Editorial Reviews
Daniel Pipes, Founder and Director, Middle East Forum
Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out (Hardcover)by Susan Crimp (Editor), Joel Richardson (Editor)

"The right of Muslims freely to leave Islam is emerging as an international human rights issue of the first order. Why We left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out both documents and humanizes the tragedy of those born-Muslims who wish to pursue their conscience. The stories are vivid and the political implications profound."

Robert Spencer, Director of Jihad Watch and NY Times bestselling author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)" and "The Truth About Muhammad."
"Powerfully written and deeply compelling, these accounts of people of conscience who left Islam are rendered all the more poignant by the realization that each one of them, no matter their status or situation, lives under the death sentence mandated by the Prophet Muhammad for apostates from Islam. Why We Left Islam should be required reading for human rights activists and all those who value the dignity of the human person, so that they will see why this horrific denial of the freedom of conscience within Islam must be resisted by all people of goodwill...

From the Publisher
The penalty for renouncing Islam is death, which makes the stories in Why We Left Islam -- and the lives behind them -- all the more remarkable.

Contained in these brutally honest personal accounts written by former Muslims is an urgent truth that the mainstream media and cowed politicians won't admit -- that far from being "a religion of peace," Islam is instead barbaric and repressive, a nightmare for those living under it and those seeking to confront it.

Here are some of the voices from Why We Left Islam...

"I still remember my sister's black eyes; she stared at the sky while she was dug into the ground. She was wrapped in white sheets and her hands were tied to her body. She was buried up to her waist. The rabid mob circled her with stones in their hands and started throwing them at her while the roars of 'Allah-u-Akbar' added to their frenzy..." -- Yagmur

"As a Muslim man, the fact that my mother had only given birth to three girls made him really angry. He beat my mother very badly and the doctors were forced to remove her womb...When she awoke, my father was kind enough to tell her that he was divorcing her now that she could no longer have children, and being a man he needed a son." -- Shara

"The Koran is full of verses that teach the killing of unbelievers and how Allah would torture them after they die. There are no lessons on morality, justice, honesty or love..." -- Ali

These shocking, real-life stories from those who have escaped the Muslim yoke make Why We Left Islam a powerful communique -- and a warning -- to the West.

About the Author
Susan Crimp is a respected journalist and author specializing in Middle East affairs.

Joel Richardson is an expert in Jewish and Islamic theology.

India
Shovelling for their supper
Apr 24th 2008 | JALOR
From The Economist print edition

The world's biggest public-works project just got bigger. In some places it is working better than many feared; but by no means everywhere

James Astill

OUTSIDE Ajit Pura village, in India's arid state of Rajasthan, 42 women and a man scrape earth into panniers, hoist the panniers to their heads, and walk the contents up to a low embankment rising on the edge of the work-site. It is designed to slow the passage of monsoon flood-water, encouraging more of the precious liquid to infiltrate Ajit Pura's dusty soil. This should help irrigate just a few peasant plots for a year or two, before the embankment is washed away. And yet, modest as that sounds, to some development wonks this site is revolutionary.

Its creation was a policy cornerstone of the coalition government led by the Congress party: a guarantee of 100 days' employment on public works each year to any rural household that requests it. As an eye-catching promise—in a country where some 260m exist below the poverty line—it helped Congress win power in 2004. And with an eye to India's next general election, due by May 2009, the party's leaders are now making brave claims for its success. Last year, operating in 330 districts, the “National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme” (NREGS) provided 30m families with an average of 43 days' work. This month, to much fanfare, NREGS went India-wide (see map).

India has a history of rotten public-works schemes. At best, these have produced nothing of much value: Rajasthan, a drought-prone region, is littered with their residue: ditches and dykes as mysterious in function as crop circles. Worse, public-works budgets have made easy plunder for corrupt officials. By Congress's own rule of thumb—attributed to Rajiv Gandhi, the party's murdered leader, in the 1980s and since parroted by activist and politician alike—85% of welfare spending fails to reach its intended recipients.

