BRITAIN

BRITAIN
The Daily Telegraph, London, Nov. 10: The benefits of EU membership, we keep being told, are obvious; yet no one seems especially keen to spell them out. A recent attempt by the House of Lords to establish a cost-benefit study was dismissed by the government on grounds that the advantages, while unquestionable, were also unquantifiable. Peers of all parties were taken aback, and now want a committee of inquiry to examine the whole question.
Fear
Why are Euro-enthusiasts so reluctant to allow a formal Treasury investigation? The obvious answer is that they fear its conclusions.
Tony Blair, like many Euro-zealots, regularly claims that 60 percent of our trade is with the EU, and that more than three million jobs depend on our membership. The first of these claims is demonstrably false, while the second relies on the ludicrous assumption that leaving the EU would mean that we could no longer buy or sell on the continent.
JORDAN
The Jordan Times, Amman, Nov. 11: The U.S. has been pressing Turkey and other allies to come to its aid in Iraq, and for a while the Turkish government appeared ready to send its troops to stabilize Iraq.
Now Turkey understands more than anybody else that its military presence in Iraq would usher in another level of armed conflict instead of defusing the already raging fighting between the coalition forces and several opposition militias operating on Iraqi soil.
The reticence of Ankara on intervening militarily in Iraq must have disappointed Washington, which was hoping Turkish cooperation would encourage other countries to contribute to the desperate efforts by the coalition forces to end the fighting altogether.
Only option
With other U.S. allies contributing only marginally to the effort, the U.S. is faced with only one option, and that is to continue the battle in Iraq for many months if not years.
BRITAIN
The Times, London, Nov. 10: After yesterday's national election, some observers argued that a two-party system was clearly visible in Japan, but that ... was an optical illusion. The Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled for all but 11 months of the past 50 years, still dominates, and the ostensible opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, is a halfway house for disillusioned LDP politicians and an unholy alliance of the center-left and center-right. True electoral enlightenment remains a few years away.
Less loyal
Japanese voters did indicate that they are becoming less loyal to the LDP and even to Junichiro Koizumi, the generally popular prime minister who will govern with a reduced parliamentary majority.
There have been growing signs of life in the economy, though that recovery has been more than generously anticipated by the Nikkei stock market index, which is up almost 40 per cent from its lowest point this year.