Briefing Archive

This week, world leaders and scientists are meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to articulate a global strategy to deal with global warming. Even though it remains unlikely that major policy initiatives will be announced, the venue provides an important platform to increase U.S.-Japanese leadership on global warming. Historically, U.S.-Japan relations have benefited from multiple layers of bilateral cooperation. As the U.S.-Japan bilateral relationship evolves, traditional military and economic cooperation will prove insufficient to guard against malignant stresses in the alliance. The recent meeting in Washington of Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and President Bush provided the foundation for a new pillar […]

THE PARTY´S OVER — It was planned as a grand celebration. The occasion: the 25th anniversary of the Spanish Socialist Party´s first election victory following the restoration of democracy in Spain after nearly four decades of Franco Fascism. The evening was all the more festive because the Socialists (PSOE) were back in power under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Even so, the hero of the evening was Felipé Gonzalez, architect of the first election victory in October 1982, but a rather forgotten man among the new generation of Socialists. With new elections scheduled for March, however, the party at the grandly […]

This past Sunday, Russians went to the polls to vote in national parliamentary elections. The result was hardly in doubt — the United Russia Party of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin swept to victory. Equally predictable was the reaction of most Western media to this largely foreordained result. We are told that Putin is reviving the Soviet Union and that he has been busy building a cult of personality while crushing all political opposition. More importantly, we are told that Putin is reigniting the Cold War rivalry between Russia and the United States. This is the message that we constantly read […]

WASHINGTON — The sudden release this week of a U.S. intelligence assessment that said Iran halted its nuclear weapons program some four years ago appears to have deepened the rift between U.N. Security Council members over whether the international community will continue pursuing stiffer economic sanctions against Iran. The Security Council’s permanent members have been generally split on the issue, with the United States, Britain and France trying to convince Russia and China of the need for ramped up sanctions. But in recent weeks, Russia and China, who maintain stronger economic ties with Iran than the other permanent members, had […]

Nigeria’s recent decision to affirm the handover of the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon belies a Washington theory about Nigeria and American national security. The theory goes like this: Nigeria is on the verge of collapsing into civil war. The poor, marginalized, radicalized Muslim north will rise against the Christian south and a great conflagration will ensue. Twenty percent of Africa’s population will be consumed in the fire, and America’s access to the flow of oil in the Niger Delta will disappear. Official Washington believes that we must prepare now for the inevitable. But mere war is far too simplistic an […]

BEIRUT, Lebanon — One looks in vain for names in the 22-page report. Last week, Special Investigator Serge Brammertz submitted the ninth U.N. report on the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. But hopes that the 45-year-old Belgian prosecutor would name suspects went unfulfilled. Invoking the confidentiality of the investigations, for the seventh time since assuming his responsibilities in January 2006, Brammertz declined to identify the possible perpetrators of the crime. Brammertz’s predecessor, Detlev Mehlis, had proceeded otherwise. In the first report of the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) in […]

The Dec. 3 assessment by the U.S. intelligence community that Iran has not pursued an active nuclear weapons program since 2003 could lessen concerns about a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. According to the just released unclassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities, “Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.” U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley released a statement that, “Today’s National Intelligence Estimate offers some positive news. It confirms that we were right […]

PRISTINA, Kosovo — “When I travel through Albanian areas, I use my Kosovo license plate and when I reach Serbia or I’m back in Strpce I change it [to the Serbian plate],” says Milorad, a small retail shop owner. “I need to take these precautions, I don’t want to endanger my family,” he says. Milorad is from Strpce, one of the most southern Serb enclaves in the majority Albanian province of Kosovo. Strpce can only be reached by passing through a Kosovo Police Service (KPS) checkpoint and another manned by Ukrainian troops that are part of NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR). […]

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 […]

MOGADISHU, Somalia — On Nov. 17, two small groups of Islamic insurgents wielding rifles and rockets attacked Ugandan troops protecting a critical road junction in Mogadishu, sparking a 90-minute firefight that proved to be one of the first major tests of the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia. The battle at the so-called four-kilometer roundabout — which links Mogadishu’s airport and seaport to major roads leading out of the city — left at least one insurgent dead. The Ugandans suffered no casualties. The fight proved that the 1,600-man AU mission can survive in the embattled city, according to Ugandan army […]

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 […]

The Associated Press grimly reports that “Insurgents have staged more than 130 suicide attacks” in Afghanistan this year. Something called the “Global Islamic Media Front” is demanding that Germany and Austria withdraw from Afghanistan. “NATO’s shortfalls holding back progress in Afghanistan,” declare the Canadian media. On top of all that, we are reminded daily of Pakistan’s imminent explosion or implosion, which, by my count, we’ve been bracing for since October 2001. But there is other news from the Afghanistan front — news that’s not making it into the morning papers, at least not onto the front page. Resisting intense and […]

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 […]