www.upi.com From the International Desk Published 1/21/2003 1:17 PM

It's going to be quite a summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, in May -- and what could become the prototype of a new G-10 meeting of the real global powers. The confirmation from New Delhi that India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will combine his regular Indo-Russian annual summit with President Vladimir Putin with the celebration of St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary party brings all the key actors of the world stage together. President George W. Bush will be there, along with China's new President Hu Jintao, France's Jacques Chirac, Britain's Tony Blair and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder. So this assembles in Putin's hometown the usual G-7 crowd (which includes Italy and Canada) with Russia as the extra making up the G-8, and India and China for the G-10. India and China, Asia's two regional superpowers, have long grumbled at their exclusion from the white folk's club of the G-8. Interestingly, Vajpayee will be visiting Hu in Beijing this spring, just before the Russian summit, and Indian diplomats are weighing a joint Indo-Chinese proposal to make the G-10 meetings into a regular fixture.

-0-

Meanwhile, India has other diplomatic avenues to explore, beyond its traditional leadership of that Cold War relic, the Non-Aligned Summit (next month in Malaysia). Iranian President Syed Mohammad Khatami visits Delhi this week to consolidate a new friendship that is based partly in India's energy needs, partly on joint interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and very much on their shared concern about the instability of their joint neighbor Pakistan. What is new about this week's agenda is the confidential defense cooperation talks. India's head of Naval Staff, Adm. Madhvendra Singh, is in Iran this week for high-level talks. Ship visits and other military cooperation -- including joint weapons development -- are expected soon.

-0-

Even though it is stalling on U.S. basing requests, Turkey is making quiet preparations for war -- of another kind. An instant town of 24,000 tents to receive refugees in the event of a conflict is being established in Silopi in Sirnak province, several miles from the Iraqi border crossing at Habur. Turkey's Red Crescent humanitarian relief organization is also establishing its main warehouse Turkish Petroleum International Company's facilities in Silopi as it prepares for a tidal wave of up to 100,000 refugees. Turkish authorities have drawn up contingency plans to establish 13 camps for refugees on Iraqi territory and five more camps on Turkish territory. The effort is being coordinated by Emergency Rule Regional Gov. Gokhan Aydiner, Sirnak Gov. Huseyin Baskaya and Silopi's Unal Cakici. According to Aydiner, "the aim of all these works is humanitarian aid."

-0-

As the 1,200 members of the French National Assembly and the German Bundestag gather in Paris for Wednesday's historic joint parliamentary session, commemorating 40 years of the Franco-German Treaty, a new call comes from Brussels for a full-fledged federation of the two countries. Two members of the EU's Commission, Germany's Guenter Verheugen (who looks after the EU's enlargement portfolio) and France's Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, have issued a joint open letter, published in the Berliner Zeitung and Liberation, calling for a common government to run the two countries' foreign, security and financial policies. Stressing that they do not want to create "an island without bridges to the European Union," they propose that other EU countries be invited to join them and create a "core Europe." What they don't say, but the implication seems clear enough, is that if pro-American poodles like Britain want to slow progress toward a full-fledged EU federal state, France and Germany are prepared to build a new institution from which American Trojan horses are excluded.

-0-

This week's World Economic Forum at Davos is looking a bit thin on headliners. The organizers failed to get South Korea's President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, and have to make do with a "special envoy" from his Millennium Democratic Party, Chung Dong-young. The stars confirmed so far are Secretary of State Colin Powell (U.N. complications permitting), Brazil's new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Mexico's President Vicente Fox and King Abdullah of Jordan. Americans glancing over the program may feel they are being got at. Featured events include a critical "foreign view" of the U.S. economy that will focus on its trade deficits and growing dependence on foreign investments, another on the doom of Detroit (or the prospects of a hydrogen-fueled economy), U.S productivity as miracle or myth, and a session on "What We Don't Know About al Qaida."

www.bday.co.za

  DAVOS - Heads of government and corporate chiefs meet in Davos from Thursday to mull over geopolitical uncertainties and a crisis of confidence in the global economy, while thousands of their critics are expected to converge in Brazil.

Brazil's new president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, popularly known as Lula, will provide the only visible link between the 33rd annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss Alpine resort and the World Social Forum in his homeland.

Lula, a former trade unionist, will head for Switzerland after he takes part in the Brazilian event alongside an expected 100,000 critics of globalisation.

Both meetings are taking place against the backdrop of the threat of a war in Iraq, with the chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix due to present his first report on Baghdad's compliance to the UN Security Council on January 27.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell will take part in the WEF on January 26.

Yet the climate differs substantially on either side of the equator.

The World Social Forum appears to have reached cruising speed, with its organisers moving away from a purely oppositional, anti-globalisation stance to speak of "putting change into action".

Porto Alegre, a largely public event, has grown and gained confidence two years after it was set up as an alternative to the elite, clubbish gathering in Davos.

