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From Our Own Correspondent
16 Oct 2010
00:28:03
A huge welcome -- from some at least --as the President of Iran comes to southern was...
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Hi there. You've downloaded the BBC Radio programme from our own correspondent. We make two versions and if you'd like to hear our World Service programme, you'll find it on the BBC iplayer. This, though, is the edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's presented by Kate Ady.
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Today, a rock star welcome from some in Lebanon for the visiting president of Iran. Tales of despair and survival from the Hungarian villagers drowned in a flood of toxic sludge. A certain nostalgia in the Ukrainian countryside for the old Soviet way of doing things, and a passport from poverty for the Nepalese man who's just two foot tall. There was a low key reception for Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he flew into Tehran airport in the early hours of yesterday morning. It was in sharp contrast to the enthusiasm he encountered earlier in the week on his two day trip to Lebanon. The visit was seen as a gesture of encouragement to Iran's Lebanese allies, the powerful Shiite group Hezbollah. But it was condemned as provocative by both Israel and the United States. Jeremy Bowen in Beirut suggests the Iranian leader was keen to send out a message that Iran is one of the big players in the Middle East.
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Ali Hamdan pointed to the floor. When you're dealing with the Iranians, he said, it's all about carpets. Mr. Hamdan is the charming and always amiable foreign affairs chief of Amal. It's the senior Shiite political movement in Lebanon, though it's been outgrown by Hezbollah. His boss, Nabi Berry, a name older listeners might remember from the civil war of the 70s and 80s, led the official greeting party at Beirut Airport for his fellow Shiite president Ahmadinejad. Ali was talking about the ritual of bargaining that you have to go through if you're a customer in the Tehran carpet bazaar, the inspection of the goods, the non committal interest in carpets you may not necessarily want as a diversionary tactic to get a good price for the ones you do, and the leisurely consumption of tea. Then come the first prices. The slightly contemptuous response when the customer names his a glance signifying that if you knew anything about carpets, you wouldn't be wasting my time until finally the deal's done. Always, I suspect, with a carpet dealer coming out on top. But Ali Hamdan meant more than simply how to buy, sell and bargain. He was also talking about the weaving of the carpet, the months of knotting thousands of strands of wool or silk and the pattern rarely written down but lodged in the mind of the carpet maker, gradually and inexorably emerging on the loom. The Iranians he was suggesting, know where they're going in carpets, in business, and in political negotiations. On a chair opposite, packages stuffed with Iranian and Lebanese flags were spilling out onto his hand woven carpet, a mass of blues and reds. Ali, Hamdan's boss, was expecting President Ahmadinejad for dinner. Let's not stretch the carpet metaphor too much. I might have hesitated to use it at all if Ali hadn't. These days, sensible Western reporters don't want to be accused of masking their ignorance with Orientalist stereotypes. But the point is, it's not just Westerners who are struggling to work out what the Iranians want. Arabs are too. And just like Europeans or Americans, they find a good analogy very useful. Sharing a religion can only take you so far. The Iranians and the Arabs are not the same people. They don't just have a millennium or more of cultural differences between them. They also have a long history of fighting each other. But at this particular point in history, President Ahmadinejad is proclaiming that Iran is on Lebanon's side and plenty, though not all Lebanese, agree with him. At a rally that was more like a rock concert in south Beirut that thousands cheered and chanted Death to Israel and the Persian words for welcome, when he appeared on stage, the crowd was, as far as I could see, completely made up of Shiite supporters of Hezbollah. But Lebanon's other Muslim sect, the Sunnis, and many of its Christians are not at all happy about the Iranian President's visit. Hezbollah, already the most powerful single group in Lebanon, has been given an extra swagger by its famous visitor. Sectarian tension is high at the moment. It's widely believed that the UN led tribunal, which has spent five years investigating the assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafi Hariri, and others will soon issue indictments. The talk is that members of Hezbollah, a Shiite movement, might be accused of the killing of Mr. Hariri, who was a Sunni. That is political high explosive in Lebanon. I went to see Samir Jaja, the leader of the Lebanese Forces. It's now a political party, but when he ran it in the 1980s, the Lebanese Forces was a ruthless Christian militia. After the civil war, Mr. Zhaja was imprisoned for 11 years in solitary confinement in the basement of the Defence Ministry in Beirut. He's gone from no view at all to stunning vistas of the Mediterranean and the mountains in his current home. As befits a man in his position, he now lives in what you can only call a modern castle, high on a peak above the Christian port that runs into Beirut. His security is provided by middle aged Lebanese Forces veterans who look as if they had plenty of experience in the bad times. We talked about the chances of another war either between the Lebanese or with Israel or both. He concluded that that President Ahmadinejad was making a bad situation worse. The Lebanese talk easily about the worst that could possibly happen. Sometimes I think they do it in the hope that by talking they will somehow inoculate themselves against more tragedy.
