Heroic Actions on the Fringes: Rallying for the Future

World Leaders Create Freelance Global Diplomatic Team:
"The Elders" Repped by Mandela, Branson

By MICHAEL WINES
The New York Times

JOHANNESBURG — Melding serious statesmanship and a dose of audacity, the former South African president, Nelson R. Mandela, and a clutch of world-famous figures plan to announce on Wednesday a private alliance to launch diplomatic assaults on the globe's most intractable problems.

The alliance, to be unveiled during events marking Mr. Mandela's 89th birthday, is to be called the Elders. Among others, it includes the retired Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu; former President Jimmy Carter; the former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan; and the human-rights activist and former Irish president Mary Robinson.

Many, including Mr. Mandela, have been early and harsh critics of President Bush and American foreign policy, particularly toward Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The group's members and backers insisted in interviews, however, that they were guided neither by ideology nor by geopolitical bent.

Mr. Mandela, in remarks prepared for Wednesday, said that since members no longer held public office, they could work solely for the common good, not for outside interests.

"This group can speak freely and boldly, working both publicly and behind the scenes on whatever actions need to be taken," he wrote.

"Together we will work to support courage where there is fear, foster agreement where there is conflict and inspire hope where there is despair."

Whether governments that become the objects of the Elders' freelance diplomacy would agree remains to be seen. One of the group's founders and principal financial backers, the British tycoon Richard Branson, said leaders he had briefed — including Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, and South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki — "very much support the initiative."

"There will always be skeptics of any positive initiatives, but these are people giving up their time for nothing," Mr. Branson said. "Most individuals in the world would welcome a group of people who are above ego, who, in the last 12 or 15 years of their lives, are above partisan politics."

The Elders would not try to solve all the world's problems, he said, but would work "stone by stone" on those issues where they can do some good.

At least one veteran crisis-solver, the former American secretary of state Madeleine Albright, said the idea should not be dismissed.

"It's worth having people with experience see what they can do," Ms. Albright, reached by telephone in Paris, said Tuesday. "So much of diplomacy is having an outsider lay out what the issues are — having a wider outside view."

She added that having said that, much of diplomacy also requires the weight of nations like the United States to succeed. "Whether these people would be representing a country or themselves will make a difference," she said.

That may depend on the situation. The Elders may sometimes complement the efforts of a government to solve a crisis, Mr. Annan said Tuesday, but also may make what he called timely interventions when official efforts have failed.

Asked how that differed from what United Nations diplomats were supposed to do, Mr. Annan replied: "We are not out to defend the positions of any institution or government. We're ordinary global citizens who want to help with the problems of the world."

None of the problems the Elders will tackle have been selected. Indeed, not all of the members, who will eventually number about a dozen, have been chosen.

"The Elders won't get involved in delivering bed nets for malaria prevention," Mr. Carter said. "The issue is to fill vacuums — to address major issues that aren't being adequately addressed."

If the concept and the name seem a bit outsize — a diplomatic league of superheroes, one might say — it may be because of the group's ties to Mr. Branson, a friend of Mr. Mandela who rarely does things in a small way.

Mr. Branson said he began thinking about the notion in 2003, after he sought to persuade Mr. Mandela and Mr. Annan to travel to Baghdad to ask Saddam Hussein to relinquish power in Iraq. The two agreed, but war broke out before arrangements were completed.

Later, after working on a concert for one of Mr. Mandela's charities, Mr. Branson flew home with Peter Gabriel, the British rock star and human-rights activist. "I was talking about the need for a group of global elders to be there to rally around in times of conflict," he said, "and Peter said he'd had a similar idea."

Thus was born the Elders, named after the pre-eminence of elders in African village societies. Over the past year or so, Mr. Branson held a series of meetings at which members and backers were recruited.

The remaining announced members of the group are Graça Machel, Mr. Mandela's wife and a noted Mozambican human-rights activist; Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in extending loans to impoverished borrowers; Ela Bhatt, a women's trade union leader in India; and Li Zhaoxing, who was China's foreign minister until this year.

Mr. Branson and Mr. Gabriel contributed money to begin the project. Asked how much it would cost, Mr. Branson replied, "Obviously, it's not cheap." But enough donors have given money to finance the Elders' first four years of work, he said, and he anticipated that raising more would not be difficult.

"It's an organization that's set up to be there in a hundred years' time," he said.





Darfur campaign starts Olympic torch genocide tour
Mon Aug 13, 2007 8:23AM EDT

By Stephanie Hancock

OURE CASSONI REFUGEE CAMP, Chad (Reuters) - Actress Mia Farrow and fellow campaigners have begun an Olympic-style torch relay through countries that have suffered genocide to press China to help end abuses in the Darfur region of its ally Sudan.

Farrow, a goodwill ambassador for U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF and outspoken critic of abuses in western Sudan, lit a torch just across the border in Chad almost exactly a year before the Beijing Olympics are due to open on August 8, 2008.

"This flame represents and honors all those who have been lost, and all those who still suffer," said Farrow as she held the symbolic torch in Oure Cassoni refugee camp, 3 miles from Chad's border with Sudan.

