Israel outraged as EU poll names it a threat to peace Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor Sunday November 2, 2003 The Observer Israel has been described as the top threat to world peace, ahead of North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran, by an unpublished European Commission poll of 7,500 Europeans, sparking an international row. The survey, conducted in October, of 500 people from each of the EU's member nations included a list of 15 countries with the question, 'tell me if in your opinion it presents or not a threat to peace in the world'. Israel was reportedly picked by 59 per cent of those interviewed. The leaking of the results of the poll to El Pais and the International Herald Tribune has sparked a bitter row, with a major Jewish human rights and lobbying group, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, demanding that the EU be excluded from the Israel-Palestinian peace process and accusing Europe of suffering the worst outbreak of 'anti-semitism' since World War Two. The results appear to be a mark of the widespread disapproval in Europe of the tactics employed by the government of Ariel Sharon during the present intifada. Israeli Ministers and spokesman have also been at pains recently to insist that a definition of modern 'anti-semitism' should include criticism of the way the state of Israel chooses to protect itself, defining that criticism as an overt attack on Israel's survival. Members of the Sharon government have bridled at the efforts of Tony Blair and UK officials to try to mediate between the two sides. At one stage journalists were briefed that Israel regarded the Foreign Office as having an 'Arabist' bias. Reacting to the poll, the Simon Wies enthal Centre, which claims 400,000 members in the US alone, has begun ordering a petition to condemn the European Commission and demand the EU no longer be represented in the so-called Quartet group trying to mediate an end to violence between Israel and Palestine. The poll also comes against a background of an increase in anti-semitic attacks in Europe in the past year, although the evidence in countries such as France suggests that many are being committed by young Islamists. 'This poll is an indication that Europeans have bought in, "hook, line and sinker", to the vilification and demonisation campaign directed against the state of Israel and her supporters by European leaders and media,' said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Centre's founder. 'This shocking result that Israel is the greatest threat to world peace, bigger than North Korea and Iran, defies logic and is a racist flight of fantasy that only shows that anti-semitism is deeply embedded within European society, more then at any other period since the end of the war,' he added.
So much for my idea. China will sell to anybody: Pakistan Says to Sign Nuclear Plant Deal in China Sun Nov 2, 2:35 AM ET Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Zeeshan Haider ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan is expected to finalize a deal with China for the construction of a nuclear power plant, officials said Sunday, the second such plant to be built with the help of Beijing. The agreement for the construction of the 300 megawatt nuclear power plant is expected to be signed during the visit of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to China. "Yes, absolutely there is a possibility," Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan told Reuters when asked whether the agreement would be finalized during the visit. The nuclear plant will be constructed at Chashma on the banks of the Indus River, around 170 miles south of Islamabad and alongside the first plant that China helped to build, which has a similar capacity. Khan said China had agreed in principle to build a second nuclear power plant during the visit of Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali to Beijing in March. He said the financing details of the project had yet to be worked out. Energy experts say the project is estimated to cost $600 million and will take at least six years to complete. The first Chashma nuclear power plant was built in 1999 and was connected to the national power grid in early 2000. The United States has repeatedly urged China to halt nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, but both Beijing and Islamabad say they are not working together for military purposes. Khan said the nuclear power plant would be constructed under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "It will be meant for civilian use of nuclear energy." Pakistan set up its first nuclear power station in 1972 in the port city of Karachi with Canadian help. The Karachi plant has a capacity of 137 megawatts. Western countries, under pressure from the United States, later halted nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, suspecting that Islamabad was clandestinely developing nuclear weapons. Pakistan vowed to go nuclear after rival India exploded its first nuclear device in 1974. Pakistan conducted five nuclear tests just weeks after India carried out three such tests in May 1998. Beijing is the main supplier of military hardware to Islamabad. Musharraf's three-day visit to China ending on Tuesday comes on the heels of unprecedented joint naval exercises between the two countries. The three-day exercises, which ended last month, were China's first with the navy of a foreign country.
China's got their own agenda, part of which seems to include keeping the India/Pakistan standoff going. China and Russia have also been supportive of Pakistan over the long standing Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan.