribution to understanding who these new leaders are and how they think. The book thought-- fully removes the aura of mystery that surrounds the fourth generation, which many observers believe will initiate some degree of political reform over time.
Nathan and Gilley's book is similar, in many respects, to the newspapers found in Hong Kong markets thirty-five years ago. Both fill a need for basic yet critical information, and both give their readers a perspective that is at once voyeuristic and genuine. China's New Rulers draws heavily upon the Chinese-language book Disidai ("The Fourth Generation"), whose author, writing under the pseudonym Zong Hairen, obtained secret documents compiled by the CCP's Organization Department.' These documents are the personnel files used by the CCP itself to evaluate candidates for top party posts and are the product of meticulous research and interviews by party investigators. This is not the first time Nathan has relied on so-called secret files to expose the arcane workings of Chinese politics. He is known most famously for The Tiananmen Papers,2 which documents, through internal party memos and notes, the tragic sequence of events that led to the CCP's decision to use force against its own people in June 1989. Nathan is banned from visiting China to this day, and the government has denied the authenticity of both Disidai and China's New Rulers, albeit with little conviction. Nathan's fellow collaborator is former Far Eastern Economic Review reporter Bruce Gilley, who has authored a wellreceived biography of Jiang Zemin.3
The book's most valuable contribution is its insight into the mysterious Hu-probably the least known of the world's important leaders. Throughout his career, Hu has built an impressive resume that reveals surprisingly little about him. It is tempting, but ultimately imprudent, to infer in Hu personal qualities that could lead to prospective actions (e.g., political reforms) based on the positions he has held. For example, many believe Hu to be sympathetic to the concerns of China's rural population-such as the growing disparity with the rich urban coast-because of his service as party secretary in three of China's most impoverished provinces, including Tibet. According to party files, however, his provincial tenure was not marked with distinction, nor is there evidence of any great concern on his part for rural development. Because Hu headed the school that grooms the CCP's most promising cadres for leadership positions when it taught courses on social democracy, some believe he may favor political reform. However, nothing Hu has actually said verifies these supposed liberal tendencies, and there is no confirmation he had directed or was even authorized to approve the school's curriculum. In fact, there is stronger evidence that Hu's tendencies are more authoritarian. As Tibet's provincial governor in 1989, Hu declared martial law in the face of social unrest, setting an important precedent for the events that unfolded in Beijing just three months later. Notably, Hu was the first provincial leader to congratulate Beijing after the Tiananmen crackdown.
Hu leaves an indelible impression of "ordinariness" that leads the reader to question how he rose to power in the first place. Powerful patrons, good fortune, and, indeed, the non-threatening nature of his ordinariness seem to be the deciding factors. The authors highlight that Hu's friendship with CCP elder Song Ping proved instrumental to his rapid rise, and when Song retired from his post on the powerful Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) in 1992, he lobbied hard for his protege to succeed him. Hu subsequently overtook peers with more substantive records of accomplishment when party elders decided the new PBSC member should be younger than fifty years old at the time of the 1992 Party Congress. (Hu was just three months shy.) As a result, Hu became the youngest PBSC member and was labeled the "core of the fourth generation of leadership." The PBSC slot effectively designated him as Jiang's eventual successor and led to official postings that were second in rank to Jiang, though largely of symbolic power. "What Hu did accomplish during his decade as heir apparent was to retain that status by staying out of the limelight," Nathan and Gilley write. He succeeded mainly by assuring a complex network of party factions that he did not threaten their interests, and, given that a high political position in China frequently leads to personal power and wealth, one cannot overstate the potency of these interests. Thus, Hu has demonstrated skillful political maneuvering, but he has shown little in the way of true leadership or consensus building.
The fourth generation figure that stands in contrast to Hu is Zeng Qinghong, Jiang's protege, who currently ranks fifth in the CCP hierarchy. China's New Rulers shows that unlike Hu, Zeng achieved a considerable amount in the last decade. He helped engineer the fall of three powerful rivals to Jiang, who rewarded him with a place in the CCP's inner circle. As head of the Organization Department, Zeng was responsible for making key personnel decisions and building up a loyal base of support to Jiang and himself, while Hu could only rubber-stamp these decisions. Zeng also played a leading role in crafting the "Three Represents" theory, which codifies the CCP's groundbreaking effort to admit capitalists into the party. Also in contrast to Hu, there is real evidence that Zeng may be a "closet reformer." His files describe him as "an ideological omnivore" who "feeds freely on whatever theory or idea seems to him the most practical way to make China a strong and respected nation." He has told friends he would be willing to reverse the official condemnation of 1989, increase competitive elections, and allow independent parties and media. Ironically, it is these liberal tendencies and his connection to Jiang that now obstruct his political ambitions. Zeng threatens the same vested interests that Hu successfully attracted. He received the largest numbers of "no" votes among current Politburo members and was limited to the fifth-- ranking position in the party despite his stellar record. Nevertheless, Zeng is a politician to watch closely and someone to whom the party may turn for strong and bold leadership.
China's New Rulers is not an impartial "who's who" of Chinese leadership. The authors inject a great deal of useful interpretive analysis with which readers may or may not agree. Also, because the book draws upon documents from the CCP itself, the source files themselves are "tainted." There is much to learn from the party's biases however, as the authors point out: "Most fascinating, the files tell us what the CCP sees when it looks in the mirror." By and large, the reflection is a reassuring one to Western readers. It reveals a party in the hands of younger and technically capable leaders who are well-intentioned and hold forward-looking views. Further, their stated foreign policy goals are rather benign and tend to disavow hegemonic ambitions.
As progressive as some of its stances are, however, the party remains ignorant of its glaring weaknesses. It seems little troubled that the domination of personal interests has potentially planted the seeds of its own undoing in the form of rampant corruption and weak leadership. The party also seems overly confident in its ability to shape people and events at will. Ironically, the explosion of economic dynamism that has strengthened China has inextricably tied the country's fortunes to global forces, for better or worse, and weakened the party's reach. The CCP response to problems within the scope of party control-rampant corruption and the weakness of stateowned industries and financial institutions-has been either feeble or ineffective. Thus, the best intentions of the party may matter little if internal weaknesses reach crisis conditions or are ignited by an external shock.
[Footnote]
Notes
[Footnote]
1 Zong Hairen, Disidai (New York: Mirror Books, 2002).
2 Zhang Liang, Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link, eds., The Tiananmen Papers (New York: Public Affairs, 2001).
3 Bruce Gilley, Tiger on the Brink: Jiang Zemin and China's New Elite (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998).
[Author Affiliation]
Reviewed by Richard B. Khoe, M.I.P.P Johns Hopkins University, SAIS, 2003.
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"Avalanching" Bin Laden
By Stephen Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 10, 2004
They are smoking the rats out of their holes.
The joint American-Pakistani military offensive, launched recently in the rugged Afghan-Pakistani border region, is making life difficult for Islamist forces. About 2,000 of the 12,000 American troops stationed in Afghanistan are involved in the action, dubbed "Operation Avalanche," to eliminate the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other armed Islamist groups, and to capture their leaders. The American soldiers are positioned on the Afghan side of the border in what is termed a "hammer and anvil" operation: about 70,000 Pakistani troops are acting as the hammer to drive the Islamists across the border into the waiting American anvil.
At one point it was claimed that the allied forces had surrounded Osama bin Laden, however this turned out to be premature. Nevertheless, the military offensive has already achieved some successes. Besides the jihadists forced from their Pakistani refuge back across the Afghan border, the Pakistanis claim to have captured more than 20 foreigners, including nationals from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. As well, among their number was Khalid al-Zawahiri, son of Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who recently released a taped message that threatened more terrorist strikes against the United States. The Pakistanis have also arrested 15 people for aiding the Taliban.
The first phase of Operation Avalanche is taking place in the tribal areas of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Created by the British as a buffer between pre-partition India and Afghanistan, the North-West Frontier Province is made up of seven different tribal areas and contains a population of about six million. The Pakistani government exercises little control in the province where, besides a safe haven, the Islamist groups find support and recruits among the mostly Pashtun population.
And with its long (2,400 kilometers), porous border with Afghanistan, the region has long been a thorn in the side of the American military and the Afghan government, as it was for the Soviets in the 1980s. Taliban and al-Qaeda adherents fled there after the American invasion of Afghanistan more than two years ago, where they continue to stage attacks against allied forces and UN aid workers. One hundred US soldiers alone have died in Afghanistan since the invasion.
Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf is cooperating in the hunt for bin Laden as well as in the battle against the new jihad forming against coalition troops in Afghanistan. Since 9/11, Pakistan has been an important ally of the United States in the War on Terror, having captured more than 550 suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives. Pakistani authorities have also allowed the FBI to set up office in their country where its officials interrogate captured terrorists, listen in on the communications network and conduct other intelligence gathering operations.
After 9/11, Pakistan pretty much had to join the American side in the War on Terror or suffer such consequences as aid reduction, refused loans, and a ban on weapons sales. America granted $395 million in aid to its ally last January, while another $3 billion has been promised to the South Asian country over the next five years. In addition, America will not sanction Pakistan for its role in the recently revealed nuclear proliferation scandal involving that country, receiving instead permission for American troops to operate on Pakistani territory in the spring.
The Pakistani army, often accused of hindering efforts against the Taliban due to Islamist sympathizers in its ranks, appears to be taking Operation Avalanche seriously. It has cut off all access into and out of the region and has ordered the tribes in the affected areas to cooperate or face such punishments as home demolitions. One observer says the tribesmen now cannot even drive around with tinted windows or they face three years in jail, confiscation of their vehicles and a $1,200 fine.
The strategy of the Islamist forces under attack is simply to lie low until the spring when they can launch their own offensive, possibly against Afghan cities. They will also continue their suicide bombing campaign. The Islamists have gained ground in Afghanistan in recent months, especially in the rural, southern Pashtun areas, and are threatening to undo all the gains made since the invasion.