To devotees of the scheme, including several fiery campaigners who helped design it, NREGS is different: above all, because its provisions are enshrined in the law. Wherever it applies, Indians may demand employment as their right. If it is not provided within 15 days, they are entitled to receive unemployment benefit. What is more, many safeguards have been written into the scheme, in an effort to make it more transparent and less misused than its predecessors. To exorcise ghost workers, NREGS muster rolls are read aloud at work-sites each morning. Many of these lists are available online. To chase away dodgy contractors—a main beneficiary of some works projects—at least 60% of the funds devoted to NREGS must be spent on wages for manual labourers.

Another beauty of the scheme, for its supporters, is that these poor folk are self-selecting: only a genuinely needy man would be likely to labour under an Indian sun for 60 rupees ($1.50) a day, the national minimum wage stipulated under NREGS. In tandem with one or two other recent efforts to hold the underperforming Indian state to account—for example, a right to information law, passed in 2005—NREGS represents for some starry-eyed acolytes the basis for a social-security system in a country that has more poor people than any other.

In Rajasthan, at least, it is working well. With its history of public works, and with fairly well-established local governments to run the scheme, the state last year came closer to honouring its prescriptions than any other. In the fiscal year that ended this March, Rajasthan provided an average of 85 days' work to some 2m households, a threefold increase in public-works employment offered by the state.

Better still, in Rajasthan NREGS employees came mostly from India's poorest groups: including 19% from dalit (formerly “untouchable”) castes, and 46% from tribal groups. Nearly 70% were women. Earning 73 rupees for a day's labour—the minimum wage set by the state—they did better than their sisters working in agriculture. In 2005 the average agricultural wage for women in Rajasthan was 48 rupees a day.

In Ajit Pura, in Rajasthan's southern district of Jalor, these benefits are manifest. According to the muster roll displayed at its work-site, 19 of the 43 workers belong to marginalised groups. They include the only man, Rajesh Harijan, from the Hindu sweeper caste, who shares street-sweeping duties in the village with his brother, rotating annually. The brothers are paid for this with sporadic gifts of bread.

Victory for digging
Another shoveller, Hiri Bawari, presents an even starker vindication of the scheme. As a temporary crutch for agricultural labourers, NREGS was designed to tide them over the lean season between sowing and reaping, and thus stanch temporary migrations to India's cities. Thereby, it is hoped, NREGS should ensure that the education of rural children is not disrupted—and in the case of Ms Bawari's children, that is so. A resident of Ajit Pura, she used to migrate to Punjab and Haryana, making and hawking plaster statues of Hindu gods. Together, Ms Bawari, her husband and their ten-year-old son used to earn 50 rupees a day for this work. Now she earns 73 rupees. Her husband earns 100 rupees as a farm labourer (happily, local wage-rates have risen, allegedly because of competition from NREGS). And the couple's three sons are in school.

It is a hopeful tale, but not typical. In a state that has embraced NREGS, Jalor is an especially well-run district. Its top official, or district magistrate, has made several improvements to the scheme—defying local mores, for example, by insisting that at least one-third of work-site foremen are women. Elsewhere, alas, NREGS frequently offers little obvious improvement on the rotten works schemes of the past.

Enthusiasm for NREGS among state governments has been patchy, with some of India's poorest and most populous states, such as Bihar and Jharkhand, slow to adopt it. Others have politicised NREGS, viewing it through the prism of their relations with the central government: Uttar Pradesh's 180m people, for example, saw no benefit from the scheme until mid-2007, when they elected a state government less hostile to the one in Delhi.

Even where the scheme is working well, it has hiccups. Jalor, for example, is supposed to have 27 locally hired engineers, to provide technical advice to the local governments. But, in a poor district, only five engineers can be found—of whom four have in fact been dragooned from other government service.

