Monday, 3 September, 2007

by Jill Singer
The Herald Sun

The APEC summit should be a time of national pride, yet evidence suggests we are about to be cloaked in ignominy.

I'm not referring to the inevitable threat of violent protest and the fools who engage in it.

Sensible political debate would be better served by them staying at home rather than creating a distraction.

No, the real danger is that we are about to be sold down the drain.

PM John Howard is about to spend hundreds of millions of dollars hijacking APEC for his own political purposes.

Faced with disastrous polls and criticism for downplaying the risks of climate change, John Howard now insists he will make climate change the flagship issue of the summit.

His plan is to paint himself as an international crusader for environmental good.

As he puts it, he wants to see APEC leaders agree on long-term aspirational goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

What pointless grandstanding.

The world can't wait while polluters waffle about aspirational goals. It needs mandatory targets and action.

And there's the rub. Howard dares to posture about international leadership and the environment, but steadfastly refuses to commit Australia to mandatory emission targets for greenhouse gases.

He is in no position to lecture developing countries about pollution when he continues to set the worst possible example.

Unless John Howard stands up at APEC and says Australia will set targets and stick to them, he is himself no more than a bag of hot gas.

There are two prongs to Howard's APEC agenda. Apart from painting himself as serious on climate change, he wants to flog more uranium to rogue nations.

He has already done a deal to provide uranium to India, which should be part of APEC but isn't. This is despite that country's lack of safeguards and bitter relations with Pakistan, another nuclear power in need of containment rather than encouragement.

Make no mistake, John Howard is putting us and the world at greater risk of nuclear attack and terrorism.

Several years ago I witnessed India's subterranean weapons testing.

As the booming northern desert visibly lifted and sand filled the sky, an Indian civilian next to me started muttering about Pakistanis and onions.

He would have preferred to test the weapons on Pakistan rather than in India because of his concern there would be an onion shortage. Indian officials were known to fill the explosion cavities with truckloads of onions to "kill the radioactivity". And John Howard is selling them Australia's uranium.

It gets worse. John Howard is set this week to fete one of the most evil and murderous political leaders alive, Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

Russia runs on officially sanctioned corruption. Obscenely rich gangsters benefit from Putin's rule, while many millions of ordinary Russians are being starved, tortured and murdered by his brutal regime.

The country is also home to an arsenal of nuclear weapons, which are up for sale to terrorists.

The courageous Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, followed Putin's career closely and described Russian

life as characterised by a system of thieving judges, rigged elections and a President with only contempt for the needs of his people.

Russian soldiers are routinely killed by their own army, on matters such as complaining that have been issued with boots four sizes too small. Civilians who mutter privately about corruption conveniently "suicide".

Any who stand in Putin's way are soon found shot, stabbed, injected with radioactive material or otherwise dispatched.

Even the weakest citizens are tormented and abused. Survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear power accident, for example, are now being denied the medicine needed to relieve their pain.

Anna Politkovskaya was often asked if she was frightened. She admitted she was, but couldn't stop telling the truth about Putin out of love for her country.

Every day, when she headed off to work, she would kiss her children goodbye and wonder if she would see them again.

Last October, Anna Politkovskaya was gunned to death outside her home.

Last week, 10 Russian officials were charged with her murder. Putin refused

to comment.

This is the man who will be riding a high at the APEC summit in Sydney, where John Howard is planning to shake his hand in a special deal.

The deal?

John Howard has arranged for Australia's biggest mining companies to supply Vladimir Putin with uranium. How can he be allowed to get away with this?

There is blood on Vladimir Putin's hands. Buckets of it. The hand that shakes his can never be wiped clean.