The American-Pakistani offensive was launched at this time due to this worsening security situation in Afghanistan, which has caused a postponement of the Afghan elections, a step regarded as crucial in the rebuilding of the country. The campaign is meant to preempt any Islamist spring attack, as well. Besides, after two years in the country American forces believe they are much better prepared, intelligence- and military-wise, for such a large operation that is expected to last many months with the destruction of the Islamist forces as its ultimate goal. The capture of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, while a very welcome bonus, are of secondary importance.
Concurrent with military operations, efforts are also being made to split the Islamist resistance by offering certain leaders a roll in the Afghan political process if they cease their attacks. Nevertheless the current offensive, unlike others in the past, still has as its goal the complete destruction of all Islamist forces. This, it is realized, is an important prerequisite for any peaceful political solution in Afghanistan, something which that unfortunate country has long desperately needed.
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Stephen Brown is a journalist based in Toronto. He has an M.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies. Email him at alsolzh@hotmail.com.
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Afghanistan: The spring trap is sprung
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - In a clear indication that the spring offensive against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border will be launched soon, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell is scheduled to arrive in Pakistan on March 17, a visit that comes on the heels of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's own journey to Islamabad last week. After Powell's trip, US Chief of Central Command General John Abizaid will also make his way to Pakistan.
These visits are all in preparation for the upcoming "game", one that will have broad consequences for the region. At a time when rebellious feelings are quickly taking root in the Pakistani tribal regions of South and North Waziristan - tribal leaders have unanimously demanded the withdrawal of Pakistani forces from the tribal areas - plans for the new operation are nearing their final stages.
An operation outline
The scope of the upcoming operation is far broader in both Afghanistan and Pakistan than it has been in the past, and is likely to be launched in April, according to high-level sources that spoke to Asia Times Online. An important development has already taken place on the Afghan front: access to Tora Bora has been restricted by international and Afghan military forces. While this piece of information made news around the globe, what is little known is that there is a truce between local Afghan military bosses in Jalalabad and local warlords associated with Hezb-i-Islami, the Afghanistan rebel group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar that is spearheading the Afghan resistance movement.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the border in Pakistan's Khyber agency and surrounding areas, it is alleged that Osama bin Laden built bunkers and tunnels, echoing the path he took in the Tora Bora mountains, from where he escaped advancing US-led troops in early 2002 after the fall of the Taliban. Sources maintain that if bin Laden is not arrested in Khyber agency, it is unlikely he will be located as it is the only static refuge besides Tora. At the same time, the region is where guerrilla fighters take refuge for longer periods to plan their next guerrilla attack. This information is very much known to US authorities, which is why Khyber agency is one of the next targets for the operation against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
It is also believed that the spring operations will cover not only Afghan and the Pakistani tribal areas, but the city centers of both countries. The high-level sources say that the US is working to paralyze all possible support systems to the Taliban and al-Qaeda from cities in Pakistan.
In the next sweep, the US is expected to play an active role within Pakistan; however, the mission has been kept secret as this is a very sensitive issue in the country. The owners of major Pakistani press organizations have already been warned against coverage of events showing US involvement in Pakistan. And for foreign media correspondents, new proposals are under review to restrict their movements, as well as monitor their writing.
Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf, who faces significant domestic political pressure against US deployments in Pakistan, has repeatedly denied the presence of US troops.
Putting on the pressure
The US has already pressured Pakistan to take all the necessary steps to ensure the spring operation will be a success. In an extraordinary development highlighting the intricacies of the operation, the Corps Commander in Peshawar, Lieutenant-General Ali Jan Orakzai, has retired a month prematurely. Major General Safdar Hussain will take his place. Sources from Peshawar maintain that Orakzai will be installed as governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province in compensation for his premature retirement.
Orakzai has been in Washington's bad books since last year, when he visited the US and openly condemned the behavior of US authorities towards Pakistanis. Orakzai was an official guest, but was forced to go through a plethora of screenings and checks at the immigration counter on his arrival. As well as complaining about this particular incident, Orakzai spoke against what he felt was discriminatory behavior against Pakistanis at functions hosted by the Pakistani embassy in the US.
These changes in command come amid word that US authorities have made a special request: in the next phase of operations, all Pashtun officers should be separated from those officers actually involved in the spring offensive, whose names would be vetted by US authorities. (Pashtuns are generally sympathetic to the ethnic Pashtun Taliban.)
Orakzai is a Pashtun. Meanwhile, the new corps commander, Hussain, is from Punjab and enjoys good relations with US authorities. Previously posted in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) , where he coordinated with US forces, Hussain is highly knowledgeable about the north western Pakistani region. Traditionally, the Pakistan army has been dominated by Punjabi and Pashtun officers, but for the past two years Pashtun officers have been greatly cut to size. In recent promotions, 18 brigadiers were elevated to the position of major-general, while only one Pashtun was given the same title.
Elsewhere, a list of Pakistan's most-wanted terrorists has been compiled by a newly formed group called the Special Investigation Cell. This group is headed by a Federal Investigation Agency director from the Pakistani side and by a Central Intelligence Agency official from the US side. As per the list, several top jihadis were recently picked up and interrogated. These events were not reported in the media.
This correspondent spoke with one of the men picked up, who once belonged to the banned Lashkar-i-Taiba and who is now an inactive office bearer. He was previously picked up by ISI and US Federal Bureau of Investigation officials and jointly and separately interrogated by these agencies, which wanted to know the whereabouts of Arab fighters hiding in the port city of Karachi.
The man was given clearance after several days of interrogation, but was picked up again for the same reason, and once again set free after he went through several stages of screenings and investigations. He has been told that since he is on the US's most-wanted list, he will be in contact with these agencies in the future.
Under the new operation, many big names associated with the Jamaat-i-Islami, the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (Fazalur Rehman) , Jaish-i-Mohammed and the Lashkar-i-Taiba are expected to be interrogated. The names include Maulana Masood Azhar and Abdullah Shah Mazhar, two top-ranking jihadis.
At the same time, all those who previously fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, since released from Afghan jails, will be required to report weekly to their local Afghan police stations and will occasionally be picked up by intelligence agencies for screening. Those Pakistanis released from Afghan jails will not be set free by Pakistani authorities and will be dealt with under a stringent legal clause.
From Kabul to Jalalabad and from Khyber agency to Karachi, an infrastructure is being put in place, all of which is being supervised by US authorities, to make the spring operations a success. The depth of these plans suggests that the battlefields will heat up in the near future, on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. But whether these steps will actually help the US catch Osama remains the million-dollar question.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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Iran demands entry to nuclear club
By Safa Haeri
PARIS - Iran on Sunday surprised the international community, and above all the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), by seeking to join the world's atomic club, calling on its members for a prompt entry.
"We want Iran to be recognized as a member of the nuclear club, that means Iran be recognized as a country having the nuclear fuel cycle, and enriching uranium. This is very difficult for the world to accept," Hassan Rohani, the secretary of the Supreme Council for National Security (SCNS), announced ahead of an important meeting this week of the IAEA. Five countries are officially inside that club - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.
The UN agency meets in Vienna to tackle Iran's and Libya's nuclear programs, which have been fed by a global black market linked to the father of Pakistan's atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. The governing board will consider two resolutions during the meeting, expected to last until Friday.
The first is Libya's long-secret atomic-weapons program, which Tripoli has agreed to dismantle under the supervision of the IAEA. The second issue is Iran, long accused by Washington, among others, of using its atomic-energy program as a front to build a bomb.
Tehran insists that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and has called on the IAEA to leave it alone. "The case concerning Iran's peaceful nuclear activities should be completely closed at the IAEA board of governors and removed from its agenda," Rohani said on state television on Sunday.
He added that it was time for the IAEA, which launched an intensive investigation into Iran's nuclear program 13 months ago, to confirm the Islamic Republic's innocence.
The "request" for membership to the atomic club by Rohani, who handles the complicated, complex and controversial issue of Iranian nuclear activities and who conducts the difficult and tortuous talks with the IAEA, means that Iran has the capacity of making nuclear weapons, a potential that most US and European experts and intelligence services put at between three and five years to achieve.
Whatever the reasons that motivated Tehran's move, diplomats and experts say that Rohani's declaration not only will not appease international concerns about Iran's determination to set up a nuclear arsenal, but also convince the United States and the European Union to increase pressures on the Islamic Republic to stop all its atomic projects, or face drastic international sanctions.
In a report to be published at the end of this month, David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a US-based non-profit research organization specializing in nuclear matters, will disclose that Iran has the capacity to produce enough enriched uranium to build some 30 nuclear warheads a year.
In Tehran on Sunday, Rohani told the inaugural session of the Assembly of Experts, a body made up of 82 senior clerics that has the power to elect or dismiss the leader of the regime: "We have two goals ahead of us that we must achieve. One is closing Iran's nuclear dossier with the IAEA and bringing the board of governors to take it out of their agenda, and the other is to have Iran recognized globally as a nuclear country."
As Rohani was briefing the Experts, a hardline newspaper warned the IAEA to be "more realistic in its dealings with Iran or the whole game would be jeopardized", and an unidentified Iranian diplomat in Vienna threatened that Iran would resume uranium enrichment and revise its agreement to cooperate with the international nuclear watchdog if the dispute is not resolved in line with last October's agreement.
The envoy was referring to an accord signed on October 21 in Tehran between Rohani with the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany under which Iran agreed to sign the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and suspend enriching uranium in return for getting access to advanced nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes, like the construction of nuclear-powered electrical plants.
"Iran will not wait forever to restore its legitimate national right to pursue peaceful nuclear activities and will not accept that the IAEA continue its double-standard policies toward Iran," the diplomat added, quoted by Mehr, a news agency close to the ruling conservatives.
