Path of negotiations

APPARENTLY, the sole superpower is taking the longest to realise that 21st century politics requires diplomacy to settle international issues, however thorny, as opposed to muscle and exercise of force.
And despite numerous starts and stops and incoherence in Washington’s diplomatic engagement with estranged capitals, the Geneva talks with North Korea present a welcome opportunity to set an abiding precedent. While axis-of-evil threats and military buildup only pushed Pyongyang to press ahead with nuclear tests, a more refined approach coupled with a decent quid pro quo promise has clearly proved more effective in drawing N Korea out into the open. Not only has the Yongbyon reactor been shut down since February, but there is an obvious desire on part of the Kim dispensation to be removed from America’s list of terrorism-sponsoring nations.
Clearly, financial choke makes running a country just as difficult as the axe of terrorism continuously hanging over the neck. Hence the softening of approaches on both sides of the equation. Of course, despite the progress, affairs are far from normal between the two countries and both remain just as sceptical of the other’s intentions. But that the road to meaningful long-term progress has already been taken is hard to refute. Strangely, Washington apparently continues to conduct foreign policy experiments with states it has itself labelled rogue, using the stick here and the odd carrot there. For, admirable as sitting across the table with N Korea is, a distinctly different approach is on display with regard to engagement with Iran.
Just as stakeholders breathe a much-awaited sigh of relief owing to apparent US designs of taking up a softer than usual line on Iran, the highest offices in Washington turn things around suddenly, giving a field day to undesirable elements thriving on unpredictability and confusion.
Considering the loss of face across the Middle East especially, America would do well to give negotiations a stronger thought with regard to Iran. Foreign policy merits basing more on ground realities than ideological nuances. And for the world’s standard bearer in realpolitik to deliberately sidestep something this obvious runs the risk of more confrontational elements coming to the fore. The North Korean example is clearly better. Much of the civilised world now relies less on military means and more on diplomatic skill. It’s time for the biggest and the strongest to take up the same approach on a more consistent basis.
 

Female feticide

SCIENCE is knowledge and no science can ever be undone, though any reasonable man might wish that some knowledge such as nuclear weapons had never been developed. The scientist is sometimes blamed by liberal critics for being amoral and bent only on discovery, whatever it takes. That is indeed how it should be. Good science is often based on years of exhaustive research and testing. Good science can have no morality.
Moral failure comes with the subsequent misapplication of scientific techniques. Should the scientists who developed prenatal techniques such as ultrasonography and amniocentesis be now blamed for their present woeful misuse in India or China to establish the sex of an unborn child? In both countries male children are preferred as future supporters of the family. Females, especially in India, are unwanted because, among other economic disadvantages, they will carry the expense of a dowry when they marry. Thus the UN reports that a disturbing 2,000 female pregnancies are now being aborted every single day in India. The sex of the unborn child has often been ascertained by ultrasound techniques deployed at clinics established to improve the care of expectant mothers. Thereafter, either outside or, it seems all too often, within the Indian health service there are abortionists willing to commit female feticide.
This is illegal without sound medical grounds. But it is all about money, for the clinicians who reveal scan results knowing the risks, for the abortionists who carry out the crime and for the family who see the cost of the female feticide as an investment in a long-term future without an expensive daughter. The immorality of this is clear. What is only now also becoming evident is the radical demographic impact of this behavior. In the 2001 Indian census there were only 800 female to every thousand male births. On the basis of the UN’s estimates of daily female feticide in four years when the next census is taken, the disparity in male/female births will have increased dramatically.
This will have serious social consequences. At least two hundred in every thousand men will be unable to find a wife. That will mean 200 fewer families, maybe 400 or 500 fewer children. Some may argue that India needs to control its population and such a check on the birth rate is no bad thing. But what of men who cannot marry? Violence against women is already high. Will it not grow along with vice and the rising mafia which controls it?
Historically it has generally been a shortage of men as the result of war that has produced gender imbalances. Plagues and epidemics have not been sexist in their tolls. Though the worrying expense of the female child is nothing new to many societies, including India, and girls have sometimes been murdered at birth, science has given parents the opportunity to carry out the crime earlier and less obviously. But the guilt does not lie with the scientists but with any society that is prepared to permit the technology to be abused so wickedly.

—Arab News