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by Lynn Ockersz

A revised UN Security Council resolution obligating Iraq to submit to UN-sanctioned, comprehensive weapons inspections, has won the unanimous approval of the Council and reaffirmed its role in assessing whether Baghdad has violated UN requirements in relation to the manufacture and possession of weapons of mass destruction, but has also aggravated global divisions and tensions.

Resolution 1441 (2002), which gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein one last chance to disarm or face "serious consequences", doesn't compel the US to seek UN Security Council authorization to declare war on Iraq, although it can do so only after the Security Council evaluates any possible UN weapons inspectors' reports on Iraqi transgressions on the development of weapons of mass destruction.

Thus has weeks of wrangling among the Western powers over an adequately worded UN Security Council resolution on the alleged threat posed by Iraq to international security come to an end but with the climate of uncertainty which gripped the world over the US-Iraq standoff remaining undefused.

In fact, this atmosphere of anxiety may have only deepened with this latest resolution which has failed to preclude the possibility of a US - led military strike on Iraq.

With apparently no binding effect on the US of any evaluations arrived at by the UN Security Council in relation to the issues at hand, the US could be said to have won the day because, in the final analysis, it reserves the right to military action against Iraq.

However, the recent atrocities in Bali, Indonesia and in the Southern Philippines point starkly to the lot which awaits those parts of the world which are seen as collaborating with the Western alliance in its "war on global terror".

The conflict in Afghanistan and its fallout, the prolonged conflict in the Middle-East and now, the US' confrontation with Iraq and its spill-over effects should be seen as inseparable links in a single chain of crises.

An aggravation of any of these crises is bound to have a ripple effect right down the inter-connected arenas of conflict.

For, the forces of confrontation in each of these conflicts are essentially identical - the Western military alliance or those states it supports in collision with the forces of religious fundamentalism. As should have been recognized by now, these forces constitute the new, global division of power.

With even India reporting what are seen as Al-qaeda infiltrations in its North-East border, with massive amounts of cash, arms and drugs believed to be siphoned in by this militant outfit and other terror groups, newer and newer frontiers of confrontation and conflict seem to be opening-up in the wake of the "War on global terror".

This expanding chain of crises constitutes the dark underbelly of the much trumpeted process of globalization.

True, more and more states are embracing the concept of economic globalization and its practical implications, but what is starkly evident is that global political divisions and tensions are also deepening in its wake.

Today, two movements are gathering pace almost in tandem in Western civil society: protests against globalization and those against war. In other words, globalization breeds conflict.

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