Elsewhere, a surfeit of pointless earth embankments is the least of the trouble. A report on NREGS by an autonomous government auditor, released in January, pinpointed many examples of error and abuse. Another, by researchers at Allahabad University, estimated that 33% of NREGS wages in Jharkhand were being trousered by corrupt officials (the government disputes this). Hardly any unemployment benefit has been paid to millions of people who are currently being denied all or part of their 100-day entitlement. India's rural development minister, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, admits some of these “shortcomings”, which arise, he says, “because so many dishonest people are there”. But he is confident that, because of the transparency and checks in the scheme, the failings will be put right in a year or two.

That the states' bad behaviour makes NREGS so far neither national nor guaranteed does at least ease one big concern: its cost. This was originally projected at $11 billion a year. According to Mr Singh, however, though NREGS may overshoot its provisional budget of $4 billion this year, it is unlikely to cost more than $6 billion annually. Its opportunity cost may be another matter. According to a recent World Bank simulation, more Indian peasants would be withdrawn from poverty if the government just handed them cash—without first making them shovel dirt.

Spread of Nuclear Capability Is Feared
Global Interest in Energy May Presage A New Arms Race

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 12, 2008; A01

VIENNA -- At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America have recently approached U.N. officials here to signal interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations.

At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium, according to U.S. and international nuclear officials and arms-control experts.

Much of the new interest is driven by economic considerations, particularly the soaring cost of fossil fuels. But for some Middle Eastern states with ready access to huge stocks of oil or natural gas, such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the investment in nuclear power appears to be linked partly to concerns about a future regional arms race stoked in part by Iran's alleged interest in such an arsenal, the officials said.

"We are concerned that some countries are moving down the nuclear [weapons] path in reaction to the Iranians," a senior U.S. government official who tracks the spread of nuclear technology said in an interview. He declined to speak on the record because of diplomatic sensitivities. "The big question is: At what point do you reach the nuclear tipping point, when enough countries go nuclear that others decide they must do so, too?"

Although the United Arab Emirates has a proven oil reserve of 100 billion barrels, the world's sixth-largest, in January it signed a deal with a French company to build two nuclear reactors. Wealthy neighbors Kuwait and Bahrain are also planning nuclear plants, as are Libya, Algeria and Morocco in North Africa and the kingdom of Jordan.

Even Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, last year announced plans to purchase a nuclear reactor, which it says is needed to produce electricity; it is one of 11 Middle Eastern states now engaged in starting or expanding nuclear power programs.

Meanwhile, two of Iran's biggest rivals in the region, Turkey and Egypt, are moving forward with ambitious nuclear projects. Both countries abandoned any pursuit of nuclear power decades ago but are now on course to develop seven nuclear power plants -- four in Egypt and three in Turkey -- over the next decade.

Egypt's ambassador to the United States, Nabil Fahmy, told a recent gathering of Middle Eastern and nonproliferation experts that his country's decision was unrelated to Iran's nuclear activities. But he acknowledged that commercial nuclear power "does give you technology and knowledge," and he warned that a nuclear arms race may be inevitable unless the region's leaders agree to ban such weapons.

"We continue to take the high road, but there isn't much oxygen there, and it is very lonely," Fahmy told the gathering in Washington at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He added a prediction: "Without a comprehensive nuclear accord, you will have a proliferation problem in the Middle East, and it will be even worse in 10 years than it is today."

Many countries involved in nuclear expansion have stressed their peaceful intentions. Some, such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, publicly vowed never to pursue uranium enrichment or fuel reprocessing -- technologies that can be used to create fissile materials for nuclear weapons. But some arms-control experts say the sudden interest cannot be fully explained by rising oil prices.

"This is not primarily about nuclear energy. It's a hedge against Iran," said Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear policy and author of "Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons." "They're starting their engines. It takes decades to build a nuclear infrastructure, and they're beginning to do it now. They're saying, 'If there's going to be an arms race, we're going to be in it.' "
'90 Percent' Is Deterrence

Although U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran halted its research into making nuclear weapons five years ago, the Islamic republic still seeks to make enriched uranium with centrifuges at its vast underground facility at Natanz. It is now operating about 3,000 centrifuges and plans to increase the number to 50,000.

