Diplomacy & Politics Archive

U.S. authorities are pushing forward with a newly designed system of special military tribunals to try suspected terrorists detained at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay. With the first cases expected to be announced this month, it remains to be seen whether such high-level suspects as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the accused mastermind behind the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, will be on the docket. Congress passed legislation calling for the new system in September, after President George W. Bush announced the transfer of KSM to Guantanamo, and after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed an earlier tribunal system set up […]

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Former rebel turned governor, Irwandi Yusuf, stunned many with his victory in the first direct provincial election held in Indonesia’s once pro-secessionist province of Aceh on Dec.11, 2006. Yet, with post-election pleasantries now over, the former academic has a tough job ahead, as hefty expectations weigh on his three-year term, due to start on Feb. 8. Irwandi’s election is the direct result of the peace deal signed between the Indonesian government and the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM) in Helsinki, Finland, on Aug. 15, 2005. The peace ended a separatist war that had killed nearly 30,000 since 1976. […]

UNTIMELY DEPARTURE — The U.S. intelligence community is upset at John Negroponte’s sudden departure from his post as the director of national intelligence after less than two years. According to one insider, Negroponte has left unfinished the important structural reform he began shortly following his appointment as overall head of the country’s 15 intelligence services two years ago. President Bush shifted Negroponte, a veteran diplomat, from national security to fill the second ranking position at the State Department when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s first choice, Robert Kimmitt, the deputy secretary of the Treasury, didn’t want to transfer to Foggy […]

Just two days after U.S. President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address, it was the turn of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to lay out his government’s agenda. Abe’s policy speech to the Diet last Friday touched on similar themes — the need for stability in the Middle East, the character of the country’s children — and all against the back drop of troubling poll numbers. The key difference is that while Bush was making his speech after heavy losses in midterm elections, Abe is trying to avoid a similar routing in his country’s upper house […]

Since shortly before the inception of the Turkish Republic, in 1923, a journalist has been murdered on average every 1.5 years in Turkey, columnist Oktay Eksi recently lamented in the Hurriyet newspaper. In the last 15 years alone, according to a recent report of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, “18 Turkish journalists have been killed for their work, making it the deadliest country in the world for journalists.” Like a blow from an axe, the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink two weeks ago has cut yet another deep gash into Turkey’s already embattled democratization and intellectual freedom. […]

On Jan. 21, 2007, German Chancellor Angela Merkel conferred with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. Merkel has met with Putin six times since replacing Gerhard Schroeder as head of the German government in November 2005. This latest meeting highlighted the transformation of the German-Russian relationship, particularly in the area of energy. The Sochi encounter was the first meeting between Merkel and Putin since Germany assumed the presidency of both the European Union and the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations. With the expected departure from power of both Britain’s Tony Blair and France’s […]