At the same time, and in an obvious coordinated campaign aimed at intimidating the IAEA's board of governors, Mohsen Rezai, the secretary of the powerful Expediency Council that is chaired by former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said cooperation with the IAEA would become more difficult if the IAEA decided to limit Iran's peaceful and civilian nuclear activities.
Rohani, in his lengthy and detailed report to the Assembly of Experts, explained why he had to bow to the IAEA's demand to sign the Additional Protocol, revealing that in the event that Iran did not obey, "it would face the same fate as Iraq", meaning a possible military invasion of the country authorized by the UN Security Council.
"The pressures applied on Iran were so great that most of the world's leading industrial nations conditioned trading with us to the signing of the protocol, as seen in the Azadegan oilfields that the Japanese refused to develop," the SCNS influential secretary told a bewildered assembly. (See Japan, Iran sign major oil deal, US dismayed , February 20.)
However, Rohani expressed the hope that because of Iran's "clear-cut and full" cooperation with the IAEA, the board would not take the case to the Security Council for economic sanctions. "Even the Americans have indicated that they would not insist on the matter," he added.
Diplomats in Vienna said a draft resolution prepared by the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand does not mention the Security Council and balances criticism of Iran with praise for granting the IAEA access to sites and agreeing to suspend all activities linked to the enrichment of uranium.
The IAEA will also discuss technology and equipment for enriching uranium sold to Iran by Pakistan's Khan. According to a report by Malaysian police based on the apparent confession of a wealthy Sri Lankan who serves as a middleman, Khan sold Iran a number of centrifuges for US$3 million. But Tehran has constantly denied the accusations, saying that it obtained second-hand material on the black market, with no information about its origin.
IAEA inspectors who found traces of aluminum enriched with new equipment known as P-2 say Iran concealed this equipment from them, but the radical daily Keyhan on Sunday accused the agency of "gross lies and total dishonesty", reiterating that Iran had told inspectors about all of its activities and installations.
In a sharp-tongued comment, Hoseyn Shariatmadari, a high-ranking intelligence officer appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as editor, said that although the October 21 agreement with the foreign affairs ministers of Europe's big three was a choice between bad and worse, the IAEA, under pressure from the "US and Zionist circles has gone far beyond honesty in dealing with the Islamic Republic".
Quoting Khamenei as having warned the IAEA and the leading powers "not to try to challenge Islamic Iran's right to possess nuclear technology", Shariatmadari called on the authorities to be ready for "the big showdown" and urged lawmakers elected to the next Iranian parliament not to approve the protocol if the IAEA failed to accommodate Iran.
The additional protocol, which allows IAEA inspectors to carry out "instant" and unrestricted inspections of all Iranian nuclear installations and projects, has not yet been approved by the outgoing Iranian majlis (parliament).
According to Mehr, continuing accusations against Iran, despite its cooperation with IAEA inspectors, has irked the Iranian delegation, which has accused the agency of dealing with Iran in an "illogical manner ... There is nothing permanent. We signed the additional protocol ... and when to resume is in the hands of our system [the ruling Islamic establishment]," Rohani said at the assembly on Sunday, reiterating that Iran's atomic projects, like an electric plant that is under construction at the Persian Gulf port of Booshehr, with assistance from Russia, are for civilian purposes.
But Washington insists that Iran's ruling ayatollahs want to use atomic installations, and Booshehr, for advancing military aims.
The IAEA's latest report on Iran said that agency inspectors had unearthed designs and parts for the advanced P2 uranium enrichment centrifuge, capable of producing bomb-grade uranium at twice the speed of Iran's first generation P1 centrifuges. The agency also uncovered experiments in the creation of plutonium, which can also be used as the explosive in nuclear weapons, and polonium, which can spark a chain reaction in a nuclear weapon.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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Iran threatens to end cooperation with IAEA
TEHRAN: Iran will halt its cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog if European states fail to counter US pressure on the Islamic republic over its atomic programme, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi threatened on Wednesday.
Iran's decision to resume uranium enrichment, a possible material for making nuclear weapons, would not be constructive, Kenneth Brill, US ambassador to the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog, said. He was reacting at a press briefing to comments by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi that Iran intended to end its suspension of uranium enrichment once relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were "normalized".
The Iranian minister also said Iran intended to end its suspension of uranium enrichment -- a key step in producing both nuclear weapons and atomic energy -- once relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were "normalised." "Unfortunately, the agency allows itself to be influenced by the Americans," Kharazi told reporters here after a cabinet meeting. --Agencies
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Japan to shift aid focus from China to India
By Purnendra Jain
ADELAIDE - Japan is set to make a historic economic and political policy decision, shifting its foreign aid focus away from China - and to India.
For many years China has been the top recipient of Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA) that symbolized Japan's economic commitment and political and diplomatic closeness to its powerful Asian neighbor. As recently as 2000, China received some 214 billion yen (US$2 billion) in loans as part of Japan's ODA, while India remained on the periphery of Japan's foreign-aid program; at that time Tokyo had just resumed its yen loans to New Delhi, which had been suspended to demonstrate strong disapproval of India's nuclear tests in 1998.
But this equation is changing fast. If proposed changes in Japan's ODA budget allocations are approved at the political level, China is certain to slip into the No 2 position and India will emerge as the leading recipient of Japan's ODA loans in 2004. China is likely to receive only 100 billion yen in 2004, about 20 billion less than last year - the total loan will be less than half the amount Beijing received in 2000. This is a steep decline. On the other hand, India is certain to receive an amount similar to what it received last year, or even a little more, which will be in excess of 111 billion yen.
An announcement is expected by the end of the month.
Why this shift?
Criticism of Japan's aid policy as being devoid of a philosophy, the misappropriation of aid money in recipient countries, and political scandals within Japan forced policymakers to address these issues through policy change. Moreover, cuts in the ODA budget every year since 2000 - the total budget in fiscal 2002 was $9.1 billion - have also prompted Japan to review its aid policy and set new priorities both in aid-funded projects and country focus. To this end, the government has established several commissions and advisory panels consisting of politicians, officials, business leaders and academics that have proposed numerous recommendations. A better balance between China and India is one of the aims of Japan's new direction in its aid policy.
The shift is no doubt an important milestone in Japan's foreign-aid policy. India was the first recipient of Japan's yen loans when this policy was implemented in 1958. But slowly, India's position declined over the years and countries such as Indonesia and China became the leading recipients of Japan's ODA in Asia. Cold War conditions saw Japan's and India's strategic interests drift apart, and led to a consequent fall-off in economic and diplomatic relations between Tokyo and New Delhi. On the other hand, China continued to rise in prominence in Japan's overall economic, diplomatic and strategic considerations after Beijing and Tokyo signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation in 1978.
With India's recent sustained economic growth, its technical preeminence globally, especially in the information-technology sector, and its diplomatic activism, particularly as a key player in the Group of 20 developing countries, and its push to secure a place as a permanent member of the United National Security Council in recent years, many countries are forced to sit up and take notice of India. Japan is no exception. One way to win back India's heart, hurt deeply in 1998 by Japan's policy response after the nuclear tests, is via its aid policy. Policymakers in Tokyo are convinced it's high time to strengthen diplomatic ties with India.
While China will undoubtedly feel a little disappointed with the continuous decline in Japan's flow of yen loans for infrastructure and other national projects and, more important, because of its status change from No 1 to No 2, Beijing is aware that it commands an overwhelming position in the minds of Tokyo's policymakers. China is a key player in Japan's recent economic recovery, and it is unlikely that Tokyo will intentionally make any policy that would upset the Chinese leadership.
Indeed, Beijing should take this development as a compliment. Japan's aid reductions to China are based on the assessment that China no longer requires Japan's financial assistance as much as it once did. In Japan's analytical framework, China's economy has matured and the country is now able to fund many of its infrastructure projects without support from Japan. Of course, China is not the first country to have seen this transition. There are other cases in Asia, such as South Korea and Singapore, which initially received development aid from Japan but with the growth in their economies they no longer required Japan's aid. Indeed, some of them are now members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and aid donors in their own right.
The ODA priority shift from China to India does not reflect Japan's policy shift in other areas. Japanese investment in China continues to rise and two-way trade is increasing, reaching a level last year never seen before. India still languishes both in trade and investment areas. It will be decades before the level of Japanese investment and trade with India is as high as with China. Indeed it may not reach that level at all.
The subnational factor
It is not just the national government and business leaders who regard China as a key and influential player for many years to come, Japan's subnational governments and local leaders have also realized the importance of China for their industries and future economic well-being.
In recent years, a large number of Japanese prefectural and city governments have opened their offices in Chinese provinces and cities. Their numbers are ever rising and some Japanese local governments are even closing their offices in countries such as Singapore and Thailand and relocating them to Chinese cities and provinces.
More than just in the area of economic linkages, subnational governments of Japan and China are forging strong ties in educational, cultural and scientific fields through sister-city agreements, whose numbers are increasing by the year.
While currently there are some 256 official sister-city agreements between Japanese and Chinese subnational governments, there is only one between India and Japan, formed as far back as in 1965. The first sister-city link between a Japanese and a Chinese subnational government was formed as late as 1973, and that number has now gone above 250. The Council of Local Authorities for International Relations - a national body in charge of promoting international linkages at the grassroots level - has offices in Beijing and Singapore, but none in South Asia. India appears nowhere on its radar screen.
Moreover, there are close to 40 offices of Japan's local governments in different locations in China, seeking business for their local companies, facilitating investment and coordinating cooperative projects. But there are no such activities in India.
The national government's ODA program should not be regarded as the only indicator of government aid and assistance in a bilateral relationship. Japan's subnational governments now offer a range of assistance to their Chinese counterparts, what can be easily regarded as a "local ODA" program. Japan's local governments have knowledge and expertise in areas such as city planning, transportation, the curbing of industrial pollution, environment management, garbage disposal, sewage and water supply, all of which can be highly useful to Chinese localities. Japan's localities are willing to transfer these skills and know-how, and their Chinese counterparts are embracing them. The Indian side neither courts such assistance nor do Japanese local officials have any such proposal for Indian cities.