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Jeremy Bowen in Beirut it's six years since Ukraine celebrated the Orange Revolution that some thought would sweep away corrupt and unaccountable Soviet style politicians and bring in pro European reformers. But in a country with weak institutions and riddled with corruption, the practicalities of government proved too much. Earlier this year, conservative politicians under President Viktor Yanukovych regained power. Critics say the government is now moving away from European values of democracy and freedom and looking back towards Russia for guidance. But Humphrey Hawksley, who's just been to Ukraine, says 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the political choices might not be that simple.
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She's made from a massive slab of stainless steel and stands 62 meters high. She holds up a sword and a shield emblazoned with the hammer and sickle and stretches skywards, watching over the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. They call her Mother of the Motherland, built symbolically to defend the Soviet Union from an encroaching Western Europe. Unlike in many countries, this statue has not been pulled down. Instead, she's come to represent the new, looming influence of Russia. See that? Said an American tourist. He pointed to the top of the statue, brought his hand rapidly down to the base, then lifted it up again, then down again. Nowadays they call it vertical power. They call it what? I asked. Or power vertical, he answered. Check it out. Caught in a rainstorm, Oleg Grybuchuk, who runs a think tank, arrived late for our meeting. As soon as we sat down, I asked what was meant by power vertical and whether it formed a part of the government's policy. He laughed. It means you have the biggest boss and he gives a command, and it goes through like blood in the arteries and reaches everywhere. But is it good or bad? I asked. What's the opposite? Power horizontal? Neither is good, he said quietly, his smile fading. But the opposite. We call that chaos. He was referring to the post Soviet period, particularly the years after mass protests in 2004, hailed as the Orange Revolution that threw out apparatchik politicians and ushered in reformists who were meant to forge a path towards European Union membership. It was yet another notch, many analysts thought, on the scoreboard for Western democracy. But it didn't work out like that, and earlier this year, conservative politicians were voted back into government. According to critics, they've been bolstering their own power and moving against activists and the media. In Brussels, that nerve center of the European Union, there's been much talk that Ukraine might now never become a member and that it's turning its back and taking a lead from the new authoritarian Russia from where, according to Google, the phrase power vertical first emerged. Ukrainians don't believe anymore in fairy tales, said Walid Arfush, who was among the Orange Revolution demonstrators. He then became disillusioned, switched sides and is now deputy head of the government controlled television station. We've never had democracy here, he said, only something that looked like democracy that the foreign newspapers wrote about. The only thing Ukrainians worry about is how can I pay my bills, how can I afford schooling for the kids? Less than an hour's drive from Kiev, I came upon a scene that, far from resembling an emerging European economy, was more suited to the pages of a novel by Leo Tolstoy. It was a product, as Tolstoy wrote, of the storm tossed sea of European history. A young man in ragged clothes, his face creased with work and the weather, lifted a load of hay onto his back. Bent double, an almost biblical figure. He carried it to a barn where his mother was gathering cows in a pen. His name was Volodymyr Petrovich. He was 10 when the Soviet Union collapsed, and today was celebrating his 31st birthday. The farm used to be a Soviet cooperative, rows of once magnificent whitewashed buildings now run down and broken, with stray dogs running through the grounds. Not surprisingly, Volodymyr hadn't heard of Power Vertical, nor was he much interested. The trouble is, there's no difference between politicians, he grumbled, bundling up another load of hay. They're always fighting each other. Politics is politics. But here is real life. Ukraine used to be part of the Soviet Union, you know, chipped in his mother. Then our wages went three times further. So what do you want for your birthday? I asked Volodymyr. He stood upright and brushed dirt off his hands. I need a horse to carry these loads, he said, but we can't afford one. Back in Kiev, I met a deputy prime minister, veteran conservative Boris Koleshnikov, and I told him about Volodymyr's need for a horse. That's what we really have to sort out, he answered. Wages. This is our biggest challenge. Will you do that with Power Vertical? I asked. He chuckled. Our opponents are making an issue of this. But the meaning is very simple. It means that decisions taken by the president are carried out, that's all. But some people say it means curtailing freedoms. I challenged turning away from Europe and leaning towards Moscow. No, he countered, fixing me with an iron gaze. You tell me about the farmer who needs a horse. Real freedom comes when there's freedom of the economy. So this power vertical, it's not Russia or Europe or democracy or anything. It's just making things work.
