/editorial

Un lobby israélien en Inde ?

Missed opportunity on Gaza -

The Hindu
▻http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial

Updated: July 24, 2014 00:34 IST

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s statement on the ongoing Gaza crisis during a discussion in the Rajya Sabha is an exercise in political correctness. By stating that New Delhi’s stance on the Israel-Palestine issue has not shifted, and going ahead with a pro forma denunciation of violence, Ms. Swaraj has missed a golden opportunity to impress upon a domestic audience that the Modi administration is pursuing a fresh statesman-like approach on a complex global issue. Besides, she may have also let down a wider international audience, especially in West Asia and North Africa, which has been looking for a stronger and principled Indian voice to help resolve the spiralling crisis.

The new government seems to have missed the full import of the Gaza situation by choosing to espouse a minimalist position of equidistance between the Palestinians and Israel. It is important to recognise that the Israel-Palestinian issue is the core of instability in West Asia — a region that is the lifeline of India’s economy because of its huge oil and gas reserves. A long-term interest in energy security alone demands that New Delhi — a friend of both Israel and the Palestinians — should leverage its unique position to persuade both sides to revive peace talks. There is reason to believe that greater diplomatic activism by India on the Israel-Palestine issue would be welcomed by the emerging powers as well as the global south, which is looking for new leaders on the global stage. This is especially true at a time when the international system is mutating from the unipolarity of the 1990s to the emergence of a multipolar world in the second decade of the twenty-first century. However, in taking a forthright position, the government has to contend with a powerful pro-Israel constituency in India. Citing India’s close military relationship with Israel, Tel Aviv’s friends construe any position taken by India that is even mildly critical of Israel as a threat to national security. Nothing could be farther from the truth, for Indo-Israel military ties are premised on interdependence, with New Delhi providing a huge market for military products as well as joint ventures, which Israel would find hard to give up. In navigating a dense grey zone, Ms. Swaraj could have followed the lead provided by BRICS, which has at the Fortaleza fully appreciated that the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fundamental to sustainable peace in West Asia. The new grouping has also unambiguously stressed that dialogue must be resumed, which would result in a two-state solution based on the lines of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state.

Les grands pays émergents se dotent d’un outil financier à côté de la Banque mondiale et du FMI

BRICS for a new bank - The Hindu
▻http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/brics-for-a-new-bank/article6221912.ece?homepage=true

What might have been dismissed as an impossibility just five years ago is now a reality. Defying sceptics and critics, five countries that between them account for 40 per cent of the world’s population and 20 per cent of its GDP have signed an agreement to create a development bank to provide financial assistance to developing countries and emerging market economies, mainly for infrastructure projects. As its name implies, the agreement for the New Development Bank, signed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa at their sixth BRICS summit in Brazil, signals the start of a new global financial order that aims to be more inclusive than the Western-focussed International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The $100 billion bank will have an initial subscribed capital of $50 billion. The five members managed to iron out their differences to agree on an equal share for each in the bank, so no one member dominates the institution. India and South Africa both wanted to host the headquarters. The eventual decision to locate it in Shanghai was an acknowledgement that China’s is the biggest economy in the grouping. The Bank will also have an African Regional Centre in South Africa and India will assume the first presidency of the bank. First mooted at the fourth BRICS summit in New Delhi in 2012, the Bank will certainly have an impact on the existing arrangements put in place by the Bretton Woods institutions, and will give more say to smaller countries. But BRICS also appears to recognise that the NDB cannot replace the IMF, the World Bank or the regional development banks. Thus, the Fortaleza Declaration describes the NDB as a “supplement to the efforts of multilateral and regional financial institutions for global development.”

A second financial instrument, the Contingency Reserve Arrangement of $100 billion, has been set up to help developing economies tide over “short-term liquidity pressures, promote further BRICS cooperation, strengthen the global financial safety net and complement existing international arrangements.” In its sixth year, BRICS has a new confidence, and it was more than apparent at the summit. The only world grouping that is not region, security or trade-based, its members have come together with the determination to create a more multilateral global order. China and Russia have backed the other three BRICS members on the issue of UN reform and Security Council expansion. But the grouping needs to find a stronger political voice. The Declaration came in the midst of the bombardment, even if under grave provocation, of Gaza by Israel, but it is silent on this while calling for Israel and Palestine to resume negotiations towards a two-state solution.

L’Inde devient plus sensible au traitement de ses ressortissants émigrés en Occident et au Moyen Orient au moment
où plusieurs pétro-monarchies durcissent leur politique d’immigration.

Protecting India’s migrants - The Hindu
▻http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/protecting-indias-migrants/article4647773.ece

Human trafficking for labour exploitation is a global concern. In West Asia and the Gulf Cooperation Council region, it is a particular worry given the scale of labour migration and the prevalence of opaque and exploitative regulatory systems. A new report on forced labour and human trafficking in the Middle East, based on research sponsored by the International Labour Organisation, attempts to quantify the scale of the problem. Not surprisingly, it makes for some disturbing reading. The report puts the estimated number of victims of forced labour in the region at 6,00,000. These numbers have a huge resonance for India, which accounts for a significant chunk of the labour force there. What emerges is the close relationship between human trafficking and labour migration, and how failures in labour migration governance systems are allowing trafficking to persist. In the region’s capital-rich economies, the rapid development of infrastructure has relied on the use of short-term labour immigration. An estimated 14 million migrant workers, originating mostly in Asia and Africa, were in the GCC states between 1975 and 2010.

L’attentat du 1e février à Ankara devrait pousser le Premier ministre turc à revoir sa politique exérieure.

The Hindu : Opinion / Editorial : Erdogan should talk Turkey
▻http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/erdogan-should-talk-turkey/article4400728.ece

The facts about the bombing may seem unproblematic, but Turkey’s domestic and international policies cause bitter resentment among several sections of its 74 million population, and any one of several groups could have carried out the recent attack, for a variety of reasons. Hardline leftist groups have long opposed Turkey’s collaboration with NATO — the country is a member of the Atlantic alliance — and have gained fresh resolve from Ankara’s help for Washington in the Syrian crisis; Turkey, which favours foreign intervention in Syria, hosts NATO troops and a Patriot missile system near the Turkish-Syrian border. Most of Turkey’s Alawite community, however, are strong supporters of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, who belongs to the ruling Alawite minority there. Yet another sect, Turkish Alevis, are disproportionately represented among the country’s Marxist factions. In addition, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), led by Abdullah Öcalan, who is imprisoned on an island off Istanbul since 1999, has been involved in a 40-year war for independence that has cost 40,000 lives so far. Istanbul’s security services have been talking with Mr. Öcalan since December 2012, but a political settlement looks as remote as ever. The sooner Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an responds to the justifiable disquiet that Turkey’s domestic policies and international realpolitik generates among substantial sections of its people, the better the prospects of lasting peace in the country and region.