The Guardian 14 June, 2006
Global briefs
RUSSIA: US weapons development projects could upset the non-proliferation regime, Russian Foreign Minister said. "US plans to construct low yield nuclear warheads and to arm ballistic missiles on Trident submarines and the intercontinental ballistic missile force on a whole with conventional warheads is a cause for concern", said Sergei Lavrov. The United States and its allies are considering the deployment of missile defence elements in Eastern Europe, supposedly in Poland and the Czech Republic", Lavrov pointed out. In Lavrov’s opinion "these projects could be destabilising in their nature. They could lower the threshold of weapons use and have a destructive effect on the nuclear non-proliferation regime".
USA: The United States demanded last week that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan repudiate a speech made by his deputy Mark Malloch Brown in which he criticised the United States and its attitude to the United Nations. Brown said that America needed a global foreign policy with the UN a critical part of it. He attacked the US for "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping over too many years". He lamented the fact that the good works of the United Nations are largely lost because "much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News". John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN and well known for his hostile attitude towards the UN, took exception to the speech and lashed out saying: "Fundamentally and very sadly, this was a criticism of the American people, not the American Government, by an international civil servant. It’s just illegitimate."
GUINEA: A successful general strike brought the poverty-stricken West African country to a halt last Thursday, despite government threats and the presence of armed riot police on the streets. Banks, businesses, schools and offices were shut and streets were virtually deserted. The industrial action was organised in protest against the deepening economic hardship and maladministration of the government of President Lansana Conte by the National Confederation of Guinea Workers (CNTG) and the Public Service Union of Guinea (USTG). Their specific demands include a reduction in the price of oil-based fuels which rose by 30 percent last month and the quadrupling of wages. The strike action is the second this year by unions which represent more than 90 percent of Guinean workers.
BOLIVIA: Cuban doctors have provided free eye surgery for hundreds of thousands of people as part of its Operation Milagro (Miracle), a hemisphere-wide program. On June 1, the Bolivian Medical Society organised a 24-hour strike to protest Cuban doctors practicing there without official domestic certification. The society pointed out that 10,000 Bolivian doctors are unemployed. There is a shortage of funding and most of them are not willing to work in the extremely poor areas. Cuba will be training 7000 young Bolivians as doctors, and Bolivia, with Cuba’s help, will train some 5000 more. Under the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas between Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba there are plans to train 200,000 Latin American and Caribbean doctors over the next 10 years.