A few yards away another karlik, unconnected with her, was also working the patch. Her krisha, the thugs who control her – creaming off 90 per cent of the 60 roubles (pounds 2.30) or so that she pulls in from the street each day – had no time for demonstrations. On this day, as on any other, she was expected to deliver up her pittance.It was they who had brought her to Moscow from her home in the republic of Moldova, where she once worked as a painter.As the crumbled cardboard sign which she showed to passing motorists explained, her 13-year-old son – who spent his last months in a wheelchair – had died in childhood.Now, aged 36, she was destined to work the streets indefinitely, in return for a place to sleep and a few roubles. I was curious to know if there was any other reason, beyond poverty, that she had not joined the demands for what she clearly needs, a better life.In retrospect, it should have obvious She was begging because she had no choice. There is probably a politically correct way of putting this – although not one used by the Russians, who worry little about the sensitivities of minorities – but she is what they call a karlik, a dwarf.
A few days ago I decided to meet her in person, although for no noble or charitable reason. It was the day of protest, when the trade unions had called Russians out onto the streets to demonstrate against unpaid pensions and wages and to call for the resignation of President Boris Yeltsin.No one, on the face of it, had any better cause for complaint than Ms Beleu; and yet, as I was driving to Red Square to talk to the crowds, I noticed that she was still working.
I FIRST became aware of Pasha Beleu about a week ago, when she was gazing straight at me through the car window with an expression which – although she was begging – contained not a jot of self-pity or resentment. She was working the crossroads not far from our apartment block near Moscow University, on a grey and chilly afternoon. The reason we met eye to eye is that, although in her mid-thirties, she is no more than 4ft high. The decision on the new secretary-general will not be made until Commonwealth leaders meet in South Africa in November 1999..
Mr McKinnon broke a nine-year deadlock by bringing the parties – the PNG government and the squabbling separatists – to a series of meetings at an army camp and a rural college campus in New Zealand, where he arranged a ceasefire, or rather allowed it to arrange itself, without deadlines or imposed solutions “We were on Melanesian time,” he said later “There was no rushed decision- making.. We set no agendas… All the parties needed time to assume ownership of the process.” The ceasefire is still holding.It was his achievements in Bougainville which gained Mr McKinnon a Nobel Peace Prize nomination and brought him to the notice of many Commonwealth leaders. He is deputy chairman of the Commonwealth’s Monitoring Action Group, pressuring wayward states such as Nigeria, Gambia and Sierre Leone to return to democratic government.But his most notable success has been in his role as a peacemaker, specifically in the bloody (and weirdly under-reported) war on the island of Bougainville. About 20,000 islanders – one in seven of the population – have died in this conflict between the Papua New Guinea government and Melanesian secessionists.When the Papua New Guinea government of Sir Julius Chan decided to bring in the British “security consultants” Sandline International to wage war in Bougainville, the PNG army threatened mutiny, riots broke out in Port Moresby and the security of the whole region stood at risk. In any case, in the Commonwealth as in all good clubs, hidden hatreds swirl below the surface, and India has no friends among the numerous island states of the Caribbean and the Pacific.
But quite apart from the law of rotation, Mr McKinnon, who has been New Zealand’s foreign minister for eight years, has established a good reputation in his own right, as a champion of small states in the matter of debt relief and as one of the Commonwealth’s leading negotiators with the Nigerian military government.
President Jiang knows that Taiwan is highly reluctant to rejoin the Chinese mainland and realises that an offer of reunification has to be made attractive.Last month Tang Jiaxuan, China’s foreign minister, told an American audience that once Taiwan was reunited with the mainland it would “enjoy a greater autonomy than Hong Kong and Macau”. The tone of his speech was widely seen as highly conciliatory.. LOS ANGELES’ emergency services suffered their own emergency over the weekend after the city’s 911 telephone exchange – the equivalent of 999 – was inadvertently drenched in 2,000 gallons of water. Buried deep in the bowels of City Hall, workers operating the telephones fell victim to a small fire that broke out a few floors above them.
The fire – caused by some old fireworks being stored by police investigators – was put out immediately, but the over-zealous sprinkler system regrettably turned the 911 room into something from a scene in Titanic.”There were cables floating in six inches of water That’s the kiss of death. But Malaysia is in bad odour at present, and the violent, and now nuclear-fanged rivalry of India and Pakistan means that neither country is able to field a candidate acceptable to the other – or to anyone else. This is partly at least because he has geography on his side. There is an informal law of rotation at work in the Commonwealth which means that the top job should go to a different region in turn.