While Iran insists that the uranium will be used only to make electricity, the United States and its European allies have sought to dissuade Tehran from pursuing the technology by pushing ever-tougher sanctions through the U.N. Security Council. Iran's neighbors, convinced that a nuclear-armed Tehran is now likely, are keeping their own options open, nuclear experts say.

Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency and a winner with the IAEA of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for his work preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, has likened the pursuit of "latent" nuclear capability to buying an insurance policy.

"You don't really even need to have a nuclear weapon," ElBaradei said at a recent international conference of security officials in Munich. "It's enough to buy yourself an insurance policy by developing the capability, and then sit on it. Let's not kid ourselves: Ninety percent of it is insurance, a deterrence."

The Middle East's renewed interest in nuclear power is part of a global trend that began around 2004, as prices for fossil fuels began to rise. Before that, commercial nuclear development had remained relatively flat since 1986, when a massive fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine widely spread radioactive contamination in history's worst commercial nuclear power accident.

But now, with oil supplies tightening and prices soaring, nuclear power is being viewed in a different light, said Alan McDonald, an IAEA official who coordinates the agency's programs on nuclear energy. McDonald said he thinks there is a logical economic argument for developing a domestic nuclear industry, even if a nation's oil reserves are measured by the tanker-load.

"Why would these Gulf states want to go nuclear? Because they know their oil will only become more valuable as global demand increases," McDonald said. "It may be more cost-effective to sell oil to Americans driving SUVs than to burn it domestically."

The IAEA officially encourages commercial nuclear development under policies backed by successive U.S. administrations since the 1950s. It also provides technical and legal assistance to any country that wants a nuclear power plant.

But IAEA officials say they have never previously seen such widespread interest in starting a domestic nuclear power industry. While officials declined to detail their correspondence with specific countries, the list of the newly interested includes several African countries, such as Nigeria and Namibia, and at least half a dozen former Soviet republics that are embracing new Western designs to replace less-reliable Soviet nuclear plants.
Programs Can Be Hidden

Nuclear weapons experts say commercial nuclear power plants, by themselves, pose relatively little proliferation risk, although they are frequently mentioned as possible targets for terrorist attacks. But nuclear power can give a country the technological expertise and infrastructure that could become the foundation for a clandestine weapons program.

Such covert programs can be successfully hidden for years, as was demonstrated in recent months by U.S. and Israeli allegations that Syria was building a secret plutonium production reactor near the desert town of Al Kibar. Plutonium is an efficient fuel for nuclear explosions, as well as for power generation.

Both India and Pakistan built nuclear devices using an industrial infrastructure built ostensibly for nuclear power. Taiwan and South Korea conducted weapons research under cover of civil power programs but halted the work after being confronted by the United States.

A particular concern is rising interest in nuclear enrichment and reprocessing, the commercial enterprise that creates nuclear fuel and then, after its use, separates plutonium from the spent fuel. The business has long been dominated by the United States, Russia and a consortium of European nations.

But since 2004, uranium-producing countries such as Namibia, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil, as well as close U.S. allies such as Canada and Australia, have sought to develop their own enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. All of these nations are seeking to cash in on the future growth in nuclear power generation.

Canada's push for expanded enrichment capacity has already prompted private but intense clashes with the Bush administration, officials said.

"They're all rethinking enrichment, even countries that did it in the past and gave it up," said a senior IAEA official who monitors fuel-cycle development, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that he not be identified by name. "They already mine uranium and sell it, and now they realize they could make a lot more money if they enrich it."

While no one forecasts a nuclear-armed Canada or Australia, the change could lead to more nuclear materials being transported around the world, among countries in nearly every region with heightened nuclear expertise.

