HOW HE SEES IT White House is ignoring fate of N. Korean babies

By JOHN HALL
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- In North Korea last year, "pregnant female prisoners reportedly underwent forced abortions, and in other cases babies reportedly were killed upon birth in prison."
That unadorned sentence stands out in the State Department's annual country-by-country report on human-rights problems around the world. You would think, particularly in an administration that has become associated with the "right-to-life" movement, that this alleged practice would be amplified. It was not.
In its section on China, the department noted that thousands of North Koreans fled across the border in an attempt to escape the wretched conditions in their homeland. China deported most of them. Many of those sent back "faced persecution and some may have been executed" on their return, the report noted.
Nuclear-weapons taunting
Some North Koreans, including girls who are forced into prostitution once they reach China, have been fleeing to escape starvation and malnutrition in a famine that is largely hidden from world view. Because of dictator Kim Jong Il's nuclear-weapons taunting, North Korea is being let off with half a wrist slap with a wet won-ton for these outrages.
China never seems to get much pressure either to treat the North Korean refugees more humanely or to stop Kim from brandishing his nukes, even though the Chinese are preparing to host the 2008 Olympics and are dependent on the advanced nations for trade.
Instead, all the American attention is focused -- insofar as freedom, democracy and human rights are concerned -- on the Middle East.
If U.S. pressure for reform is brought against anyone, it is against a benign despot like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Mubarak is not much of a prize, but his country did lead the Arab world in making peace with Israel in the 1978 Camp David peace accords.
That doesn't count for much. What have they done for us lately? as Groucho Marx used to say.
So, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month canceled her trip to the Middle East in a dispute over Egypt's imprisonment of an opposition political leader. The Egyptians insist that there was a legitimate legal charge involved while U.S. officials noted that Mubarak has now been elected, unopposed, to four six-year terms and the parliament is dominated by one party.
As the spat escalated, the Egyptians said it wasn't any of the Americans' business. But the Rice State Department, along with several members of Congress, said they no longer could do business with Mubarak if he treated his political enemies this poorly.
Does the world really need this bad turn in U.S.-Egyptian relations? It is mystifying. If there is ever a time Washington needs strong, moderate partners in the region, especially big countries like Egypt, it is now. But the Bush administration has decided to check credentials for Jeffersonian purity. At least, it checks the countries without oil derricks on their horizon.
Saudi Arabia -- with a much worse human-rights and democracy record than Egypt -- has escaped with barely a breath of criticism. No one in this administration is demanding replacement of the Saudi royal family with an elected prime minister. The State Department -- in a sentence that would do justice to the police inspector who was "shocked, shocked" at all the stuff going on at Rick's Cafe -- said the Saudi government's human-rights record "remained poor overall."
Middle East
President Bush, to be sure, has used the megaphone of his office to make things happen in the Middle East. The recent elections in the Palestinian territories and in Iraq sent shock waves in all directions. Some analysts believe the president's forceful speeches on the subject, including his second inaugural address on the need for more liberty, may have contributed to rapid changes that are under way.
The resignation of Lebanon's pro-Syrian government and Syria's move to withdraw some of its troops from Lebanon appear to be responses to the president's bold foreign-policy approach.
The Middle East preoccupies and consumes American policy. There is room for little else. The North Koreans who "reportedly" commit crimes against our sensibilities -- the murder of newborns -- rate but a sentence.
X John Hall is the senior Washington correspondent of Media General News Service.