A strong bilateral relationship in the future will not just be based on how much money a country doles out to another, but long-lasting friendly relations even in times of stresses and strains will be those whose foundations are based on solid ties at the grassroots and popular level. On this measure, China by far leads others in Asia in its relations with Japan.
While India may take some comfort in becoming the No 1 destination of Japanese yen loans, this does not necessarily signal a close and intimate relationship between the two.
But change, even if small and symbolic, does matter in international relations.
Purnendra Jain is a professor in the Center for Asian Studies at Australia's Adelaide University and president of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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`US forcing North Korea to increase nuclear deterrent'
LONDON: North Korea said on Wednesday the US stance in talks on its nuclear programme was forcing it to "further increase its nuclear deterrent force".
The state-run KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as dismissing as unfounded statements by US officials that six-way talks in Beijing last month had been a success.
"The recent talks could not yield any results due to the fundamental difference between the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea - North Korea) and the US in their stands," it added.
Washington repeated its demand at the Beijing talks for the "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" of the North's nuclear programme.
The North Korean spokesman called that a "demand that can be forced on criminals only..., embarrassing and disgusting to hear," the news agency said in a report monitored in London.
Instead, the United States "should commit itself to completely drop its hostile policy towards the DPRK in a verifiable and irreversible manner," it added.
The spokesman repeated Pyongyang's denial of US allegations that it is pursuing a uranium enrichment programme to make nuclear weapons.
"The far-fetched US assertion about this programme is intended to attack the DPRK under that pretext just as it did against Iraq," the news agency quoted him as saying.
"The reckless US stance only pushes the DPRK to further increase its nuclear deterrent force."
The impasse in talks "does nothing bad to the DPRK as it will have time to take more necessary steps with increased pace", the spokesman added.
US officials say they believe North Korea already possesses one or two nuclear weapons.
In October the United States said the North had admitted to developing nuclear arms. Pyongyang later ejected UN nuclear inspectors and removed inspectors' seals from a mothballed reactor.
North Korea is viewed by Washington as one of the states at the heart of a network responsible for the spread of nuclear weapons technology. --Reuters
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KCNA...
Kim Jong Il's Great Personality Praised
Pyongyang, March 10 (KCNA) -- Members of the State Academy Ensemble of the Ministry of Interior of Russia on a performance tour of the DPRK expressed deep impressions of the noble traits of leader Kim Jong Il as a great man who is possessed of distinguished political capacity, extraordinary leadership ability and warm love for the country and the nation. Igor Shustikov, deputy head of the ensemble, after visiting the Revolutionary Museum of the Ministry of Culture, said the literature and art of Korea have reached a high phase under the wise guidance of Kim Jong Il. He is a genius of art who has brought a great turn in the development of Korean literature and art, he added.
Actress Natalia Kurganskaya, who is well known to the Korean people for her successful presentation of the immortal famous song "Dear General, Where Are You", said she liked this song loved by the Korean people and its melody is immensely expressive as befits the most famous song.
She said she was struck with wonders when she learned that it was created by Kim Jong Il. Seeing the audience overwhelmed with deepest longing for him while hearing this song reverberating from the stage, I could keenly feel their boundless trust in their leader.
Anatoli Lazhuk, general director of dance, said there are many famous generals in the world but he had not heard a story that the head of state of a country went out to the front and planted a tree. Kim Jong Il inspected a unit of the Korean People's Army and planted a tree and I can hardly repress admiration at his ardent patriotism, he added.
The world has never seen such a peerless patriot loving the country and the nation as Kim Jong Il does, he said, adding: I was deeply impressed by his great personality.
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EU and NATO at Odds on Peacekeeping Duties
Mar 09, 2004
NATO and EU officials are set to meet on March 10 in Brussels to hash out details surrounding the EU's December takeover of peacekeeping operations in Bosnia. NATO has said it will turn over the peacekeeping reins to the EU, but it wants to maintain command and control of ongoing counterterrorism operations. This signals more discord within the European Union -- Italy and the United Kingdom seem to support NATO -- and highlights suspicions about the effectiveness of fledgling EU defense capabilities. The NATO pressure also reveals a lack of confidence and a desire to stunt the EU force's operational development.
Musharraf Cursed if He Does, Ousted if He Doesn't?
Mar 09, 2004
Despite the media hype and fresh military operations on both sides of Pakistan's northwestern border, Osama bin Laden and the top leadership of al Qaeda are nowhere to be found. Certain elements within the Pakistani state and society are known to sympathize with the group, and it is likely that certain rogue elements within the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment are helping al Qaeda members evade capture.
Colombia: Who Isn't Out To Kill Castano?
Mar 10, 2004
Someone is trying to kill Colombian paramilitary chief Carlos Castano -- and U.S. intelligence might unwittingly be involved.
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Who "Misled" Whom?
By Steven C. Baker
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 10, 2004
When listening to one of his filibusters, it's hard to tell just what Senator John Kerry really thinks about many things, including Iraq. President Bush recently highlighted the inconsistencies that are inherent in Senator Kerry's legislative record and campaign rhetoric as they relate to Iraq. Summarizing precisely what will become clear to most Americans in November, he said about Senator Kerry that he is "in favor of liberating Iraq, and opposed to it."
The President's retort came after months of relentless assaults from the prospective Democratic presidential nominee. For example, Kerry rarely misses an opportunity to eschew personal responsibility for his October 2002 vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq; a vote that ultimately enabled President Bush to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The liberal Democrat from Massachusetts maintains that he voted in favor of "the process the president promised." According to the Senator, there was a "right way" to hold Saddam Hussein accountable and there was a "wrong way" to do it, and he charges President Bush chose to do it the wrong way.
But anyone with access to the internet can observe that the senator's 2002 vote authorized President Bush "to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to: (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." Contrary to the Kerry's accusations, Public Law 107-243 had nothing to do with a "process" but everything to do with granting the president the authority to execute foreign policy "as he determines."
Furthermore, Secretary of State Colin Powell clarified the Bush Administration's Iraq policy (i.e. "the process" the administration would pursue vis-?-vis the Iraq problem) before the United States Senate during a hearing on September 26, 2002, concerning "U.S. Policy Toward Iraq." In fact, Senator Kerry's exchange with Secretary Powell should dispel the notion that the Senator was "misled" - at any time - by President Bush, or that any so-called promises were broken.
For instance, Secretary Powell informed Senator Kerry: "It's certainly the case that I am making, and the president is making, to our colleagues in the Security Council: Don't go down this road unless you are prepared to take action if there is continued violation of the kind that we have seen in the past with respect to a new resolution." Secretary Powell even went so far as to warn Kerry, "if for one reason or another the United Nations does not wish to take that action... then the president reserves the right to take the action with like-minded nations, just as was done in Kosovo." The Kerry's response: "Fair enough."
Then, in an attempt to assuage the senator's continued concerns regarding the Bush Administration's rationale for seeking a congressional authorization to use force in Iraq, Secretary Powell reiterated that President Bush would use the authority granted to him by Congress "to act as part of a multilateral effort, but also, in the event that the president sees that the UN will not be able to act and decides that it is in our interest to act with like-minded nations. And we believe there would be like-nations at the time..." Kerry's response: "I understand."
Senator Kerry also likes to claim that President Bush "misled" the American people about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction. But again, Secretary Powell's testimony on September 26, 2002, reveals the duplicity of this accusation. Secretary Powell told Senator Kerry: "I think the president has made it clear in all his conversations with members of Congress, in his presentations to the American people and his presentation to the United Nations that Iraq has to be disarmed. That is the major problem." The senator's response: "I agree. I agree completely."
Senator Kerry added: "I don't want any misinterpretation about my position. I really want none whatsoever. The issue, to me, is not whether Saddam Hussein should be held accountable. Of course he should. The issue is not whether or not these weapons are a threat. Yes, they are. The issue is: how do we go about this?"
At the time of this debate, Senator Kerry acknowledged that Saddam Hussein's WMDs and were "real" threats in "the capacity of those weapons to slide off to a surrogate terrorist group." Yet he fumed that the authorization to use force in Iraq - in order to protect the American people from these threats - was an "extraordinary broad overreach" in terms of the mandate that it provided the Commander-in-Chief. This is the most significant difference between candidate Kerry and President Bush; a distinction that the President emphasized recently: "It's a choice between an America that leads the world with strength and confidence or an America that is uncertain in the face of danger...Our opponents say they approve of bold action in the world, but only if no other government disagrees." The bottom line is that Kerry is willing to endanger the United States in deference to the "authority" of the United Nations and its preferred statecraft. In contrast, President Bush is determined to do what is necessary to confront America's enemies, with or without the UN's blessing.
In March 2003, President Bush commenced Operation Iraqi Freedom after years of Bill Clinton's feckless diplomacy. When it became clear that the United Nations would not act to enforce its own resolutions, including Resolution 1441, which granted Saddam Hussein "a final opportunity to comply" with his disarmament obligations, the President acted "with like-minded nations." This is exactly what Secretary Powell had forewarned five months earlier. This eventuality should not have surprised Senator Kerry, and if it did, which is the only conclusion he wishes to promote when he says that he was "misled" by the President, then he is not only unfit to be the Commander-in-Chief, but he's unfit to be a senator, as well.
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Deploying the full arsenal: Fighting hunger with biotechnology
Peter G Lacy. SAIS Review. Washington: Winter 2003. Vol. 23, Iss. 1; pg. 181, 22 pgs
Abstract (Article Summary)
One of the most important issues in the debate over biotechnology today is its potential to combat hunger in the developing world. This question is especially relevant as biotechnology struggles to find acceptance while countries in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world face famine. This paper reviews modern efforts to fight hunger and the projected future of the problem. What does biotechnology have to offer in response to this situation and what are the major obstacles to its deployment? The paper then explores ways to overcome these obstacles, arguing that while traditional efforts should be continued, biotechnology's potential to make a safe, meaningful contribution to fighting hunger is too significant to be overlooked.