More than 100,000 people from 157 countries are expected in the Brazilian port city, along with 5,000 organisations under the banner "Another world is possible".

Meanwhile, Davos's slogan, "Building Trust" betrays declining confidence.

The 2,150 mainly corporate and political guests from 99 countries - including 29 heads of state or government, 81 ministers - will gather behind a series of fences and checkpoints.

Media reports suggest that this year, the WEF has had trouble convincing important figures to turn up.

The event will be dominated by the Americas, with a large US contingent including Powell, Attorney-General John Ashcroft and chief executives of major US corporations.

They will be joined by several Latin American heads of state including Lula, Argentinian President Eduardo Duhalde, and Colombia President Alvaro Uribe Velez.

Security has been boosted and for the first time the Swiss authorities are warning that unauthorised aircraft entering a no-fly zone around the resort could be shot down.

The Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve described the 14 million Swiss franc ($10.2-million) spent on security as "the largest security operation ever set up in peacetime in Switzerland".

The WEF has also been stirred by question marks hanging over the business world, following US corporate scandals over the past year, as well as the possible economic impact of a war in Iraq.

Three decades after he founded the WEF, Klaus Schwab, president of the meeting, said he could not remember the meeting taking place "at such a special moment in time, of such complexity, fragility and vulnerability in the global situation".

He has also played down the role of the Davos forum, saying it is "not a decision-making body, not a place to negotiate".

A few Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) have been invited while more social themes will be debated at an "Open Forum" unusually open to the public.

This year's meeting will also go without its traditional gala evening. However, most NGOs will hold their debates at the alternative "Public Eye on Davos" gathering just outside the conference centre.

The Swiss authorities have allowed a demonstration by anti-globalisation activists to take place in the resort on Saturday. 

AFP

www.timesofmalta.com World Economic Forum - January 23-28 Andrea Friedli in Zurich, Reuters

Switzerland is mounting its biggest security operation for the world's business and political elite who gather this week at the Davos ski resort, with any plane straying overhead risking being shot down.

Hundreds of police and around 300 soldiers will be deployed in and around the chic mountain city for the January 23-28 World Economic Forum (WEF). Troops in neighbouring Germany are on standby in case of need, police sources said.

The aim is not only to protect international figures such as US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Brazil's new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from extremist attack, the resort is also bracing for anti-globalisation or anti-war protests.

Unlike in 2001 - last year the event switched to New York as a mark of respect after the September 2001 suicide plane hijackings - demonstrations will be allowed in Davos, Europe's highest city at 1,500 metres.

The WEF meeting comes amid mounting international tension over Iraq, with United Nations weapon inspectors due to report to the Security Council on January 27 on their search for Baghdad's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Washington, which has threatened war if Iraq does not come clean over its alleged nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, says the report could be crucial.

Last Sunday, police in Davos found a small explosive device containing a firecracker and an automatic fuse near the Davos Congress Centre where the WEF meeting will be held.

WEF organisers, police and the Swiss government played down the threat from violent political extremists bent on striking a high-profile blow.

"The fact that personalities like the US Attorney General and others are participating should show you that this question has been taken care of," WEF founder Klaus Schwab told journalists.

The security measures will cost the Swiss authorities some $10 million, around $5,000 for each of the 2,000 leaders of finance, business and politics due to attend.

The resort is not on the route of commercial airlines and any light plane seeking to overfly it could be shot down by Swiss fighters if it ignores orders to change course, Swiss government officials said.

The several thousand protesters expected in Davos for Saturday's main demonstration will have to run a gauntlet of police checks.

"We are expecting large difficulties (in getting to Davos). At the moment we have permission to demonstrate, but no permission to allow demonstrators to get to Davos," Walter Angst from the Oltner Buendnis protest movement told Reuters.

Police are setting up checkpoints in the narrow valley that leads to Davos and travellers will be searched for weapons or potentially dangerous objects.

At the main checkpoint midway up the valley, train and bus passengers must disembark and enter a fenced area where they will be searched before being allowed to board a train to Davos.

The government came in for heavy criticism from both civil rights groups and the media for banning protests in Davos in 2001 when riots erupted in other Swiss cities, particularly Zurich.

news.bbc.co.uk Thursday, 23 January, 2003, 05:30 GMT

Today's editions cover the Paris celebrations to mark the anniversary of the treaty between France and Germany. Some papers also note the summit in Davos of World Economic Forum and its counterpart in the Brazilian town of Porto Alegre. The Russian press picks up on the theme of theft, large and small.

Symbolism out, pragmatism in

France's leading daily Le Monde finds the French-German celebrations so providential that, as the paper puts it, "if the 40th anniversary of the Elysee Treaty had not existed, it would have had to be invented".

With "major challenges" ahead like the EU's "unprecedented enlargement" and the drawing up of a European constitution, the paper says, "it was about time the languishing (French-German) cooperation was revived".

But with the war more than half-a-century away, it adds, "this is no longer a time for symbolism like that of De Gaulle and Adenauer praying together at Reims cathedral, or Mitterrand and Kohl holding hands on the battlefield in Verdun".

