International

Romania’s president could have learned something from King Midas who, according to legend, turned anything he touched into gold. Yet what had at first seemed like a gift, ultimately became a curse.

Mladen Jukicic loves his job – even if it could kill him. To go to work in the morning, he needs a special suit, a metal detector and a whole lot of nerve. Jukicic, 48, is a land mine clearance expert in Croatia.  

“You know, it wouldn’t be a half-bad idea for us to meet on the beach so you can get a better idea of what I look like,” says the deep, masculine voice on the other end of the phone.

“You’ll recognise me easily: I’m tall, moderately muscled, with short brown hair. I’ll be in a tight white T-shirt.”

In mid-May, I flew to Benghazi to meet Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC), a visit coordinated with European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton and NATO allies. I was the first Western Foreign Minister to travel to Libya since the crisis began. What I saw reminded me of my country 20 years ago, just after Poland’s first free elections, which, together with the fall of the Berlin Wall barely six months later, came to symbolize the Cold War’s end.

Suleiman J. Al-Herbish surely has one of the best jobs in the world. As Director General of OFID, the OPEC Fund for International Development, he is in charge of a multi-billion dollar revolving endowment whose mission is to help countries in the neediest parts of the world.

From Washington, the enthusiasm of the French for intervention in Libya is seen with a mixture of relief and puzzlement. The Americans do not want the job and are happy that someone else does. Indeed, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s willingness to intervene (alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron) helped close a dangerous gap between the world of “values,” which would call for direct American intervention against Muammar al-Qaddafi, and the world of “interest,” which impelled President Barack Obama to restraint.

Harouna Ismael Lebaye from Mauritania says he rues the day that the big boats from Europe started turning up off the coast of his West African country.

OK, so three weeks ago, I officially moved to Los Angeles. It is not that I wanted to live in Los Angeles. Or work in movies. I fell in love. With a man who wants to live in Los Angeles. And works in movies. Life has its own plans.

The attack by a Western-led alliance on Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in Libya is driven largely by principled motives. Had it turned its back on the Libyan rebels, the West would have betrayed its very identity.

Of course, the same principles are not being applied to save the brutally repressed masses in Yemen or the Shia protesters in Bahrain. It is doubtful whether they will be extended to Saudi Arabia and Syria, let alone to Iran. Nor is it improbable that a protracted war in Libya would end by vindicating the warning of the region’s authoritarian rulers that the Arab Awakening is but a prelude to chaos.