Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has been in Washington since last week, celebrating his birthday and guiding followers of Tibetan Buddhism in a multi-day prayer and meditation ritual. The U.S. government-funded Voice of America sat down with him.
One sign of how good relations between Russia and the United States have become is that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spent three days in high-level meetings in Washington without attracting much attention from the American news media. Bilateral ties may finally be evolving, at least for now, into a more mature, almost normal relationship between two great powers sharing common interests as well as limited areas of disagreement. Lavrov discussed a range of important issues with his American interlocutors, including Libya, Syria, Iran, Korea, Afghanistan, South Sudan, terrorism, the Israel-Palestine peace process, the United Nations and even Alaska and [...]
One year after taking office in July 2010, Philippine President Benigno Aquino’s effort to end the country’s decades-long internal conflicts is still stuck in first gear. Aquino has put the highest premium on reaching a political settlement with the Muslim Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and making inroads with the Maoist front led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) — while not forgetting the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), another Muslim rebel group that signed a final, yet shaky, peace agreement in 1996. In fairness, Aquino has made progress. But doubts remain about whether the steps he has [...]