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Humphrey Hawksley in Kiev, the Indian authorities have announced they're to look into allegations of corruption and mismanagement at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Investigators will be meeting members of the organising committee on Monday. Meanwhile, residents of India's capital have been trying to evaluate the benefits the event has brought to their city. Sam Miller, who lives there, says one positive development has been the extension of its Metro railway system.
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As a child growing up in London, the Tube was my playground. I loitered happily there, trying to collect tickets from every one of its 250 plus stations or asking drivers to let me ride in the cab of the train. Most of them would. They wouldn't now, letting me apply the brakes and pointing out long, empty ghost stations. One day I set out to break the record for visiting every station on the network, which then stood at 15 hours. But I gave up in less than 45 minutes. I'd failed to plan the journey properly and I'd forgotten to bring any food with me. The Tube Challenge, as it's now known, remains a popular pastime, particularly with computer programmers, who have devised software to work out the quickest route. When I moved to Delhi in 2003, its metro had just opened one line and only six stations. I was an excited early passenger. It took less than 20 minutes to travel its length, which includes a rare view of the city's neglected river, the Yamuna. The Metro was treated as a modern marvel, a tourist attraction, but of little use to most deliites. The network slowly expanded and had more than 50 stations by early 2009. Over the same period, I explored Delhi in almost intimate detail, and for a book I eventually wrote about the city. I decided to transplant the Tube challenge to Delhi and set a record for visiting every station on the Metro. I succeeded. It was much easier than my previous attempt in London and took me just under two and a half hours. For the last two years, large parts of Delhi have resembled a building site. Much of the construction work has been for the anxiously awaited Commonwealth Games, and the Games in turn provided an excuse and A deadline for almost any kind of building activity. Ancient monuments were restored, flyovers were built, old shopping centres were prettified, Delhi's first cycle lanes were created. And, of course, dozens more metro stations were opened. In the month leading up to the Games, with less fanfare than usual, two more metro lines opened, and I decided to repeat my Metro challenge and visit all 136 stations on the network. I prepared, carefully plotting out the quickest route, packing this time enough food to survive a journey that would take me to every corner of Delhi and would last, I calculated, at least seven hours. And so, on a humid Friday morning, I began my journey. The newest trains were impressively sleek, with the electronic station indicators above the doors, plug points to recharge mobiles and laptops, and special carriages for women passengers. Most of the stations are unlike the London Tube above ground, usually raised high above street level, giving superb views over this enormous city which has twice the population of London. The journey began well, but I missed an interchange and lost 15 minutes. Then, while I was checking my stopwatch on a platform and writing times down in my notebook, two unctuously polite policemen came up to me. Suspicious behaviour, they said, I explained. They looked at me as if I was quite mad. Eventually, they let me continue, but had missed two trains and was now disheartened and at least half an hour behind schedule. I got out my sandwiches. A fellow passenger pointed silently to a notice no eating and drinking on the Metro. I was starving. And so, I'm ashamed to say, I abandoned the challenge and went for a meal, promising myself that I would try again once the Games were over. And as I now look ahead, beyond the hype and the sneers that have overshadowed the Games, I feel again some small pride in my adopted city, which, despite the poverty, despite the corruption, despite. Despite the chaos, can claim as its own one of the world's most impressive railway systems.