Full Text (7450 words)
Copyright Johns Hopkins University Press Winter 2003
[Headnote]
One of the most important issues in the debate over biotechnology today is its potential to combat hunger in the developing world. This question is especially relevant as biotechnology struggles to find acceptance while countries in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world face famine. This paper reviews modern efforts to fight hunger and the projected future of the problem. What does biotechnology have to offer in response to this situation and what are the major obstacles to its deployment? The paper then explores ways to overcome these obstacles, arguing that while traditional efforts should be continued, biotechnology's potential to make a safe, meaningful contribution to fighting hunger is too significant to be overlooked.
Introduction
Among the many hotly contested issues in the debate over biotechnolor today is its potential to combat hun er in the developing world. This question is especially relevant as biotechnology struggles to find acceptance while countries in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world face famine. Proponents of biotechnology argue for the immense possibilities that it offers in the fight to end hunger, while opponents say that hunger can be combated successfully without dependence on what they consider dangerous genetically modified (GM) products. Anti-biotech activists often make the case that the inability to end hunger is due to failure in other areas. In a world awash with agricultural surpluses, they argue, we do not need biotechnology. Instead, we should redouble or refine our efforts to relieve distribution bottlenecks, open markets to exports from less developed countries (LDCs), increase investments in yield-enhancing hybridization techniques, boost foreign assistance budgets and medical aid programs, and focus on other areas where the record of success in combating hunger is characterized by less than satisfactory results or outright failure.
This paper reviews modern efforts to fight hunger and the projected future of the problem. It looks at what biotechnology has to offer and the debate surrounding it, and then explores ways to overcome the obstacles to realizing its potential to help wage a successful war on hunger. While traditional efforts should be continued, biotechnology's potential to make a safe, meaningful contribution to fighting hunger is too significant to be overlooked, and is in fact reason alone to embrace it.
Hunger Today in the Developing World
There are about 840 million undernourished people in the world today, about 30 percent of the world's population. Some 777 million of these people live in the developing world, and of these, 177 million are children under ten years of age.1 Hunger is linked to poverty, and vice versa. Hunger and malnourishment impede productivity, thereby dooming people to poverty. The poor, meanwhile, cannot afford food. Hunger, therefore, often becomes a selfperpetuating cycle.
More than two billion people worldwide suffer from malnutrition,2 meaning they live below the per capita daily caloric intake threshold of 2,350 calories that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines as necessary for an adequate diet. This manifests itself in many ways. For example, almost two billion people in the developing world suffer from iron deficiency, 140 million people experience iodine deficiency, and 140 million children experience vitamin A deficiency. Today, fiftyfour countries are estimated to fall below the 2,350 average minimum calorie level.3
Hunger and malnutrition are particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa. Three-fifths of Africa is unsuited to sustained yields in grain production and suffers from locust plagues and other scourges that restrain food production.4 Regional food production has dropped 23 percent in the past twenty-five years.- Today, 46.7 percent of the population lives on less than $1 per day, and 194 million people go to bed hungry, including 31 million children under five years of age, one in three of whom suffer from mental retardation, blindness, and other illnesses brought on by malnutrition.6 In 2002, drought, poor governance, and the ravages of HIV/AIDS meant that an estimated 14.4 million people in six southern African countries faced famine.
Hunger and Poverty in the Developing World
A Review of Modern-Day Efforts at Fighting Hunger
Despite the grim numbers, there has been significant success in the post-war era in combating hunger. The percentage of hungry people in the developing world has dropped by about one-half since 1970, from over 30 percent of 3 billion people in 1970 to 16 percent of 4.7 billion today.7 The world's undernourished population has also dropped in absolute terms, from 959 million to 777 million. Major victories have been achieved in China (where the number of hungry people has fallen by 74 million since 1990), Indonesia, Vietnam, Peru, and Nigeria. Across the developing world, the almost 30,000 children who die daily from hunger today is down from the 40,000 in 1985.8
This record of success is due to a variety of efforts carried out on many fronts. The most effective means of reducing hunger rates are general measures such as good governance, avoidance of war and political conflict, strong and stable economies, and social programs that protect the weakest in society. Specific efforts targeted at fighting hunger fall into five basic categories: technological advancements, foreign aid, expanded trade, financial investment, and multilateral cooperation.
Technological advancements
The Worldwatch Institute points out that while the output from fisheries and rangelands has increased five- and three-fold, respectively, since 1950, production in these two food systems has now hit a plateau. Future food growth must therefore come from the third system, croplands. Technological advances raised cropland productivity three-fold in the twentieth century, through irrigation, chemical fertilizers, hybridization, the development of shortstrawed wheat and rice varieties, and, most recently, genetics. The Green Revolution, launched in the 1960s and 1970s, used these techniques to double and triple the yields of rice, wheat, and corn in Asia, saving hundreds of millions of lives. Largely because of these advances, world grain yield per hectare increased from 1.06 tons to 2.73 tons per hectare between 1950 and 1998, and world grain consumption per capita rose from 247 kg to 319 kg over the same period.9 This increased food productivity has greatly contributed to the 50 percent drop in the percentage of undernourished people since 1970, and there is plenty of potential in LDCs for continued growth in yields through technological extension.
Foreign assistance
Overseas development assistance (ODA) was conceived after World War II as a means of helping LDCs to modernize and reduce hunger rates. In the early 1970s, the UN called on all Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to dedicate at least 0.7 percent of their GDP to ODA; very few countries, however, have met that threshold. Total global ODA today stands at about $53 billion, down from $69 billion ten years ago,10 reflecting the global trend in declining aid ratios in the post-Cold War era.ll In particular, the U.S. contribution to total OECD aid fell from 60 percent in the mid-1960s to only 13 percent by the mid-1990s,12 and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) now contribute more resources to aid in aggregate than the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Official aid targeted specifically at expanding LDC agriculture is experiencing an alarming decline. In 2001, USAID's funding for agriculture dropped to 11 percent of total U.S. aid, while agriculture represented only 10 percent of World Bank lending, the lowest level ever.13
After fifty years of experience, many donor countries are unwilling to keep pumping development aid into LDCs because they see no correlation between aid and economic growth, and thus limited impact on reducing hunger. Experts blame the failure of aid on flawed policies and applications in the North and South, including an overemphasis on industrialization at the expense of agriculture-based development, corruption in recipient countries, and the influence of strategic and commercial self-interest on donor country aid allocation. With many LDCs experiencing aid dependency and skyrocketing debt, there is much debate over alternatives to traditional aid methods, such as pursuing growth through partnerships or identifying grassroots development approaches better suited to local needs.
Trade liberalization
In the 1980s, efforts to fight hunger shifted away from government action to a reliance on open markets, with mixed results. A World Bank study found that countries that increased their share of exports and imports to GDP and reduced their tariff levels (e.g., China, Malaysia, Mexico, India, Thailand, Chile, Argentina, and Hungary) saw average economic growth rates increase from 2.9 percent in the 1970s to 5.0 percent in the 1990s.14 Hunger figures in these countries have seen some of the most dramatic declines anywhere. Those countries that decreased their share of trade to GDP and lowered their tariff rates the least (e.g., Burma, Pakistan, Honduras, and most sub-Saharan African countries) saw average economic growth rates drop from 3.3 percent in the 1970s to 1.4 percent in the 1990s. Hunger rates in these countries have remained some of the worst in the world.
However, embracing free trade is a necessary but insufficient element of national development strategies. Free trade is not an "easy" answer to the question of hunger either; its effectiveness depends on the underlying institutional and policy conditions in individual countries. To be successful, countries must support integration into the global economy with good governance measures such as putting the right institutions in place, reducing corruption, and improving infrastructure and public health systems.
Investment
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is another major tool to generate economic development and reduce hunger levels in LDCs. Industrialized countries in 2002 invested about $166 billion in LDCs through bonds, loans, and company ownership.ls An Institute for International Economics study of 183 FDI projects carried out in thirty countries since the mid-1980s found the majority (SS to 75 percent) to have a positive impact on host country income levels. The study suggested that most of the negative effects could be addressed through reforming host country policies and laws.16 Coupling these changes with new location incentives, rules of origin, and antidumping regulations in investing countries improves the chances for growth through FDI significantly.17
Microcredit is a particularly important tool in fighting hunger since it targets the rural poor, typically the poorest members of society. The Grameen Bank, which pioneered the concept in Bangladesh in 1976, has disbursed almost $3 billion in loans of less than $150 to individual entrepreneurs in LDCs. A typical borrower might be an impoverished mother who uses the funds to purchase a sewing machine, a cell phone, or even a cow-a small investment that enables her to produce a good or provide a service that meets a need in her community. One benchmark of the Bank's success is its impressive payback rate of over 90 percent. Today, Grameen Bank serves 2.35 million clients throughout Bangladesh, almost all women. The World Bank found that extreme poverty in these Bangladeshi villages where people had access to microcredit fell by 70 percent within five years. As of early 2002, there were about 30 million microcredit borrowers worldwide, 19 million of whom were once among the world's poorest people.18
Since well-structured FDI projects and microcredit can directly boost economic development in LDCs, they are some of the most successful tools for fighting hunger.
Multilateral cooperation
From the World Bank, to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), FAO, World Food Programme, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), the world's nations have demonstrated their intent to work together to confront poverty, hunger, and other problems that threaten global peace and stability. Several NGOs aiming to eliminate hunger have also emerged, including Bread for the World, Food First, and the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa. Numerous international conferences, most recently the World Food Summits in 1996 and 2002, have helped bring resources and attention to this continuing problem. All of this cooperation has had an inestimable effect, yet more is clearly required to eliminate hunger.