"People stand up and pay attention when you talk about enrichment and the fuel cycle," said the senior U.S. government official who tracks nuclear proliferation. "That's the long pole in the tent" in the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. He added that, while the extensive system of IAEA inspections and monitoring for such programs is meant to prevent misuse, "that only holds up to the point where the country decides to kick the IAEA out."

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Bush's Comments In Israel Fuel Anger
Linking of Nazis, Iran Seen as Jab at Obama

By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 16, 2008; A08

JERUSALEM, May 15 -- On an emotional visit to mark Israel's 60th anniversary, President Bush on Thursday compared people seeking talks with Iran and radical Islamic groups to the Nazis' appeasers, provoking a political storm at home and accusations that he was politicizing the celebration.

Bush's address to the Israeli parliament also stirred intense debate between Israelis and Palestinians. His strong words of empathy for Israel brought lawmakers in the tiny chamber to their feet.

Palestinians expressed disappointment afterward that Bush did not use the occasion to press the Israelis forcefully to make compromises toward the creation of a Palestinian state. While Bush has frequently promoted that goal, the only reference in the speech came when he looked forward to the 120th anniversary of Israel and the prospect of a changed Middle East.

"The Palestinian people will have the homeland they have long dreamed of and deserved -- a democratic state that is governed by law, and respects human rights, and rejects terror," Bush said.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, called the speech a missed opportunity. Bush should have used the forum to address the urgency of ending the conflict, he said: "We shouldn't have to wait 60 more years for a Palestinian state."

Bush's comments about appeasement reverberated across the U.S. campaign trail, offering a new platform for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to sharpen their lines of attack.

In the speech, Bush warned that the United States must not negotiate with Iran or radical groups such as Hamas.

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush told the Israeli lawmakers. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Democrats angrily called the comment a veiled shot at Obama, who has advocated dialogue with Iran and Syria, but not the Palestinian group Hamas.

"We have a protocol . . . around here that we don't criticize the president when he is on foreign soil," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "One would think that that would apply to the president, that he would not criticize Americans when he is on foreign soil. I think what the president did in that regard is beneath the dignity of the office of president and unworthy of our representation at that observance in Israel."

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, used an expletive to describe Bush's comment. He went on to say: "For this president to leave the country and unleash a political attack on Senator Obama and the Democrats cannot go unanswered. We're not going to tolerate this swiftboating," he said, referring to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign in 2004 to impugn the war record of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the Democratic nominee.

Democratic leaders demanded that McCain repudiate Bush's comments, but McCain joined in on Bush's side. "Why does Senator Obama want to sit down with a state sponsor of terrorism? What does Senator Obama want to talk about with [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad?" McCain asked reporters while campaigning in Ohio.

"Yes, there have been appeasers in the past," McCain added. "The president is absolutely right." Asked whether he thought Obama was one of them, he said he didn't know.

In a statement, Obama responded to what he called "a false political attack," saying, "George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."

White House press secretary Dana Perino dismissed the Democrats' complaints, saying that Bush's remarks were not directed at Obama. "This is not new policy that the president announced, and it should come as no surprise to anybody that the president would talk about this," Perino said.

Obama is far from the only politician who has advocated a renewed dialogue with Iran to try to get it to give up its nuclear-enrichment programs. A smaller number of U.S. politicians, including former president Jimmy Carter, have said the United States should talk to Hamas.

In his speech to the Knesset, Israel's parliament, Bush said the incendiary language of Hamas and the armed Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah must be taken seriously. He invoked the legacy of the Holocaust, citing Hamas's call for the "elimination" of Israel, Hezbollah followers' chants of "Death to Israel, death to America" and the Iranian president's vow to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It is natural," Bush said. "But it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred."

The Knesset address was the centerpiece of Bush's two-day visit to Israel, timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary. Bush also paid a visit to Masada, the Dead Sea fortress where Jewish rebels are said to have killed themselves almost 2,000 years ago rather than submit to Roman rule. He brought the Knesset audience to its feet when he vowed, "Masada shall never fall again, and America will be at your side."