As the paper sees it, "neither the time nor the incumbents lend themselves" to such an approach.

And in fact, it notes, the joint declaration signed in Paris on Wednesday, is so pragmatic in tone that it reads more "like the conclusions of a company board meeting".

A matter of taste

In Romania, Bucharest's Adevarul welcomes the Franco-German joint declaration in which, it writes, "the two countries mention Romania as a future member of the EU".

"The Wednesday celebration of the 40th anniversary of French-German post-war reconciliation," the paper continues, "demonstrates what a partnership at the heart of Europe was able to create in our modern time". The white wine was German and the red was French

Adevarul

"But the present French-German partnership did not consist uniquely of bilateral relations and European construction", the paper adds, and points out that "the two countries are acting jointly in the service of international security and various international bodies".

"And to show to all European countries the extend of their friendship," the paper concludes, "France and Germany extended their partnership during the celebrations to the wine list as well: the white wine was German and the red was French."

Davos & Porto Alegre

Global issues will be addressed today from standpoints as far apart as the distance between the Swiss Alpine village of Davos, where the movers and shakers of the World Economic Forum will gather today, and the Brazilian town of Porto Alegre, the regular venue of the World Social Forum.

Major West European political leaders seem to have disappeared from the forum this year

International Herald Tribune

"They have as much in common," says the French daily Liberation, "as a Swiss company's board meeting and a tropical carnival."

"On one side," the paper adds, "there will be the happy few, and on the other the legion of the discontented."

Their topic is "more or less the same", it notes, "but the languages are so different that any kind of communication would appear impossible". And yet, the paper marvels, President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, "one of the few speakers to have triumphed in Porto Alegre", has taken up the challenge and will address the Davos meeting.

But then, as the paper puts it, Lula is "living proof that a culture nurtured in the laboratories of Utopia is capable of facing the cruel reality of the post-industrial world".

The Paris-based International Herald Tribune says that many of the Davos forum's customary stars have been "humbled", as the paper puts it, "by accounting scandals, mismanaged mergers, personal greed or the economic downturn".

But still, it notes, "about 1,000 corporate figures have paid up to $30,000 dollars to attend the gathering, along with 1,000 other representatives from the media" and other groups, as well as "political luminaries" such as US Secretary of State Colin Powell and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

However, the paper points out, "major West European political leaders", including Britain's Tony Blair and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, "seem to have disappeared from the forum this year".

Got a new motor?

"Many foreigners are surprised on first arriving in Moscow at the superabundance of luxury cars in our capital," writes the Russian newspaper Trud.

"They don't see this number of BMWs, Lexuses and Mercedes in Berlin, Paris or Los Angeles.

"They ought to be pleased at how wealthy Russians are becoming, but there is a big 'but': practically all the elite foreign cars belonging to Russians have either been stolen overseas or illegally brought through customs."

The numbers are staggering, Trud explains.

"In the 1990s, Interpol was looking in Russia for 2.4 million cars stolen in the West. From 2000 this number halved - the explanation is simple, they stop looking for cars over three years old... but they still call us the country of stolen cars."

Komsomolskaya Pravda reports that a press conference in Moscow by representatives of Western insurance companies noted that not more than 100 of the vehicles illegally exported to Russia have been returned to their true owners.

The police representative invited to the press conference did not show up. "Evidently we will remain a black hole in the eyes of the civilised world for some time to come," Komsomolskaya Pravda notes.

If it's not nailed down...

Local paper Vecherniy Chelyabinsk says allotments Belaya Balka near Chelyabinsk in the Urals "should go into the Guinness Book of Records for the number of thefts over the winter".

The dog was stolen together with its kennel and chain

Vecherniy Chelyabinsk

On average across Russia one in three allotment buildings is burgled over the winter: the average for Belaya Balka is for every one to be burgled twice a season.

The gardeners got together and took decisive action.

"They brought in a specially-trained guard dog from Chelyabinsk, which was capable of tearing any intruder to tiny pieces.

"On its first night on duty, the dog was stolen together with its kennel and chain."

The European press review is compiled by BBC Monitoring from internet editions of the main European newspapers and some early printed editions.

www.novinite.com Politics: 23 January 2003, Thursday. Bulgaria's Finance Minister Milen Velchev will participate in the World Economic Forum to take place January 23-28.

At the forum Minister Velchev will talk on the businessmen's ability to become good politicians and the remuneration of the presidents and executive directors of companies. The Forum aims to prompt discussions, not to yield concrete results, Minister Velchev said in Sofia.

The political and business elite have already begun gathering in the exclusive Swiss ski resort of Davos for the annual meeting. Corporate scandals and the possibility of war with Iraq will be the two issues dominating this year's World Economic Forum.

Top billing goes to the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who will deliver a "major speech" on US foreign policy at the weekend. Other political figures likely to make the headlines include Presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Vicente Fox of Mexico and Johannes Rau of Germany.