Future Projections of World Hunger
Hunger continues to be an immense foreign policy challenge, and will likely remain so for many years to come. At the 1996 FAO World Food Summit, 190 nations set a goal of reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half in twenty years. The follow-up Summit in June 2002 reviewed studies showing that the number of undernourished people is falling at an annual rate of about 6 million, well below the 22 million per year average required to meet the FAO's goal.19 In certain countries, the hunger problem will remain especially acute. India will have one-third of the world's undernourished children. Sixteen million African farm workers (i.e., food providers) are expected to die from HIV/AIDS in the next twenty years, and hunger rates in some sub-Saharan African countries are actually expected to rise.20
Projected population growth rates threaten to overwhelm future efforts to feed the world. The FAO expects world population will expand to as many as 10-12 billion by 2050, with the vast majority of the increase occurring in the developing world.21 Because of the expected population boom, the absolute numbers of people going hungry will increase, even though the percentage may continue to decline. Countries facing dramatic population increases include China, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Ethiopia.22 Water scarcity is also emerging as an important constraint. Water tables fell on every continent in the 1990s, with particularly serious declines in North America, North Africa, the Middle East, India, and China.23 Given modern agriculture's heavy reliance on irrigation, water scarcity will be a major obstacle to increasing crop yields.
There is widespread agreement that the world's demand for food will double by 2025. Some observers believe the world's farmers and food industries can, with appropriate changes to policies and resource allocation, meet this increased demand. But with cultivable grain area reaching a plateau, population exploding, and water scarcity constraining production, there is no doubt that feeding the world will be one of the most important challenges governments and policymakers face in the coming decades.
Opponents of biotechnology argue that if foreign aid has failed to end hunger, then ODA budgets must be increased and refocused on grassroots development; if trade liberalization has not solved the problem, then more is required, or it must go hand in hand with better governance; where investment has come up short, then it must be replaced by better-structured investment projects; and if multilateral cooperation has failed, then these efforts must be redoubled. If governments around the world addressed distribution bottlenecks, corruption, bad domestic policies, and internal strife, etc. vigorously and creatively, then hunger would be a thing of the past.
All of this may be true. But can we afford to wait for such ideal results, which have yet to, and may never, be realized? If current methods have failed to feed six billion, we must use all available tools-deploy the full arsenal-if we are somehow to feed almost twice that number. Agricultural biotechnology is one of the most promising new weapons for successfully combating hunger, yet widespread controversy has created major obstacles to its deployment. What is the nature of this controversy and how can the obstacles be overcome?
Biotechnology Products on the Market and in the Pipeline
Modern biotechnology is essentially the introduction into organisms-often across species boundaries-of specific genes with the intention of fostering desirable new traits. It is superior to conventional cross-breeding in that it allows for a quicker, more precise, and more reliable transfer of traits, and draws on a wider variety of genetic material.
Since the introduction of GM crops in the mid-1990s, their share of planted acreage has steadily increased. As of 2001, the total area planted with GM crops was 52.6 million hectares (1.3 percent of total cropland area). More than 99 percent of this planting is in the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina, and China, where more than five million farmers now grow GM crops.24 In all, sixteen countries currently grow GM crops and fifty varieties of GM foods are on the market today in the United States and elsewhere. Most traits commercialized so far address herbicide tolerance (77 percent of planted GM crops) and insect and disease resistance (20 percent). These products include herbicide- and insect-resistant cotton (Bt cotton), insect-resistant corn (Bt corn), herbicide-resistant soybeans, and fungal-resistant wheat. GM potatoes, tomatoes, sugar beets, and apples are also being marketed.
The United States is by far the leader in GM production, growing 70 percent of all GM crops. Two-thirds of food products on U.S. shelves contain GM ingredients, and one-third of all corn, three-fourths of all soybeans, and 40 percent of cotton are now GM.25 Herbicide-tolerant crops have reduced the need to plow, thus decreasing soil erosion (and resulting in less carbon dioxide escaping into the air). Pesticide use in the United States has decreased by 46 million pounds since the introduction of insect-resistant GM technology in 1995,26 while corn and cotton yields have increased by 5-10 percent. Because of lower chemical and other input costs, U.S. farmers improved their bottom line by $1.4 billion in 2001 using GM corn, cotton, canola, and soybeans.27
Since today's biotechnology products serve largely to boost production in developed countries, they increase total supplies and lower world market prices. For the moment, therefore, biotechnology is not benefiting income levels or efforts to fight hunger in LDCs. Only once scientists and policymakers adapt biotechnology to enhance local production and target specific needs in LDCs, can it begin to have a real impact on hunger.
Currently available GM products could be leveraged on a case-by-case basis to enhance some crop yields in LDCs. But the coming "second generation" of GM crops and foods is of even greater relevance and may provide significant benefits for poor farmers. "Golden rice"-rice genetically modified to contain high levels of Vitamin A-should be commercialized in Asia by 2006 and is expected to make a significant contribution to fighting Vitamin A deficiency, a major cause of blindness and death. The company that developed golden rice, Syngenta Corp., has offered it royalty-free to the world's poorest farmers. Unfortunately, concerns over biotechnology have led some Asian rice growers to postpone plans to plant golden rice. If fully adopted, golden rice could have a major impact on malnutrition in Asia, as rice is already a staple, and rice dependence is expected to double by 2025.28 Other products five to ten years down the pipeline include crops designed to tolerate cold, drought, and salt, and plants that can flourish in acidic soil.
Some LDCs are experimenting to produce foods that will help target their specific hunger problems. The Philippines is developing GM rice that resists bacterial blithe,29 while India is developing GM groundnuts that survive Indian peanut clump virus, as well as GM pigeon peas, chickpeas, and sorghum.30 China-a country with 33 million acres of saline soil-has experimented with salt-resistant tomatoes, soybeans, and rice.31 Kenya is developing virus- and drought-resistant sweet potatoes, and in South Africa, Bt cotton has already helped poor farmers reap financial gains due to higher yields.12
In the realm of pharmaceutical biotechnology, private sector researchers are developing about 400 plant-based drugs that promise significant benefits for fighting health problems and combating hunger. These include allergy-free soybeans, cancer-fighting tomatoes and tomatoes with vaccines for Hepatitis B and diarrhea, bananas with vaccines against diarrhea and cholera, spinach with rabies vaccine, a corn that treats cystic fibrosis, and potatoes, pearl millet, corn, cassava, and other vegetables with enhanced nutritional value. These products are also expected to become available in five to ten years and, because of their cost benefits as domestically-grown medical alternatives, they could have a significant impact on health care in LDCs.
The Debate over Biotechnology
Despite its demonstrated benefits and immense potential, biotechnology has met strong resistance in many countries and from many quarters. Concerns center around its perceived threats to human health and the environment, the role of the corporations involved in its production, and ethical and moral considerations connected with its creation. Myths and misinformation fuel many of these concerns. The following discussion attempts to respond to these concerns, and assess the origins and ramifications of anti-biotechnology resistance.
Dangers to health
Concerns over the health effects of biotechnology are widespread. One of the most common is that genetic material introduced into new foods could cause unexpected allergic reactions in consumers. Yet, regulatory authorities worldwide pay strict attention to allergenicity when assessing the safety of foods produced using biotechnology. Since GM foods first hit the market in 1996, there have been no known cases of allergy, illness, or death from consuming GM products. In the mid-1990s, regulatory action forestalled the introduction of genes from Brazil nuts into other foodstuffs on the possibility they would cause allergic reactions. In 2000, a number of corn products were pulled from shelves when they were found to contain GM StarLink corn intended only for cattle feed, producing much controversy but no apparent ill effects in terms of human health.33
The fact is that more safety tests have been conducted on GM foods than on any food products in history. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Agriculture have approved every GM food available on the U.S. market today, and a broad, international consensus has emerged on the safety of GM crops for human consumption and the environment. This consensus includes the OECD, World Food Programme, World Health Organization, Third World Academy of Science, American Medical Association, American Dietetic Association, Swiss Association for Research and Nutrition, American Society of Toxicology, six national science academies, and nineteen Nobel Prize-winning scientists.34 At the 2002 World Food Summit, the FAO came out in support of biotechnology products as being as safe for human consumption as their traditional counterparts.31 Even the European Commission recently declared that "the use of more precise technology and greater scrutiny probably make GM foods even safer than conventional plants and foods."36
Nevertheless, since the potential for human health risks exists, continued regulatory scrutiny will be necessary to ensure that only those products suitable for human consumption enter the market.
Environmental damage
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and other NGOs have warned about the possible emergence of environmentally hazardous "superweeds," new plants that draw unexpectedly on traits introduced through biotechnology. This is essentially a matter of gene flow, a phenomenon common in agricultural production, and one which scientists have experience at containing. Some critics worry about the possible side effects of GM crops on other species, such as the monarch butterfly; however, any negative impact on such species remains, for now, theoretical. What we do know is that examination of environmental impacts is taking place in every country that produces or consumes biotechnology, as well as through several of the international bodies mentioned above, significantly enhancing the risk control process. As with the question of risks to human health, the scrutiny of environmental impacts should, and in all likelihood will, remain intense.
The risks of biotechnology for both human health and the environment are being exaggerated. On the other hand, the proven and potential environmental benefits of biotechnology must be recognized, particularly the reduced reliance on dangerous chemicals that it makes possible. In Australia, for example, the use of Bt cotton has cut the country's pesticide use in half.37 In South America, biotechnology has the potential to help preserve rainforests by increasing yields on existing farmland, lessening the need to clear more land by felling trees.
