Turkey's Kurds Fear Fallout from Istanbul Blasts---New WMW

[Gloria]

Excerpts, links up now at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical/current.htm

Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com

1//KurdishMedia.com, UK--TURKEY’S KURDS FEAR FALLOUT FROM ISTANBUL BLASTS(Turkey’s Kurds are fearful that security clampdowns after the Istanbul bombings could lead to intensified operations against Kurdish rebels and deal a blow to their recently-won freedoms… Although no one has blamed Kurds for last week’s truck bombings, reports that the bombers were Islamist extremists from the Kurdish town of Bingol has unnerved the community just as it was starting to enjoy relative peace and greater cultural freedom after years of bloody fighting…At least 12 million Kurds live mainly in the southeast of Turkey, a sizeable minority in this country of 70 million.)



2//Yemen Times, Yemen--OUR VIEWPOINT: WHY AMERICA WILL FAIL IN IRAQ (Bush will certainly work on the elections and make it his priority. And how he performs in Iraq will be critical. But assuming he wins against all those odds, and gains the trust of the people in the elections, and hence continues his plans for Iraq, then he will have to pray for a post-election Iraq strategy, and that is even more challenging. The reason is simple: Money. In a time of instability, insecurity, violence and hatred towards American forces, bringing investors and reconstructing Iraq will prove extremely difficult.)



3//The Independent, UK--CHIRAC AND BLAIR AIM FOR NEW ENTENTE (Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac will make a major effort to repair frayed relations between Britain and France during a summit in London tomorrow. In contrast to the state visit by George Bush, the meeting between the two European leaders will involve a great deal of detailed negotiation, with a minimum of ceremony and no street demonstrations.)



4//The Moscow Times, Russia--MOST VOTERS DON’T CARE, SURVEY FINDS (With a little over two weeks to go before State Duma elections, a poll has found that 12 percent of Russians think that United Russia has performed best in televised campaign debates -- despite the fact that the pro-Kremlin party has refused to participate in them. As well as revealing confusion among voters between debates and appearances on regular news programs, the poll, published late last week by the independent VTsIOM-A agency, found that 70 percent of respondents had little or no interest in the election campaign…Oleg Savelyev, a sociologist with VTsIOM-A, said that interest in the campaign, and television debates devoted to it, is low because many believe the outcome of the elections has already been decided.

5//Inter Press Service, Italy--ANALYSIS: FTTA GOES “LITE” BUT U.S. STILL TRADE HEAVYWEIGHT (The scaled down plan given the nod at the end of a meeting here Thursday on a proposed pan-American common market marks a U.S. retreat on its ambitious trade policies in the western hemisphere but Washington's new aggressive push for bilateral deals could be a greater threat to the region's developing countries.)