Many Israelis admire Bush for his strong support of their actions against militants and his unwillingness to pressure their government in negotiations with the Palestinians, though there is also considerable sentiment here that the administration should have pushed harder for a peace deal during the past seven years.

Administration officials counter that conditions have not been ripe for a settlement because, in their view, the Palestinian leadership has been an unreliable partner for peace until recently.

The speech to the Knesset gave Bush an up-close view of Israel's raucous politics. His appearance was boycotted by the Arab members of the legislature, who number about a dozen, though three did appear with protest signs reading "We Shall Overcome." Two members who oppose creation of a Palestinian state left in protest when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in introducing Bush, spoke of a two-state solution to the conflict.

Bush also heard from opposition leader and former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who drew applause from some quarters of the chamber when he declared that any peace deal would have to leave Jerusalem "intact under Israeli sovereignty" -- a controversial point because Palestinians also lay claim to a city considered the third holiest in Islam.

"It's a rare privilege to address the Knesset," Bush said, when it was finally his turn to speak, "and the prime minister told me there was something even rarer. To have just one person in the chamber speaking at a time."

Correspondent Griff Witte in Jerusalem and staff writers Michael D. Shear and Jonathan Weisman in Washington contributed to this report.

China seizes moment to heal its image
By Geoff Dyer
Sunday May 18 2008 21:15
continued from previous page

The mood towards China has altered sharply from the attitude only a few weeks ago following the Tibetan protests and the ill-tempered Olympic torch relay - events that to many people outside China reflected a country that still seemed illiberal and brittle.

"There is now a small window for rapprochement," said Mark Leonard, executive director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. "The earthquake has turned the Chinese government - in the eyes of the international community - from aggressor to victim."

Chinese leaders had hoped that the the forthcoming ­Beijing Olympics would burnish the country's international reputation. But recent opinion polls have demonstrated how badly China's image has been hit by the Tibetan turmoil.

An FT/Harris survey conducted in early April showed that China had overtaken the US as the biggest threat to global stability in the eyes of people in five European countries. In the US, China was seen as a bigger threat than either North Korea or Iran.

However, the massive relief effort, and the relative level of transparency that has accompanied the Chinese government's response to the disaster, has won plaudits around the world. "China's response to this week's catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan province has revealed a compassion, openness and efficiency that casts the country in a new light," said a weekend editorial in the New Zealand Herald newspaper.

Le Monde - the French paper that famously announced after 9/11: "We are all Americans now" - said in an editorial that China was adapting well to the catastrophe. "In this Olympics year, where Chinese power has above all been illustrated by brutal repression in Tibet and the arrest of political opponents, Beijing has mobilised its army to help its population."

China has also let in international rescue experts for the first time - a team from Japan arrived on Friday, followed by specialists from Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan - although some diplomats said that, by then, the chances of finding many survivors had already passed.

Despite all this, the goodwill at home and abroad that the Chinese government has received could easily wither. The earthquake has left millions homeless, leaving the government with a vast, long-term humanitarian challenge. Chinese citizens are also asking tough questions about why so many schools collapsed in the quake and the reaction of the government to these ­criticisms will be closely watched.

Moreover, there have been isolated stories of foreign journalists being prevented from visiting quake sites where local reporters were already present. If the perception takes hold of a clampdown on foreign coverage of the disaster and its aftermath, China could start to lose sympathy.

Beijing could also find itself under pressure over the situation in neighbouring Burma. Just before the Sichuan quake last week, China was under fire in some quarters for not doing enough to pressure the Burmese junta to accept outside help - criticism that has gone quiet for the time being. But China could swiftly find itself involved in the argument again.

Mr Leonard said the earthquake would provide only a short-term respite for China unless it took other measures ahead of the Olympics to meet criticisms of its policies in areas such as Tibet and Darfur.

"Despite the tragedy of the earthquake, people will still use the fact that China is so visible to put it in a corner," he said.