Diplomacy & Politics Archive

TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s visit to Singapore late last month for a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) must have come as something of a relief to the challenges and confusion reigning at home. At the meeting, Fukuda had a chance to reconfirm the warming nature of the relationship between Japan and China, which had become strained under former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, while ASEAN nations also made a point of praising the Fukuda Doctrine as outlined by his father and former prime minister, Takeo Fukuda, which emphasized mutual confidence-building between Japan and the […]

The victory of Putin’s party in Sunday’s elections for the Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, was widely expected, and the results did not disappoint. According to the preliminary tally, the governing United Russia Party, whose list of candidates was headed by Putin himself, received almost two-thirds of the vote. In alliance with the two other pro-Kremlin parties (the Liberal Democratic Party and the Just Russia Party) that gained sufficient shares of the vote (7 percent) to receive national representation, the pro-Putin bloc will control an overwhelming majority in the Duma. Only the Communists, which won 11-12 percent of […]

PARIS — Are the deaths of two youngsters that sparked several nights of rioting in France last week being exploited for political purposes? Consider only that one of the two lawyers representing the families of the boys happens to be none other than the personal attorney of Ségolène Royal: the Socialist Party (PS) candidate who was defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy in the French presidential election May 6. It will be recalled that just two days before the vote, in an interview with French radio station RTL, Royal warned ominously that Sarkozy’s candidacy was “dangerous” and that there would be “violence” […]

MORE PRESSURE ON CHINA — Members of the European Parliament, human rights activists and dissidents appeared before a hearing of the European Parliament’s Human Rights Subcommittee Nov. 26 to testify about efforts to put pressure on the International Olympic Committee to hold China to a higher human rights standard. Speakers chronicled a wide array of human rights abuses in China and argued the IOC should honor its own precedent — set when it banned South Africa from Olympic events in 1964 because of apartheid — and publicly censure Beijing. From press freedom and privacy rights to Darfur and Tibet, various […]

DENPASAR Indonesia — There is a double set of expectations in Bali this week, where about 15,000 are expected to converge Monday for the 13th meeting of the parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The meeting begins on Monday and runs through Dec. 14. In the wake of terrorist attacks in recent years, local residents hope that the 12-day conference signals to tourists worldwide that the island is a safe vacation destination. Meanwhile, the movers and shakers of the world’s environmental lobby hope it will pave the way for negotiations toward a new, binding deal to […]