INDIA COCKS A SNOOK AT WASHINGTON

Quote of the day, from this article in Dawn:

On India's part, Defence Minister George Fernandes continued to cock a snook at Washington, telling reporters in Kolkota that Washington's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been proved wrong, because US forces had found no such weapons.

I'm not really sure what "cocking a snook" means (any help, Chris?), but it sounds bad.

The article, at any rate, was Dawn's attempt to play up recent tension between India and the U.S. As I noted in a discussion of the Indian papers' descriptions of the Pakistani foreign minister's trip to Washington (see here as well), you really can't trust reports from either side of the Line of Control with respect to the international fortunes of the other side.

Although there is no mention of increased tension between India and the U.S. in the Times of India, Monday's lead article on their website mocks the U.S.'s efforts to hunt for Iraqi WMD capabilites, which ToI seems to think is a wild goose chase. Here are a few of the biting paragraphs in the article "U.S. Hunts for Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax":

WASHINGTON: Saddam Hussain and secular Iraq may take pride in being home to the most emancipated women in the Arab world, but the United States is not impressed. Amid universal opprobrium over lack of evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Washington is looking for two Iraqi women scientists believed to be central to Baghad's bio-warfare programme.

They go by the fearful monikers of Mrs Anthrax and Dr Germ.

Mrs Anthrax, also known as "Chemical Sally" in western circles, is Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, the lone woman seen in several video clips of Saddam Hussain meeting with his Revolutionary Command Council. Sitting demurely next to the Iraqi dictator's feared son Qusay in a room full of men, Dr Ammash is now believed to be on the lam, having possibly escaped to Syria.

The United States has counted her among the 55 most wanted Iraqis, and she features as a "five of hearts" in the deck of cards Washington has issued in its hunt.

. . .At the height of the US bombing of Baghdad, video clips released by the Iraqi government often showed the camera panning past Ammash, usually dressed in military uniform and covered with a headscarf. The clips alarmed Washington, which believed that it was a message from Baghdad that Iraq was ready to use bio-weapons on Coalition forces.

A more mundane explanation, now that the American panic has proved to unfounded, is that she is the lone woman in the Iraqi high command, which contrary to US propaganda, was a diverse group with Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, Christians and other minorities.

This snook cocking doesn't make itself onto Monday's editorial page at ToI, though. Instead there is an article on the dangers of childbirth in India (the article claims that maternal mortality levels are 40 times higher in India than in Japan), an editorial castigating China for its handling of SARS, and a melancholic obituary for the Concorde.