• Kyrgystan : Beef imports to Japan Kyrgystan : Beef imports to Japan Daily Telegraph, London, on Kyrgyzstan The ousting of Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan is not as clean-cut as many in the West might wish. The uprising against him
• Kyrgystan : Beef imports to Japan
Kyrgystan : Beef imports to Japan
Daily Telegraph, London, on Kyrgyzstan
The ousting of Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan is not as clean-cut as many in the West might wish. The uprising against him was accompanied by arson and looting, some of it aimed at businesses owned by Chinese, Uighurs and Turks. …
The looting has stopped. The country no longer has two legislatures, the one defying the other, and the main rivals for power, Kurmanbek Bakiev and Felix Kulov, the acting security chief, have temporarily buried their differences. Although the situation is calmer than it was, the transition is proving messy.
And yet little Kyrgyzstan could still be the yeast in the despotic dough of Central Asia. That will require a clean presidential election on June 26, and thereafter a more even distribution of power between the winner and the prime minister than under Akayev.…
Regime change in Bishkek apparently presents the West with a classic choice between acquiescence in despotism for the sake of stability and support for political liberalisation whose outcome is uncertain. Yet, to take Uzbekistan as an example, is the authoritarian rule of Islam Karimov inherently stable? Does his disastrous human rights record not push opponents towards radical organisations such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, designated as a terrorist movement by America in 2001, and Hizbut-Tahrir?
Washington has bases in both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It naturally wants to retain both as instruments against global terrorism. But it should not sacrifice its concomitant commitment to democracy to the likes of Karimov. In Central Asia, however hesitatingly, Kyrgyzstan is showing the way forward.
Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, on U.S. beef imports to Japan
The government seems poised to ease its blanket testing of all cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the world’s toughest controls against mad cow disease.…
But the proposed review of the system should not immediately lead to the lifting of the ban on U.S. beef imports. There are a host of problems that must be sorted out before the Japanese market can be safely opened again to beef from the United States, where meat safety standards are far less rigorous than in Japan.
The easing of the controls is not enough for the resumption of the U.S. beef imports. That also requires a new round of talks at the Food Safety Commission on the safety of American beef.
U.S. regulations on cattle feed and meat processing methods have been criticized, even in the United States, as being dangerously flawed. The commission will have its work cut out in evaluating the safety of U.S. beef.
The commission needs to deliver a convincing conclusion on U.S. beef based on rigorous scientific evaluation of the risks.
- From the Associated Press
