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Off the Radar News Roundup
By Judah Grunstein
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20 Nov 2009
- China's foreign minister visits Japan for the first time since the DPJ took power.
- China and Vietnam agree to boost economic ties.
- China and Burma agree to establish railroad and banking links to facilitate resource flow.
- Remarks by President Barack Obama in Korea reflect how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have transformed U.S. forces stationed there -- like the Army reserves back home -- into an operational, as opposed to a strategic, reserve.
- The leader of the Hurriyat, a Kashmir political coalition advocating for self-determination, declared his support for the U.S.-China joint declaration regarding India-Pakistan relations, and said that China has a stake in the resolution of the Kashmir conflict. Again, whoever in the State Department okayed the declaration's language was a bit tone-deaf to Indian concerns.
- Maoist revolutionaries are still blowing things up in India. I found it a bit odd that there were three Maoist candidates in the
first round of France's last presidential election. So needless to say, Maoist bombers in 2009 is a hard concept to fathom.
- Turkey's new domestic Kurdish initiative has the added advantage of cementing much-improved relations with Iraqi Kurdistan.
- Ankara is not worried by new EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy's past opposition to Turkey's EU accession.
- Turkey officially scraps its flawed tender for a nuclear energy reactor. Apparently the Middle East nuclear arms race will be a bit more difficult than foreseen.
- Israel's trade minister will travel to Turkey for the first such visit since the Gaza war last January.
- Sparked by U.S. concerns, South Africa is investigating charges of South African mercenaries training forces of Guinea's ruling junta.
- Restrictions on opposition parties and ongoing human rights abuses mark the run-up to Ethiopia's 2010 elections.
- A new draft law in Kenya would explicitly define the powers of the president and prime minister under the power-sharing agreement arrived following the country's last disputed elections.
- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev fired a Putin-era Kremlin appointee, the first such move of his presidency.
Researched by Kari Lipschutz.