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/ 11 January 2008
Doubts intensified on Thursday night over the nature of an alleged aggressive confrontation by Iranian patrol boats and American warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, after Pentagon officials admitted that they could not confirm that a threat to blow up the US ships had been made directly by the Iranian crews involved in the incident.
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/ 31 December 2007
North Korea appeared certain to miss a year-end deadline to finish disabling its atomic plants and declare all its nuclear programmes, a key element in a six-nation disarmament accord. After almost two decades of confrontation over its nuclear ambitions, the communist state in 2007 took an unprecedented step.
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/ 27 December 2007
Russia is to supply Iran with a new and lethal anti-aircraft system capable of shooting down American or Israeli fighter jets in the event of any strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran on Wednesday confirmed that Russia had agreed to deliver the S-300 air defence system, a move that is likely to irk the Bush administration.
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/ 20 December 2007
United States President George Bush is to embark on a week-long tour of the Middle East in the new year to nudge Israelis and Palestinians towards an end to their decades-long conflict and to bolster an Arab coalition against Iran. It will be the first time in his seven years as president that Bush will have visited Israel, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
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/ 6 December 2007
Climate scientists from around the world urged delegates at United Nations-led talks in Bali on Thursday to make deeper and swifter cuts to greenhouse emissions to prevent dangerous global warming. In a declaration, more than 200 scientists said governments had a window of only 10 to 15 years for global emissions to peak and decline.
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/ 27 November 2007
United States President George Bush said on Tuesday it was the ”right time” for peace between Israel and the Palestinians before launching his biggest initiative to negotiate an end to the conflict. But he warned ”achieving this goal will not be easy”, according to remarks prepared for delivery at the opening later of the Annapolis peace conference.
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/ 22 November 2007
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was hosting a summit with the Palestinian and Jordanian leaders on Thursday as Arab foreign ministers mull whether to join a United States-sponsored peace conference next week. Mubarak met Jordan’s King Abdullah II in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss preparations for the conference.
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/ 8 November 2007
The United States and French presidents forged a common front against Iran’s nuclear ambitions on Wednesday, signalling a further warming of once-chilly relations between Washington and Paris. US President George Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to keep the pressure on Tehran, which has defied demands to halt uranium enrichment.
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/ 2 November 2007
Turkey wants action and not words in dealing with Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said on Friday during a joint press conference with United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. ”We are where words have come to an end and action must begin,” Babacan said following talks with Rice on the threat posed by fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
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/ 1 November 2007
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Israeli and Palestinian leaders this weekend to craft a joint document ahead of a peace conference but she has intentionally set expectations low. US officials expect Rice’s visit will result in a document filled with principles to kick off negotiations on a Palestinian state.
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/ 27 October 2007
Vladimir Putin stirred ghosts of the Cold War on Friday by comparing the Pentagon’s plan to site elements of its missile shield in Europe to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 when the United States and the Soviet Union went to the brink of nuclear war. The Kremlin’s challenge to the US president in 1962 triggered the worst confrontation of the Cold War.
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/ 13 September 2007
Dotted throughout the world are ”ungoverned territories” outside the control of the states in which they lie and which provide havens for extremists, according to a United States military-financed study by the Rand Corporation think tank. ”The world is full of safe havens for potential terrorists,” Angel Rabasa, director of the study, said this week.
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/ 12 September 2007
Somali opposition figures meeting in Eritrea united to form a new ”liberation” movement on Wednesday to seek a military or diplomatic solution to conflict in their homeland, a spokesperson said. The main aim of the organisation, called the Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia, is to secure the exit of Ethiopian troops who are backing the interim government in Somalia.
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/ 12 September 2007
Somali Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys dismissed United States terrorism allegations against him and instead blamed Washington for instability in the Horn of Africa, in an interview published on Wednesday. ”The US cannot present any concrete evidence for its unfounded accusations,” Aweys said.
United States President George Bush will outline reforms on Friday to help struggling subprime mortgage borrowers and his central bank chief will deliver a speech which will be pored over for hints of a looming rate cut. Federal Reserve chairperson Ben Bernanke speaks on ”Housing and Monetary Policy” at around 2pm GMT.