Corporate control
Monsanto and other leading food science companies led the charge to develop agricultural biotechnology. Both these companies and their critics now recognize the error of introducing biotechnology to the public in ways that benefited corporate bottom lines more than they addressed consumer needs. This did not help the acceptance of a controversial technology. Company requirements that farmers re-purchase new GM seeds yearly, instead of allowing for replanting in the time-honored tradition, have also raised concerns over corporate control, as have plans to insert genes that would prevent such replanting (the so-called "terminator genes"). In addition, some companies are engaging in a mad rush to patent plant gene strains around the world, enraging LDC farmers who developed these strains over generations and who consider them "public goods."
Clearly, corporate behavior has contributed to the resistance these products have encountered, and companies are now trying to repair their image. Syngenta's offer to provide golden rice royalty-free to LDCs is one example, as is Monsanto's decision to make its sequence of the rice genome freely available (LDC research facilities should eventually benefit from this access). Biotechnology's proponents expect the pending "second generation" of GM products, with its potential for more direct benefits to farmers in LDCs and consumers everywhere, to improve the technology's acceptance.
Biotechnology is also seen as a production tool that, because of economies of scale and purchase costs, benefits only corporate and other large-scale producers. However, evidence is beginning to show that it can deliver benefits to smaller farm operations as well. For example, a study on the adoption of Bt cotton in South Africa concluded that "both large-scale and small-scale farmers enjoy financial benefits due to higher yields and despite higher seed CoStS."38
Ethical objections
Some opponents object to biotechnology on moral or ethical grounds, saying that human beings should not interfere with the "natural order" by modifying genes or crossing species boundaries. However, humanity has always made use of science in order to improve living conditions. Traditional plant and animal improvement processes such as cross-breeding and hybridization are obvious examples, and genetic engineering is essentially a refinement of such methods.39
Reflecting these various concerns, resistance to biotechnology is at a high level today, particularly in Europe. Fueled by pressure from the environmental lobby and other NGO sources, as well as genuine consumer preferences for conventional foodstuffs, Europeans have opposed the introduction of GM products into their food system. Although the European Union does not officially ban foods with GM ingredients, a de facto ban on approvals of GM products has existed in the EU since 1998.
There are recent signs, however, of a shift to a more accommodating European position. The European Commission in 2002 cited eighty-one separate studies supporting the view that GM foods on the market are as safe to eat as their traditional counterparts.40 Spain, France, and Portugal are currently growing GM crops, and Spain has reported benefits from Bt corn that include environmental improvements, higher yields, better quality, and increased income.41 In addition, dozens of European companies are developing products like GM beans, grapes, wheat, and bananas-but for now they are intended only for sale in LDCs or the United States, not in Europe.42 Finally, the new European Food Safety Authority is expected to lift the de facto ban in the EU.
Other industrialized countries have been slow to accept biotechnology as well. Switzerland and New Zealand remain biotechfree today, the latter taking a long look before approving any GM products for market entry. This is also the approach in some Asian countries. The resistance of some industrialized countries to biotechnology has even begun to dampen U.S. farmers' enthusiasm for planting GM crops and stifle the development of new products by biotechnology companies.
However, it is EU resistance to biotechnology that is the major obstacle to poor countries' development and use of biotechnology. Africa needs biotechnology more than any other region, yet the EU's position has made some African countries reluctant to take up this technology. Last year, Zambian President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa refused 17,000 tons of U.S. grain intended to forestall the famine facing 2.9 million Zambians out of fear the country would lose its export markets in Europe. Four other African countries facing similar food shortages-Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho-accepted GM corn, but only if the grain was first milled into flour (to prevent it from affecting the region's exports). European resistance could also affect Africa's livestock exports if they become GM-fed.
In some cases, concerns about the risks associated with biotechnology are preventing the establishment of national regulatory regimes that could facilitate the commercial importation or development of biotechnology in LDCs. In others, they are leading to the establishment of regimes that interfere with the technology's development and importation. China, for instance, recently reversed course on biotechnology and imposed restrictions on domestic varieties of GM rice, soybeans, vegetables, and tobacco, while requiring stringent safety tests and labeling for GM imports. Critics consider these constraints protectionist measures designed to shield China's huge domestic farming sector from further pain while it restructures to meet its WTO commitments.43
Pressure from NGOs also contributes to LDC resistance to biotechnology. The environmental lobby has targeted LDCs in a $175 million campaign to convince them to reject biotechnology.44 Greenpeace warned the Philippine government that there would be "millions of dead bodies and disease" if it accepted GM foods.41 The Sierra Club has called for a moratorium on all planting of GM crops,46 while the Earth Liberation Front has caused $40 million of damage to GM farms and laboratories around the world.47 Former Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore and others have questioned the honesty of the environmental lobby's arguments on biotechnology, denouncing them as scare tactics designed to raise funds in order to stay solvent.
Finally, some individual anti-GM activists play a prominent role internationally. India's Vandana Shiva opposes all forms of high-tech agriculture, which she says will destroy the land and "traditional farming." The ecologist-activist has opposed golden rice, attempted to block U.S. food donations to Indian cyclone victims that contained GM ingredients, and argued in favor of organic production as the "wave of the future."48 Partly as a result of Shiva's activism, India-a country with significant hunger challenges-has banned the domestic marketing of all GM food crops for supposed human health and rural employment reasons.49
Overcoming Obstacles to the Use of Biotechnology
Enough opposition to biotechnology could stall or defeat breakthroughs in important areas. Opposition could also result in GM products, once developed, going unused, left, as the saying goes, to "wither on the vine." Indeed, many approved GM foods are going unplanted in industrialized countries for fear of attracting NGO-inspired demonstrations or violence. For LDCs, the story is the same. Out of fifty-four African countries, only South Africa and Kenya have plans for developing GM products, and these plans are small scale and limited. The restricted availability and adoption of biotechnology in LDCs is due to several factors, including:
* Fear of lost export sales to Europe and elsewhere
* Intellectual property rights constraints
* Health and environmental concerns
* Inadequate scientific and research capacity in LDCs
* Absence of government regulatory mechanisms to oversee testing and regulation
* A general inability to assess biotechnology's potential and risks
These obstacles must be overcome before LDCs can take full advantage of biotechnology in addressing their nutrition needs. Let us review each in turn.
When coupled with appropriate domestic policies, trade liberalization can be one of the most important engines for growth in LDCs. Two-thirds of the developing world labor force is employed in agriculture. In Africa, rural small-holder farms provide over 80 percent of agricultural exports.50 It follows, therefore, that developing the export potential of LDC agriculture can generate significant growth and combat hunger. However, European export subsidies deny LDC producers their due market share, and EU opposition to GM products creates negative incentives for LDCs to invest in production-enhancing biotechnology and the supporting regulatory mechanisms, with disastrous consequences for economic growth and hunger levels in LDCs.
Many believe that if today's large food surpluses could find their way overseas, we could adequately feed the world. But, while channeling those surpluses to LDCs would feed people today, it would also undercut local agricultural sectors. Such a strategy would, in fact, have a dampening effect on efforts to raise local agricultural production, which is one of the best long-term solutions to hunger. Biotechnology can deliver these much needed production increases, and help people help themselves to break out of the poverty-hunger cycle. Although only four LDCs worldwide currently grow GM products, the initial results for productivity are positive (e.g., South Africa).
One way to resolve the biotechnology standoff is to establish a global system for setting safety standards that rely on scientific evaluation and risk assessment procedures. Such a system could include a labeling regime that facilitates the acceptance of uniform, science-based standards and common regulatory procedures. The ongoing negotiations in the WTO Doha Round are not the appropriate avenue for addressing this issue. Instead, efforts must be made to establish such a global system through alternative fora like the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which sets international food standards and guidelines. In the meantime, the concept of "substantial equivalence," in which GM products are tested to determine whether they are substantially different from their traditional counterparts, is already employed in many countries and can help smooth the way for approval in new countries. Mutual recognition agreements, in which countries agree to recognize each other's approval processes, can also help facilitate trade in GM products today.
Second, the international community needs to develop a shared vision of the role of GM crops that gets beyond current intellectual property rights issues such as the corporate patenting of gene strains. Consideration should be given to creating an international commission, perhaps under UN auspices, that could promote a broad public consultation that balances the corporate need to pursue profits with local needs in the battle against hunger.
As for the risks to human health and the environment, strengthened regulatory scrutiny and transparency will be essential to achieving broader public acceptance of GM products in Europe, LDCs, and elsewhere. A case-by-case assessment of risks will be required, with due attention paid to the effects on human health and the environment in each country concerned. As David Victor and Ford Runge have noted, "A failure in regulating biotechnology anywhere will harm the industry everywhere."51
Although private sector investment in biotechnology rose by $100 billion in the 1990s, greater governmental investment in research will be necessary to disperse the benefits of biotechnology more widely. In particular, increased U.S. government support for foreign agricultural research offers the best potential to raise income and lower hunger levels directly in the developing world. Yet governments in the developing world must invest more as well. In 1995, for every $100 of agricultural GDP, developed countries invested $2.70 in public research and development, while LDCs invested only $0.62.12 Public-private partnerships can help bridge this investment gap. A promising example is the case of South Africa, where the government is cooperating with industry on a $30 million research project to develop drought-resistant crops by 2003.53
LDCs are not currently in a position to invest substantially in the science of biotechnology, nor are they capable of creating the necessary regulatory institutions to govern its adoption and application. They must therefore work with developed countries not only to build their scientific capacity, but also to exchange information that will enhance their ability to construct and enforce regulations and institutions that will facilitate biotechnology's adoption in their own countries.
Last, any assessment of biotechnology's potential and risks in LDCs must take into account the specific and varied needs, conditions, and circumstances of these countries if hunger is to be eliminated there. This means that governments, businesses, and scientists operating in places such as New Delhi, Beijing, Capetown, and Sao Paolo should have a hand in their development. At the very least, it is essential for LDCs to stay abreast of the latest developments in biotechnology in order to make informed decisions.
