Elections Security

South Africa's government is spending more than $2.5 million to promote the coming town council elections in black townships--a spending spree greeted with derision by the nation's anti-apartheid lobby. Most activists have pointed out that the government's decision to spend so much to "sell" these elections was an admission that, after five years, black town councils had failed to take off. The government is now launching them anew.

The opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party on Monday charged that 56 of its members and supporters have been killed in political violence during the 18 months since the party's leader, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, ran for president and forged the new leftist force. At least 16 of the victims died in the last month after hotly contested elections in the poor farming states of Guerrero and Michoacan, both strongholds of Cardenas.

President Bush's decision to increase the number of U.S. troops in violence-racked Baghdad has forced commanders to extend the tours of 3,500 soldiers and appears to eliminate prospects for significant withdrawals of American forces this year. Just a month ago, the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr.

The "road map" for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement backed by the Bush administration calls for a provisional Palestinian state this year before a final settlement in 2005. The plan demands an end to Palestinian violence and the freezing of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the opening steps in a three-phase timetable, U.S. officials confirmed Monday.

Israel and the Palestinian Authority opened negotiations Sunday over the last--and most difficult--issues standing in the way of a definitive end to their decades-old conflict. The meeting in the Egyptian resort city of Taba, which began with a handshake between chief Israeli negotiator Uri Savir and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, was more symbolic than substantive.

They preceded a decade of bloodshed in Algeria. In 1997, Albania teetered under their strain. They even threw Iraqi Kurdistan, often touted as a model for the future of this country, into years of armed clashes. Far too often, history has shown that democratic elections -- when pushed too hard or too soon in troubled regions -- do not forestall violence. Rather, they may help incite it. As Iraq lurches toward democracy, the country's Shiite Muslim majority has pushed hard for early elections.

Responding to public clamor for security, Iraq's interim government Wednesday empowered itself to impose martial law on a region-by-region basis to aggressively combat insurgents. The interim government enacted a National Safety Law to give Prime Minister Iyad Allawi broad powers to impose curfews, detain suspects and engage in electronic eavesdropping and mail surveillance in order to disrupt militants' movements and confront the insurgents.

The Clinton Administration must formulate a new strategy for the U.S. role in international security. The end of the Cold War has created a power vacuum filled by territorial disputes, civil wars, ethnic conflicts and tribal struggles. Since the United States has no desire to serve as policeman of these conflicts, there is a compelling need for collective international action through the United Nations. But the United States must take the lead to ensure that the U.N.

Could it happen again? In 1997, a relatively unknown cleric stunned the religious establishment in the Islamic Republic of Iran and won the country's presidency in a 70% landslide. His victory was credited mainly to young voters and women weary of moralistic hectoring and failed economic policies from the country's ruling mullahs. Today, Iranians go to the polls in a general election.

Back in 1997, proponents of overhauling Social Security met with the man who would become their most powerful convert: Texas Gov. George W. Bush, whose presidential ambitions were beginning to gel. The governor dined with Jose Pinera, architect of Chile's 1981 shift from government pensions to worker-owned retirement accounts, in a meeting that helped bring Bush a big step closer to embracing a similar plan for Social Security in his emerging presidential platform.