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Sam Miller in Delhi. Fame has finally come to a Nepalese teenager called Kegendra Thapa Maggar. He's been officially named the world's smallest man. He hadn't been able to claim the title until his 18th birthday, but that came this week, and with it, a place in the Guinness Book of records. Kagendra is 2 foot 2 and a half inches tall, and that means he's just a shade more tiny than the former title holder, the doubtless disappointed but still diminutive Colombian, Edouard Hernandez. Joanna Jolly tells us that Kagendra and his family believe this newfound celebrity will bring them financial security.
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When the travelling salesman, Min Bahadorana stumbled on 14 year old Kegendra playing in a village high in the Himalayas. He knew he was onto a good thing. The wily businessman could see that the tiny boy who's been stunted since birth, had potential. Mim was the first to recognise our son could be a world record holder. His mother tells me proudly, standing in a bare concrete room in the shadow of the snow capped Annapurna Mountains. We're grateful to him and now he's like an uncle to us. Min began his promotion of Kgendra at local fairgrounds where children paid to see him. He then took him to Kathmandu and tried to get his height verified by the Guinness Book of Records. They said at 14, Kagendra was too young to be measured. So Min continued on with his campaign to push the boy into the spotlight. He succeeded. And When Kegendra turned 18 this week, the world's press was there to record his crowning as the world's smallest man. Before his birthday, Kegendra spoke about how much he was looking forward to throwing cake at his guests and perhaps even receiving a traditional kokuri knife as a present. The record holder, who still has the mind of a young child, seemed unaware of just how much his fortunes had changed. But his family and his new uncle Min know for them, Kegendra's fame is a path out of the grinding poverty of Nepalese village life. It's stories like Kagendra's that have inspired many Nepalese to look to the Guinness Book of Records as a way of changing their lives. In a country where there are few economic opportunities and the political situation has yet to stabilize after a decade long civil war, the internationally recognized book is seen as a sure fire way to make a name for yourself. This is a truth that's dominated the life of 27 year old Rohit Pimilsina, the eldest of five brothers from a village near Kathmandu. Rohit says that he's always been an exhibitionist, performing songs and dances in school competitions. At the age of 13, he first learnt there was such a thing as a world Record book from a television program. He remembered the presenters saying that everyone in the world had an extraordinary talent, but they had to recognize it for themselves. Rohit began to wonder what he could offer. At first, he decided to set an original record. He came up with the idea of breaking the most eggs by tapping them with one finger. Under test conditions, he managed to break 99 eggs in one minute with the middle finger of his right hand. Eagerly he applied for verification, but was told that breaking eggs by tapping was Not a recognized category. Rohit was disappointed, but he says, not the sort of person who gives up easily. At the age of 28, after two years of diligent practice, he finally managed to achieve a world record. Instead of inventing a new category, he played it safe by choosing the already trodden path of holding the max maximum number of tennis balls in one hand. Previously, the record had been held by a Spaniard who'd managed 18. Rohit did three better, holding 21 balls for 40 seconds. Finally, Rohit had the recognition he craved. Nepal's Lawn Tennis association put on a special ceremony to honour him and officially presented him with his certificate. He was photographed and interviewed by the national media and for a while basked in his new found fame. But then he said he realised he needed to do more. In the last two years, Rohit's gone on to break three more world records. One for kissing the most people on the cheek in one minute, One for shaking hands the longest and one for holding the most golf balls in one hand. The Guinness Book of Records is the best way for Nepalese people to show their talent to the world, he tells me. Our country is developing and it can't compete with European countries. Most of us live hand to mouth, he continues. We can't think about big technology or the moon and space. But I want to show there's a Nepalese person who thinks about international history and wants to be part of it. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm isn't shared by his family. There were arguments when he sold first his motorbike, then his computer and then a precious golden bangle to fund his attempts. Unlike Kagendra, who's already travelled the world and become rich from being the world's smallest man, Rohit has yet to see tangible benefits from his record breaking efforts. But this doesn't deter him. I'm going to keep going, even though I realize it's become a bit of an addiction, he says, because winning world records does give me true satisfaction.
