JAPAN

JAPAN
Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo, Nov. 25: The recent passage of a U.S. bill to create a Homeland Security Department signifies a major government reorganization.
The enactment comes less than six months after President Bush proposed the antiterrorism department in June. The speed at which the White House and Congress created the new law was a response to growing calls among the U.S. public for efforts by the Bush administration to ensure national security first and foremost in the wake of last year's Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Turf battles
The question is whether the Homeland Security Department will be able to perform its roles as efficiently and effectively as anticipated. To address such concerns, the Bush administration must ensure that officials at the new department do not engage in bureaucratic turf battles and that they keep the lines of communication among them open. The Homeland Security Department will come to naught if it is reduced to a hodgepodge of federal bureaus.
ARGENTINA
Clarin, Buenos Aires, Nov. 26: Intolerance is one of the major causes of wars, destruction and death in the world, and once again it has brought about a bloodbath. This time, Nigeria has been the scene of violence after fanaticism unleashed a spasm of bloodletting that has left that African country awash in pain.
As often occurs in a climate of intolerance, almost anything can be the trigger for such violence. In Nigeria, it seems to have begun with questioning by some sectors of Muslim groups about the Miss World beauty contest to be held in that African country.
Barbaric incomprehension
Intolerance, whether it be racial, ethnical, ideological or religious in nature, continues to cause thousands of deaths. In an era of globalization ... barbaric incomprehension and the rejection of any kinds of differences continue to sow seeds of destruction.
BRITAIN
The Guardian, London, Nov. 25: The beating of battledrums can be heard in the world's biggest finance ministries. Yet while George Bush marches slowly but surely to battle with Iraq there is still little debate on the economic consequences of war and peace.
This is not to say that voices have not warned of the possible economic repercussions. But missing is a public study of the costs of a military conflict in Iraq and the reconstruction efforts required to rebuild the nation after Saddam has gone. Into this breach has stepped William Nordhaus, a former economic adviser to Jimmy Carter and a professor at Yale. His comprehensive analysis of the cost of war, found in summary form in this week's New York Review of Books, should be compulsory reading on the subject -- especially for MPs preparing themselves for today's parliamentary debate on the U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq.
Professor Nordhaus notes that nations historically underestimate the costs of war. By his calculations the United States could end up with a bill for a war in Iraq of as much as $1.6 trillion or as little as $120 billion. The former is eight times the maximum price tag for military action in Iraq offered by Larry Lindsey, the White House's economic guru.
Doomsday scenarios
Professor Nordhaus has the intellectual curiosity and bravery to crunch the numbers for a variety of doomsday scenarios: consider the possibility of war, insurrection and terrorism being sparked off in other Middle Eastern petrol-rich states, shocking the oil markets and driving up prices. But the taxpayers of the U.S., and its most loyal ally, Britain, have not been asked to consider the sacrifices war might entail. This may be because to debate whether or not to take up arms on the basis of cashflow is a sign of weakness. Or it may be that by underplaying the costs a leader in a democracy can gain the advantage of political consensus. Either way, the public is left ill-informed about how war will affect them. There is little chance it will be beneficial.
IRELAND
The Irish Times, Dublin, Nov. 23: NATO's enlargement from 19 to 26 states this week in Prague underlines the alliance's continuing military and political role in Europe after the end of the Cold War. Its influence extends well beyond this membership base through the Partnership for Peace organization and the Euro-American Partnership Council, at which 46 states, including Ireland and other neutral states, were represented yesterday.
The decision this week to create a NATO rapid reaction force which would be available to intervene in conflicts outside Europe is a new departure for the alliance, in keeping with the summit's joint statement on Iraq and a commitment to tackle international terrorism.
Essential bulwark
President Bush's meeting with President Putin yesterday immediately after the summit ended is a sharp reminder of how much has changed in Europe since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. After the Soviet Union broke up all its successor states -- including Russia -- have been preoccupied with their security. For the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania NATO membership became a symbol and guarantee of their independence from a huge, powerful neighbor which has traditionally shown scant regard for their rights. In similar fashion the other former communist states accepted into the NATO this week -- Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia -- believe it is an essential bulwark against any reassertion of Russian power.
They have all gone through a profound transformation to become parliamentary democracies and market economies. The European Union has contributed more than NATO to this process, but it is a mistake to draw too sharp a distinction between the two, given their mutual insistence on setting similar conditions for membership. President Putin has been willing to go along with NATO's expansion on the basis that the alliance itself has been transformed from a strictly military into a much more political organization with which it suits his country to cooperate.
GERMANY
Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, Nov. 25: Even now, after more than 200 deaths, the organizers of the Miss World Contest are being pretty naive.
The violence in Nigeria has nothing to do with them, they say -- but "in the interests of the country" they have scrapped the final in West Africa.
It sounds generous -- maybe they expect to be congratulated for their withdrawal.
The way the organisers of the beauty contest have behaved confirms all the prejudices people have toward such frivolities.
The ladies put on beaming smiles for the cameras, they express their naive wish for world peace, but otherwise it is only the pretty appearance which counts.
Of course no one expects a Miss World contest to be a political event or the organizers and contestants to display an average knowledge of the world.
Hooligans
The display itself was not the cause of the unrest -- rather, it was a welcome pretext for hooligans to push ravaged Nigeria further toward civil war.
Nevertheless, the only people who made the right decision were those contestants who stayed away from the country in protest against the planned stoning of 31-year-old Amina Lawal.
Everyone else was grossly negligent -- among them human right groups who wanted to see the final as a political demonstration against Sharia law.
EGYPT
Al-Ahram, Cairo, Nov. 26: The United States is capable of moving the peace process from stagnation to action and progress because the U.S. is not only one of the two main sponsors of the peace process, but because it is the only international power capable of pressuring Israel to return to the peace talks.
All the Arab parties, including the Palestinian side, have accepted peace as a strategic option and at the Beirut Arab summit endorsed a peace initiative based on "land-for-full peace," which primarily requires halting acts of violence by both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides together with ending Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Practical application
This initiative, which gained international support, still lacks elements of practical application which are in the hands of both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides.
Despite the usual Israeli-American political unity, Israel has not responded or moved to address the American initiatives, most recently the peacemaking road map.
This Israeli attitude, which clashes with American policy, could only be interpreted as lack of U.S. determination to exert pressure on Israel.