Where interfaith dialogue should begin

Libyan leader President Muammar Khaddafy, I told Libyan Ambassador Salim Adam at a send off party for Pakistani Ambassador Kazmi, seems to be unusually silent. Well, he said, maybe it is time others do the talking. The Libyans get blamed every time they open their mouths, its time for others to speak up on issues that affect the developing and undeveloped world.

Having said that, the good ambassador said his leader sent a letter to President GMA recently on reforming the UN just before she left. In part it reads as follows: "‘The United Nations making up the UN General Assembly should exercise, through their general assembly all powers,…all powers without exceptions because there is no other party in the world apart from the assembly of 191 nations, making up all peoples of the world".

He voices the frustration of those who feel that only a handful of countries make up the Security Council. In his letter to President GMA, Khaddafy deplored that there is no move to enlarge, expand the Security Council and other bodies at the same time that reforming the UN is being bandied around. "The United Nations is not the Security Council," he adds. It is the 191 nations … which make up the General Assembly. It was different when only four nations took the cudgels against Germany in the Second World War.

"The 191 countries have the right to form their Security Council, which is different from the security council of the four nations which scored victory over Germany," Khaddafy said. The General Assembly should have the final say as "the international legislator, the world’s parliament, and vested with international sovereignty." Without this perspective, debate about democracy in the world is a "farce" Khaddafy added.

The Security Council of the 191 member nations should be an executive tool to implement the resolutions of the General Assembly. "Unless, this is achieved, the fate of the current United Nations Organization is to wither away, and we must get ready to live in a world without it," he wrote.

Well, the UN’s 60th session has come and gone and as far as I know the Khaddafy proposal was not in its agenda. What was agreed upon by the UN was a 39-page reform document that tried to reconcile the competing interests of rich and poor nations. The document was the result of grueling negotiations to strike a balance between fighting global poverty and battling terrorism while promoting human rights.

Khaddafy warned that ‘the matter is of utmost importance and seriousness, and related to the fate of the world in war and peace, the postponement of any decision of what is tabled for the forthcoming 60th session of the General Assembly is inevitable." At the end of the letter Khaddafi reminds all and sundry that his letter was based on Article 109 of the UN Charter as well as its Preamble.

Well, the Libyan leader has certainly not minced his words. In the coming days, we should hear more from him on this proposal. I am not privy to any reply made by our President GMA. But it looks like the Libyan leader has broken his self-imposed silence with this letter.

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Kudos to President GMA for her initiative on interfaith dialogues . With Speaker JDV the indefatigable brains behind this initiative at her side, I hope interfaith harmony is developed further as a Lakas-CMD party program. After all it is the only political party in the world which includes both Christians and Muslims under one political roof. This would mean not just speeches in the UN but it should concern itself with mundane activities of interfaith dialogue on the ground level.

One project that can be taken up by the party is to lobby for better textbooks on Islam in some of our universities. As an Iranian diplomat told me, he was surprised when his daughter who was studying in a Manila second rate university showed him her books on Islam. It was, to put it mildly, total rubbish. How can Muslims and Christians dialogue against a background of ignorance? He was not surprised he said if non-Muslims should hate the Muslims given these textbooks. His daughter is able to judge the wrongness of the texts but as he asked rightly, what about those who read about Islam for the first time?

If the Philippine government wants to lead interfaith dialogue in the world then it should start by doing its homework. Ignorance is the fertile ground on which terrorism grows. Then only can the much vaunted ‘solidarity through interfaith dialogues to counter terrorism’ in the UN be taken seriously. This is for the attention of the Department of Education or whoever is in charge into looking at textbooks on Islam used in our schools.

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US security has been compromised. I must say our politics is more breathtaking than a roller coaster ride. No sooner had we gone through the hump of exciting marathon sessions on whether President GMA should be impeached in Congress, here comes the arrest of Senator Panfilo Lacson’s aide, Michael Ray Aquino and co-conspirator FBI analyst Leandro Aragoncillo for spying in USA. This promises to be even bumpier but we may have to wait until the FBI unseals the envelope which contains the name of the three government officials. Except the individuals are themselves pre-empting any formal report on their alleged complicity. Every one already knows who the three are, or at least two. Michael Ray Aquino is a former Lacson aide who left the Philippines surreptitiously and under a cloud of suspected murder. The guessing game on the third is a toss-up between Mayor Jinggoy Estrada and former Senator Francisco Tatad. The former senator has denied it. I am also told by knowledgeable sources that Tatad is a wrong lead even if the information comes from NBI head, General Wycoco. On the other hand, the third man’s description as a second level government official fits Jinggoy .

Whoever it is, the conspirators/officials are in deep s….! As NBI official Ricardo Diaz put it the issue is not about whether the information leaked is important (reports culled from newspapers, claimed Lacson). Even if the information were a recipe on apple pie, the fact was the FBI classified it as secret and certainly not to be passed around. Not only did the accused access the secret files they also sent these across the world to their contacts for whom the intelligence could then be used. The intelligence files were from the only superpower in the world. The bottomline is that its system of security was compromised. Already there is speculation that this so-called ‘harmless issue of Philippine politics’ may open a can of worms on more serious money laundering. What if it had been the files on North Korea or the Al-Qaeda?

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