Stockholm hosts Int'l. Conference on Iraq

The red carpet rolled today in Infracity in Stockholm to welcome major political actors in an international conference on the reconstruction of war-torn Iraq. It is the biggest political event that Stockholm has taken on since a long time. Helping to put back Iraq on its feet has become a pressing world concern.

But not all agrees in Stockholm's hosting of the Iraq conference because critics say it legitimizes the war that the United States started and for which reconstruction and the problem of refugees that staggers Europe should be undertaken more by the US. The Swedish media reported positively on the Swedish government's decision to host the conference, even if it is clear that Washington has the greater responsibility especially in relation to refugee reception. Dagens Nyheter's editorial today says that, it is not reasonable that Europe should take on more responsibility for accommodating refugees than USA itself.

However, the editorial adds that it would be short-sighted to lay the burden mainly on the US. One has to accept two considerations: that USA's invasion of Iraq was wrong but the world has an important role to play in its reconstruction. Even if the state of violence has tapered down, the risk for escalation of conflict looms in the horizon. A devastated Iraq has repercussions on the stability of the region which does not lie in any one's interest.

It is reported that the international conference will not take up the issue of invasion but focus more on the future. It does not benefit anyone to dwell on the morality of why US invaded Iraq. After the US elections on November, it is expected that the Iraq issue will be treated differently in matters of foreign policy.

The conference is actually chaired by the United Nations in close collaboration with the government of Iraq. The major political actors that have arrived in Stockholm are US. Foreign Minister Condoleeza Rice, UN's General-Secretary Ban Ki Moon, the UN representative to Iraq and Foreign Ministers of Iraq, Iran and Great Britain.

While the conference has placed Stockholm and the Coalition government in the limelight, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is going to need a good balancing position in order not be seen as supporter of US Pres.Bush. Sweden has no ambition to play a big role in the conflict-ridden issue on how the UN and the international community will handle the conflict management and democratization of the Iraq. Stockholm hosted the conference as a neutral country upon the admonition of UN and the Iraq government.#

Gabriel Garcia Marquez on a Tallin Cruise

De'ja-vu, the strange feeling of a life moment in the past re-enacting itself in the present happened on a recent cruise to Tallin, the capital of Estonia. It seems that my fate is irreversibly linked to cruise ships, if not presidential yachts. Cruises to Tallin, Riga, Helsinki and Mariehamn from Stockholm are affordable luxuries whenever a need to get away hits the soul.

During my recent escapade to Tallin on the Queen Victoria 1 cruising ship, something remarkable happened. I don't mean having a Premium suite to myself - instead of a narrow cabin with two or four beds. On this particular cruise I met a woman, who like me was travelling alone. She was sitting by herself near a piano bar listening to a pianist's rendition of old 60s and 70s music. She was reading a book, " Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My heart skipped a beat. I was holding a copy of "The Autumn of the Patriarch" by the same author. I read her book earlier and fell in love with the tale of Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza. What a strange coincidence, I thought.. to see someone reading my book and listening to piano music.

I sat on the chair opposite her and gave her a smile. Then we looked at the books we were holding, and we both laughed. We started talking. Strange though, it seemed like we knew each other from somewhere like a lost friendship hidden in the pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novel. She said that she likes travelling alone and leisurely like on cruises after her husband passed away. I bit my lips because she took away my own story for being alone.

Obviously, our conversation fell on the books accompanying us. I told her that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is my favorite writer and that "Love in the Time of Cholera" and "Hundred Years of Solitude" were to me his best works. It is a tale of a love story that makes one re-examine one's own. How great was my own love story? How long has that love lasted. We became pensive as we separately sunk into our deep memories.

Then she told me what Fermina Daza taught her about love and being a woman. That Fermina Daza the woman was lost in all the roles she played to perfection: from being a dutiful daughter to being a dutiful wife and mother. She took on the stress imposed upon her by the society she lived in. Until Florentino Ariza, having waited half-a-century for her, declared his love on the same day Fermina's husband died. As the proper lady of the house, Fermina was revolted by Florentino's audacity. But as a woman of 72 years, she was shaken by the ardour of her old suitor. Then she finally agreed to get away from her suffocating social world, and into a Carribean riverboat with Florentino. In that boat and in the face of a ravaging old age, Fermina became a woman she had not been for many, many years.

My new acquaintance had a glint in her eyes when she narrated that part of "Love in the Time of Cholera" - Fermina's discovery of her lost sexuality. I travelled deep into mine searching for what I lost in the years gone.