Biotechnology's Role in Combating Hunger
The need to increase future food production is clear. Over 840 million people go hungry today, and hundreds of millions are expected to go hungry in the decades to come. With cultivable grain area plateauing, feeding tomorrow's global community will require making a choice: either we harvest remaining forests and plant crops on available marginal lands, or we find ways of boosting the yields of existing croplands in both developed and developing countries in ways that circumvent impending water shortages. These demands and constraints highlight biotechnology's potential.
World leaders agree on the production-enhancing benefits of biotechnology. FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf has said that since global food production must increase by 60 percent in coming decades, it makes sense to take advantage of the productivity benefits that biotechnology offers.54 To get around the current stalemate, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Director of UNDP, has called for the development of a "third way," one that involves strengthened measures to address the risks associated with biotechnology, accompanied by a focus on harnessing its potential to tackle the pressing need to improve the productivity of poor farmers.ss
There is no time to waste. Half of the world's poorest people live in uncertain climates, dependent on staple crops such as cassava and sorghum for survival.56 Africa in particular requires advances in food technology-and fast. Most Africans farm small plots of less than four acres, cultivating crops such as corn, sweet potatoes, cassava, and millet. Few have the capital to invest in agricultural improvements, and their harvests are vulnerable to the ravages of plant and animal diseases, pests, soil toxicity, floods, and droughts.57 These are some of the very problems that bio-engineers are tackling in today's laboratories.
However, biotechnology should not be considered a panacea, but rather a complement to traditional agricultural methods. Farmers in Africa and other LDCs could benefit from the application, where feasible, of existing herbicide-tolerant, disease-resistant, and insect-resistant crops (managing pest infestations in poor rural areas for example is a major problem), and particularly the promising new drought-, cold-, and saline-tolerant crops under development (one-fourth of the Earth's landmass is saline soil). From drought-resistant sweet potatoes in Africa to salt-resistant crops in China to golden rice in Indonesia and Bangladesh, biotechnology must be used to target specific problems in specific locations.
Deploying the Full Arsenal
The question of accepting or banning products made using modern biotechnology is an important issue that cuts across social, economic, and political boundaries. The battle lines in the debate are being drawn, and opponents of biotechnology are out in force. Fortunately, GM products have been well received in many countries. Recent polls show that 71 percent of U.S. consumers are willing to embrace products with GM ingredients.51 And a poll of 600 consumers in Thailand, China, and the Philippines suggests that most Asians do not mind buying or eating GM products either.59 The battle for public acceptance must be fought principally in Europe and increasingly in Africa and other developing countries that are concerned about their trade relations.
Developing countries need many things: improvements in infrastructure, credit for small farmers, development that targets women, stable societies and economic policies, anti-corruption policies, medical assistance, technology transfers, and greater and better aid, trade, investment, and cooperation from developed countries. Eradicating hunger will require fighting on all of these fronts simultaneously.
Agricultural biotechnology is an essential tool with immense potential to help developing countries improve crop yields and productivity, safely provide a broader array of more nutritious foods at lower costs, reduce harvest losses, and create higher and more stable rural incomes. And it can do this while also using less land and less water in production, improving pest control methods, reducing dependence on chemical fertilizers, and providing other environmental benefits. With such a powerful array of proven and potential benefits, biotechnology, if deployed, could lead to an agricultural revolution more dramatic than the Green Revolution, and potentially make the difference in waging a successful war on hunger.
[Footnote]
Notes
[Footnote]
1 Bread for the World, Hunger Basics,
2 John Mason, "Hunger Reduction Slows to Dismal Level," Financial Times, 16 October 2002.
3 Bread for the World, Hunger Basics.
4 Anthony J. Covington, "What's So Terribly Wrong with GM Food?" Asia Intelligence Wire, 18 September 2002.
5 Bread for the World, Hunger 2001: Foreign Aid to End Hunger (Silver Spring, MD: Bread for the Word Institute, 2002).
6 Sebastian Mallaby, "Phoney Fears Fan Famine in Africa," East African Standard, 16 September 2002.
7 FAO, The State of Food and Agriculture 2000 (Rome: FAO, 2000), 306.
8 RESULTS, Global Action, Worksheet, October 2002.
9 Lester R. Brown, "Feeding Nine Billion," in State of the World 1999 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 115-132.
[Footnote]
10 Worldwatch Institute, State of the World: More Connected, Less Stable, Press Release, January 2002, < http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/0200 10.html> (11 December 2002).
11 Anders Narman, "Reconstructing Development Assistance and Co-operation," in David Simon and Anders Narman, eds., Development as Theory and Practice (Harlow, England: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), 171.
12 Ibid., 159.
13 Bread for the World, Hunger 2002: A Future with Hope (Silver Spring, MD: Bread for the World Institute, 2002), 83.
14 David Dollar, "Globalization, Inequality and Poverty Since 1980," World Bank, September, 2001.
15 Institute of International Finance, as quoted in "A Helping Hand," The Globalist, 27 November 2001.
16 Theodore H. Moran, Foreign Direct Investment and Development: The New Policy Agenda for Developing Countries and Economies in Transition (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1998), 24-25.
17 Ibid., 163-168.
[Footnote]
18 RESULTS, "Microcredit,"
19 Jacques Diouf, Press Release, United Nations FAO, 21 January 1999.
20 Bread for the World, Hunger 2002, 71-91.
21 FAO, The State of Food and Agriculture 2000, Rome 2000.
22 The UN expects China's population to grow from 1.3 billion today to 1.6 billion by 2050; India's from 1 billion to 1.6 billion; Pakistan's from 148 million to 357 million; Nigeria's from 122 million to 339 million; and Ethiopia's from 62 million to 213 million. Iran, Indonesia, Sudan, Egypt, and Bangladesh will also likely have trouble feeding their growing populations in coming decades.
23 Brown, 120.
24 Joel I. Cohen and Robert Paarlberg, "Explaining Restricted Approval and Availability of GM Crops in Developing Countries," AgBiotechNet 4 (October 2002).
[Footnote]
25 "Why Africans Are Starving," Wall Street Journal, 17 September 2002.
26 Judy Aita, "Developing Countries Should Adopt Biotech, UN Panelists Urge," U.S. Department of State International Information Programs, 24 September 2002.
27 Rachel Melcer, "Altered Crops Have Farmers Walking a Tightrope of Acceptance," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 25 September 2002.
28 Reuters, "Asian Farmers Seen Sowing `Super Rice' in 2-3 Years," 19 September 2002.
[Footnote]
29 Carmelo Q. Francisco, "Philrice to Commercialize Genetically Modified Rice," Business World, 16 September 2002.
30 "GM Peanut a Field Trial Stage," Hindu Business Line, 14 September 2002.
31 "China Cultivates Salt-Resistant Cloned Tomatoes, Rice, Soya, Poplars," Asia Intelligence Wire, 15 September 2002.
31 Johann Kirsten and Marnus Gouse, "Bt Cotton in South Africa: Adoption and Impact on Farm Incomes Amongst Small- and Large-Scale Farmers," ISB News Report, October 2002.
33 New Scientist, "Much Ado About Nothing," 18 May 2002.
34 Marc Morano, "Green Activist Accused of Promoting Famine Wins Time Magazine Honor," CNSNews.com, 17 September 2002,
[Footnote]
31 "Irrational Fears of Frankenfood," Las Vegas Review-journal, 16 September 2002. 36 Francisco, "Philrice to Commercialize Genetically Modified Rice."
37 Denis Dutton, "Fear-Mongering Greens Doom Children to Death," New Zealand Herald, 28 September 2002.
38 Johann Kirsten and Marnus Gouse, "Bt Cotton in South Africa: Adoption and Impact on Farm Incomes Amongst Small- and Large-Scale Farmers."
39 International Policy Council on Agriculture, Food and Trade, Plant Biotechnology and Global Food Production: Trade Implications, Position Paper No. 7 (Washington, DC, October, 1998).
40 James Morris, "Biotech Food Can Save Millions of African Lives," International Herald Tribune, 19 September 2002.
41 "The Farm Level Impact of Using Bt Maize in Spain," Brookes West Consultancy, 27 September 2002
42 Brandon Mitchener, "Politics Hamstring Europe's FDA," Wall Street Journal, 17 September 2002.
43 Joseph Kahn, "The Science and Politics of Super Rice," New York Times, 22 October 2002.
[Footnote]
44 "Why Africans Are Starving," Wall Street Journal. as Murray Lyons, September 19, 2002.
46 Why Africans Are Starving," Wall StreetJournal.
47 Michael Rodemeyer, "Ratcheting Down the Debate Over Biotechnology," Newark Star-Ledger, 24 June 2001.
48 Norman Borlaug estimates that organic production could feed only about 4 billion out of today's 6.1 billion people.
49 Morano, "Green Activist Accused of Promoting Famine Wins Time Magazine Honor."
[Footnote]
50 Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa,
51 David G. Victor and C. Ford Runge, "Farming the Genetic Frontier," Foreign Affairs 81, no. 3 (May/June 2002).
-12 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, "Making New Technologies Work for Human Development," United Nations Development Programme, 6 September 2002. -13 Ibid.
-14 Jacques Diouf, Press Release, FAO, 21 January 1999.
551 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr,"Making New Technologies Work for Human Development."
56 Ibid.
57 Bread for the World, Hunger 2002, 81.
58 Institute of Food Technologies, "Survey: Consumers Support Food Biotechnology," 30 September 2002.
-19 Jason Leow, "Asians Are Game to Try GM Foods," Straits Times (Singapore), 22 September 2002.
[Author Affiliation]
Peter G. Lacy is the former Executive Director of the International Policy Council on Agriculture, Food, and Trade, a think tank in Washington, DC. Mr. Lacy is currently Director of International Research at Bryant Christie Inc., a consultancy headquartered in Seattle. He is an alumnus of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
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