"This flame celebrates the courage of those who survived and represents the hope we all share for an end to the violence, and a safe return home," she said.

During a fierce rain and dust storm which engulfed the camp, the actress then wrapped up the ceremony by symbolically leading away a refugee boy into the distance, still holding the torch high in her other hand, to cheers from fellow activists.

Human rights campaigners accuse Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's government of supporting abuses by his armed forces and allied Arab militia known as the "Janjaweed" and accuse China, Sudan's most powerful ally and top oil customer, of shielding Khartoum from international action.

Washington brands Darfur's war genocide. International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in Darfur, though Sudan puts the toll much lower at about 9,000.

OLYMPIC OPPORTUNITY

China hopes the Olympics will showcase its growing industrial and economic might, and campaigners trying to exert pressure on Beijing over alleged human rights abuses by it or its allies have seized on the Games as a publicity opportunity.

Critics who accuse China of widespread human rights violations at home against groups such as outlawed Falun Gong spiritual group began a rival torch relay in Athens, on Friday, the same day Farrow lit the Darfur torch in Chad.

Organizers requested details of the controversial ceremony in Chad be published only after they had left for Rwanda, where an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in a 1994 genocide.

"The Olympic torch travels the world before the games to represent peace and brotherhood. We are doing this torch ... to also represent peace and brotherhood for the people of Darfur," Jill Savitt, of Organizers Dream for Darfur, told reporters.

Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service, and Ira Newble, an NBA basketball player with the Cleveland Cavaliers, also took part in last week's ceremony.

Eastern Chad is home to 230,000 Darfuri refugees as well as 170,000 more Chadian civilians forced from their homes by inter-ethnic attacks similar to those which have plagued neighboring Darfur.

The Dream for Darfur torch is due to continue to visit genocide sites in Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia, Germany and Cambodia as well as touring nearly two dozen cities across the United States ahead of next year's Olympics.

The U.N. Security Council has authorized a joint U.N.-African Union operation of 20,000 peacekeepers and 6,000 civilian police for Darfur. Sudan at first resisted the proposal, but backed down. The new force will absorb a 7,000-member African peacekeeping force now in Darfur, and was to be in place by year's end.

The school where Farrow appeared Wednesday is Ecole Technique Officielle, where 2,000 Rwandans were executed during the country's genocide.

The killing started within hours after the president's plane was mysteriously shot down over Kigali late on April 6, 1994. Hutu militiamen, known as interahamwe, set up roadblocks across Kigali and on April 7 began hunting down Tutsis and moderate Hutus and killing them.

The Darfur torch relay will also go to Armenia, Bosnia, Germany, Cambodia and finally in December to Hong Kong.

Mia Farrow:
http://www.miafarrow.org

SaveDarfur:
http://www.savedarfur.org/torchrelay




Fringe actor with sword foils gang of thieves

GARETH EDWARDS
Edinburghnews.com

A GANG of teenage robbers targeted the wrong Fringe performer when they stole from a broadsword-wielding Greek warrior.

The mythical hero Odysseus - also known as student Tom Clews - chased them down, brandishing his solid-steel sword and in full costume.

The 20-year-old managed to hold three of them for the police and get his money back, despite being hit on the head with a bottle.

Police said the gang was wanted in connection with other robberies from Fringe performers in the city centre and praised the student for his actions.

The drama unfolded when members of the Live Wire Theatre group were walking through the Grassmarket on their way back to their hostel in the early hours of Thursday.

As they approached the hostel, one of the cast handed Tom £20 to buy some food. The youths barged into them, snatched the money and ran off.

Tom, who practises the martial art Tai Kwando and is a skilled swordsman, shrugged off his heroics.

He said: "I didn't really think, it was just a surge of adrenaline and fear and I just took off after them.

"Something hit me on the head and it smashed like a bottle, but I don't have any cuts or anything, which is quite lucky.

"I don't really know what I was doing but I had the sword, which is really heavy, and so I tried to trip them up with it and managed to take the legs away from a few of them.

"It's hard to describe what it was like but I certainly didn't feel heroic. It would sound good to say I was in character as Odysseus and that's why I chased them, but I think I was just angry that they'd taken the money. I did think I would get in trouble with the police for having the sword but they said these guys were wanted for other robberies and thanked me."

A spokeswoman for Live Wire Theatre said she was stunned anyone had tried to rob the actor from Oxford while he was in full costume and carrying a sword.

"He doesn't exactly look like the sort of person you would rob anyway, let alone when he's in character, and these young guys really did pick on the wrong man," she said.

"As a company we have been noted for our sword fighting, and we use real, heavy steel swords on stage, so it is very physical.

"Because of the amount of practice he has done, Tom is very used to taking knocks, so he claims he hardly even felt the bottle, just heard the glass smashing, and carried on chasing the guys down.

"He has been to the Fringe with us before, last year when he played Hector in the Iliad, so he's used to playing heroes, but now he can say he really is one."

The story is in marked contrast to a promotional stunt by the theatre company last year that landed it on the wrong side of the law.

The group was cautioned by officers a day after a widespread terror alert after they were spotted wielding a crossbow outside the Palace of Holyrood House while the Queen was staying there.