Meridians

Mexico City: Zapatista March

After a long march that started from their jungle shelters, the Zapatistas led by Commander Marcos marched triumphantly into the central square of Mexico City. Marcos and about twenty commanders of the Zapatistas, a group that fights for greater rights of Indians in Mexico, marched to the square with ski masks on their faces, where they were met by several tens of thousands of supporters whom they addressed from the stage. This spectacular performance speaks volumes for how much conditions have changed in Mexico. Marcos, who has this military name, is actually the university assistant Rafael Sebastian Vicente who in 1994 led about a hundred Mayan Indians with whom he formed a guerilla in rebellion. Guerrilla was named after Emiliano Zapata, a legendary revolutionary from the beginning of the XNUMXth century. Since Mexicans ousted the Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRP) last year for the first time in seven decades, the new government and the Zapatistas have improved relations, and the Zapatista march is a kind of pressure on Congress to pass a new law that will guarantee greater rights to Indians. Their demands were heartily supported by the new president of Mexico, Vicente Fox Quesada.

Moscow: Visit, weapons, oil

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and his host, Russian President Vladimir Putin, seemed to want to make up in a few days for the four decades that have passed since the last official visit of the Iranian statesman to Moscow. Iranian President Khatami returned home with a handful of signed contracts, Putin was left to rub his hands, and the Americans to scratch their heads. In addition to the protocol agreement on non-aggression, the two statesmen signed numerous agreements on military cooperation, which includes a large contingent of conventional weapons that the Russians will sell to Iran, as well as one on the continuation of Russian assistance in the construction of a nuclear reactor next to the military base in Bushehr in the Persian Gulf. Naturally, the details of the signed sales contracts remained a secret, which is also the reason for the uneasiness of the US administration, which long ago classified Iran among the "renegade" regimes. Iran's ambassador to Russia, however, hinted a few weeks ago that Russia could sell weapons worth as much as seven billion US dollars to Iran. The construction of the nuclear reactor alone, which was suspended by former Russian President Boris Yeltsin by signing a secret agreement with the USA, according to Iranian officials, should amount to around one billion dollars. The Russians will also sell the Iranians tanks, spare parts for tanks from the Cold War era that Iran used in the war against Iraq, but also modern anti-aircraft missile systems such as the S-300 system, which former Yugoslav President Milošević hoped in vain to get them from the Russians before the NATO intervention.

A recently published report by the US intelligence service CIA claims that Iran is working on developing nuclear weapons at the Bushehr nuclear reactor, which both the Iranian and Russian governments categorically deny. Russia and Iran have also entered into an agreement banning the construction of an oil pipeline under the Caspian Sea, with which they are directly trying to undermine US plans to convince Kazakhstan that the new pipeline bypasses Russia. General Leonid Ivashov, head of the Ministry of Defense's department for international relations, sent an indirect message to the Americans when he declared that, "whether some people like it or not, the two countries will continue cooperation." Ivashov also added that the details of the signed agreements on the sale of weapons are "the private matter of the two sovereign states."

Udairi: Friendly Fire

An American F-18 bomber mistakenly dropped a bomb weighing about 250 kg on the American military base in Kuwait, only thirty kilometers away from the Iraqi border. This mistake cost six human lives and three were seriously injured. Four American citizens and one New Zealander died at the base, and the identity of the sixth victim has not been released. American officials have not yet revealed what caused the error, that is, whether it was a technical error, or the pilot made a mistake, or they gave him the wrong target coordinates during takeoff. This is the third incident involving the US Navy in the last few months. The first was the terrorist attack on the destroyer Cole in the waters of Yemen, and the second, the collision of an American submarine with a Japanese fishing boat near Honolulu. 17 sailors died in the attack on the destroyer, and nine Japanese lost their lives in the accident near Honolulu. In April 1999, during an exercise, the F-18 bomber pilot missed the target by about two kilometers and dropped the bombs not far from the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.