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And that was Joanna Jolly. Many of the people who were evacuated when a tide of lethal red mud flooded three villages in Hungary are being allowed to return to their homes. This morning. There's anger among the villagers that police so far haven't taken action against the metals company from whose reservoir the caustic sludge leaked. They have been questioning two of its senior executives. The flood caused several deaths and injuries. It poisoned local waterways and left hundreds of houses uninhabitable. Nick Thorpe has just returned to his home in the capital Budapest, after spending eight days providing coverage of the Spill
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and its Consequences the homeless hitchhiker at the roadside hesitated before getting into my car. What's all this stuff on the side? He asked suspiciously. My normally blue car was coated with fine red dust, the residue of the red sludge I'd been driving through and living in for a week. He peered over my shoulder at the piles of satellite phone cables, protective suits, rubber gloves, and disinfectant lotions. Is it dangerous? He asked, only moderately. There were plenty of funny moments in this week of tragedy. The moment my tartan umbrella blew away from its perch on the roof of my car, where it was supposed to protect my satellite dish from the driving rain on the very first day of the disaster in the village of Kolontar, the night the tirelessly kind and helpful staff of the Mango Hotel handed us the keys and told us to lock up the place and turn out the lights because they couldn't stay up any longer. We worked 21 hours that day. Disasters expose the most intimate details of people's lives at the moment they strike the surprise on the faces in Pompeii, petrified by the volcanic ash. The schoolbooks opened on the little wooden desks in the classroom at Pripyat, the city abandoned forever during the Chernobyl disaster. So it was in the red zone. The painting of the Madonna on the wall of someone's front room, the tidal mark of red mud up to her neck but no higher. A woman was rescued from this house, or the one next door was. When she was already up to her shoulders in the mud. I met the man who rescued her, who hauled her out of her window and into the arms of the fireman. Imagine the look between her and Mary in those last moments. Who can doubt at such moments the power of prayer? Listening back to my sound recordings of the week, I hear myself coughing constantly. I was just recovering from some nasty chest infection when I first arrived to cover the accident. I also had the remains of a black eye and a limp from an over strenuous game of football. With my sons seeing me coming down the road, the villagers must have thought I was a fellow victim. The first two days of the disaster were the worst, when it rained all the time before the sun and the BBC cavalry rode in to the rescue. My satellite dish, stripped of its tartan brolly, died. When the rain finally penetrated the battery casing. I was running it off the cigarette lighter socket in the car, and when it went down, it knocked out the overhead lights in the car too. Then, in the pitch dark, my computer battery gave up too. I did at least have one set of the full BBC protective gear issued seven years ago for the Iraq war to protect me from Saddam Hussein's elusive chemical weapons. But each time I tried to pull off or pull on my red mud spattered boots, the stuff got all over my hands. The journalist can usually eventually get away, but the locals can't. On the third day, I tried to speak to a tall man striding through the sludge beside a pickup truck loaded with bicycles. He shook his head and kept walking. There was red mud all over his face and clothes, and a look of such unspeakable sadness in his eyes. I didn't ask him again. His companion explained that he'd been searching for his elderly mother day and night, to no avail. Rescue teams found her body a week later, swept halfway to the next town by the flood. We were taken to visit the broken reservoir by none other than Zoltan Iyesh, an energetic former green activist who's now State Secretary for the Environment. He was dressed, for reasons best known to himself, in a pinstriped suit and shiny black shoes. He marched at the head of a rabble of international journalists along the pathway, just two metres wide, between the toxic storage lake, which had already collapsed on our left, and another which was threatening to collapse on our right. The broken pond was like the estuary of English rivers where I grew up. At low tide, though, the mud was red and I missed the smell of the sea and the seaweed and the cry of the gulls. The wall is moving all the time, he explained. We must walk in single file so we don't cause the final collapse. The jagged cracks themselves were big enough to put your foot in, though I didn't try. For the first time in 25 years in this job, I heard journalists grumble about getting too much access to the story.
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Nick Thorpe, finally back home this weekend, but perhaps planning to give family football a miss. That's it. Two editions next week on Thursday, and I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.