The split within the international community over the Lebanon war was clearly exposed recently when the United States and Britain combined at a Rome summit to block a move by European and Arab countries to demand an immediate ceasefire.
The United Nations Security Council met behind closed doors this week to discuss a draft resolution on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme as Tehran announced it had successfully enriched uranium to a new level.
The George W Bush administration has yet to decide on a clear plan B for Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But military planning is progressing to fill that policy vacuum and may create a momentum of its own, say former administration officials and political observers.
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/ 17 February 2006
Concern is growing among European governments about United States plans to involve them in an expanded, all-out campaign against Islamist extremism from North Africa to South-East Asia, using beefed-up special forces, high-tech weaponry and more intrusive surveillance and intelligence gathering.
The trial of Saddam Hussein, scheduled to open on October 19, will almost certainly have to be postponed, a senior British official said recently. He said it would be difficult for the Iraqi administration to complete preparations in time. No agreement has been reached on basic requirements, such as whether the glass round the dock should be bullet-proof.
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/ 27 September 2005
Diplomats in the British Foreign Office are working frantically in private on what they refer to as the ”exit ticket” from Iraq. In contrast to the official line that British forces will remain until the job is done, the Foreign Office wants to engineer a set of circumstances in which both Britain and the United States can begin to reduce troops next year. But the speed with which unrest is growing is making this harder.
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/ 14 September 2005
Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, recently described the findings of the investigation into the Iraq oil-for-food scandal as "painful" and "embarrassing" and underlined an urgent need for reform of the world organisation. Annan accepted personal responsibility, but made it clear he was not going to resign.
The leaders of eight of the world’s wealthiest countries are capable of delivering justice for Africa. We take a look at their differenty agendas and also look at the domestic pressures that each of them in carrying out these agendas.
United Nations special envoy Anna Tibaijuka is investigating the shanty town clearances in Zimbabwe that have provoked allegations of widespread human-rights abuses by President Robert Mugabe’s government. The demolitions form a backdrop to the row in Britain over deportations of failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe.
From the moment it was clear that Labour was on course for a third election victory, the political class shifted to the real issue: when will Gordon Brown succeed Tony Blair as prime minister? Equally inevitably, attention will turn to what sort of prime minister Brown will make. Will he shift the emphasis from the centre to the centre left, governing from a more traditional Labour stance?