Diplomacy & Politics Archive

The early-November visit to Azerbaijan of the newly elected President of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, highlighted the strategic importance of the Turkey-Azerbaijan relationship and the two countries’ common economic and security interests. As such, it attracted much attention in the Azerbaijani media, where analysts happily noted that Azerbaijan was the first country visited by the Turkish leader since he assumed his post in July. As Azerbaijaini political scientist Rustam Mammadov suggested in the wake of the trip, Gul’s visit even had implications for the complex political situation unfolding in the Middle East. Speaking to the News – Azerbaijan agency, Mammadov said […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. CAMBODIA TRIBUNAL MAKES MORE ARRESTS — Cambodian authorities arrested the former foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge regime and his wife Nov. 11. They will face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity at a United Nations-backed tribunal. Ieng Sary, also the regime’s former social affairs minister, and his wife Ieng Thirith stand accused of involvement in the murder of political opponents. Ieng Sary is also to be tried on charges that he directed […]

Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur: a trip that was documented in a diary published in English on World Politics Review and that would see him eventually turning back from the border due to inadequate security conditions. In late October, Pelda returned to the region and crossed the border into Darfur, where he accompanied a Darfur rebel group. The diary of his trip was published on the NZZ Online in German, and World Politics […]

Trying to understand Russia through the prism of the British and American news media these days can be a real headache. On one hand, if you read the business pages of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times lately, you will learn that Russia is now one of the world’s leading emerging markets, and the Russian economy has grown at an average annual rate of 7 percent since 2000. On the other hand, if you turn to the international headlines or the editorial pages, you will read that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been busy crushing democracy and […]

BANGKOK, Thailand — Refugees from the horrors of Burma face legal limbo and police harassment inside Thailand. Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia complain of mistreatment amid police attempts to lock them in their workplaces at night. The Hmong minority in Laos are hunted like animals by their country’s repressive communist regime. In “sophisticated” Singapore it’s illegal to congregate and raise a voice of protest in public. Against this depraved everyday background, the Association of Southeast Nations is about to create some form of human rights agency as part of its dream to become the European Union of Asia. Fat chance, […]

Palestinian men, women and children, poured into the streets of Gaza City on Monday, determined to make a statement on the third anniversary of the Yasser Arafat’s death. Precisely what statement they wished to make remains a matter of some debate. Was it love for the late Arafat, founder of Hamas rival Fatah, or a yearning for a return to the pre-Hamas days? Whatever the marchers meant to say, Hamas leaders read the crowd, estimated at about 200,000, as a threat to their iron-fisted grip on Gaza. Hamas gunmen opened fire with live bullets on the sea of demonstrators, killing […]

LONDON — From the air, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo looks like paradise on earth, a palette of rich, red earth, rolling green hills and crystal-blue lakes under a panoramic sky that seems to stretch on forever. But on the ground, the grim reality of one of the world’s most volatile and perennially ignored regions shocks, with its morass of frightened civilians, bellicose and well-armed fighters and an intractable conflict that threatens to boil over again into war. If that occurs, it will boost an already tragically bloody decade’s death toll, estimated at more than four million people, vastly higher. […]

Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur: a trip that was documented in a diary published in English on World Politics Review and that would see him eventually turning back from the border due to inadequate security conditions. In late October, Pelda returned to the region and crossed the border into Darfur, where he accompanied a Darfur rebel group. The diary of his trip was published on the NZZ Online in German, and World Politics […]

“Is the Romanian bogeyman destined to become Italians’ new nightmare?” This was the question raised by Maria Luisa Agnese in a Nov. 1 column in the Italian daily the Corriere della Sera, suggestively titled “The Specter of the ‘Monsters’ from Europe.” Two days earlier, on Oct. 30, Giovanna Reggiani, the 47-year-old wife of a navy officer, was found half-naked and barely alive in a ditch near the Tor di Quinto train station on the outskirts of Rome. Reggiani had been robbed and savagely beaten. Taken in a coma to the Sant’Andrea hospital, she would subsequently die there of her injuries. […]

At the end of October, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan signed several controversial amendments to the country’s Law on Subsoil Use. The new legislation permits the government to unilaterally change contracts for companies involved in extracting the country’s mineral resources if Kazakh officials deem such alterations necessary to uphold their nation’s economic and security interests. On Oct. 8, President Nazarbayev had reassured visiting Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi that his government would honor the original terms of its contract with the ENI SpA-led consortium that was developing Kazakhstan’s offshore Kashagan oil field — providing its members did likewise. On Oct. […]

SEEKING REASSURANCE — After French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Washington last week, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, at the weekend, the flow of high-level European visitors continues in early December when Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano is due to visit — followed in February by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. The White House wants to show it has friends in Europe to support its tough Iran policy, its efforts in Afghanistan, and its new missile defense deployment in Eastern Europe. Visiting European leaders, on the other hand, are seeking reassurance that Bush’s lame duck […]

A significant anniversary passed on Oct. 31 that received little attention — the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. Sixty years ago last month, in the aftermath of a catastrophic global war, the United States reorganized its instruments of statecraft for the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union — a war that the newly created instruments eventually helped in winning. The National Security Act of 1947 created the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency. At a time of profound change in the international system, President Truman and his advisors recognized that […]

After emerging victorious from a Nov. 11 runoff against Christian democrat first-round winner Alojz Peterle — prime minister when the country declared independence in 1991, and the favorite of the center-right government of Janez Jansa — left-leaning Danilo Turk will become Slovenia’s next president. Despite coming second in the first round on Oct. 21, Turk garnered two-thirds of the vote in the runoff, largely thanks to votes transferred from Central Bank governor Mitja Gaspari, a fellow left winger he narrowly beat. In the first ballot, Peterle won overall with 28.7 percent, while Turk had 24.5 percent and Gaspari 24.1 percent. […]

Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur: a trip that was documented in a diary published in English on World Politics Review and that would see him eventually turning back from the border due to inadequate security conditions. In late October, Pelda returned to the region and crossed the border into Darfur, where he accompanied a Darfur rebel group. The diary of his trip was published on the NZZ Online in German, and World Politics […]

WASHINGTON — Across the world, “America may be less well regarded today than at any time in its history,” according to a report issued last week by a bipartisan group of politicians and foreign policy experts. But “it is not too late to reverse these trends, even in the Arab and Muslim World,” the report found. The “Commission on Smart Power” that penned the report was convened by the Center for Strategic International Studies, a non-partisan think tank. Titled “A Smarter, More Secure America,” the report calls on the next U.S. President to embrace three foreign policy themes to guide […]

EGYPTIAN POLICE PAY PRICE FOR ABUSE — Two Egyptian police officers were convicted Monday for their abuse of a Cairo bus driver, raising some hope among Egyptians that impunity for the country’s security forces could become a thing of the past. The two officers — Capt. Islam Nabih and Corp. Rada Fathi — each received sentences of three years. While their representatives indicated the officers would appeal the sentence, few expect the decision to be overturned given the damning evidence. The officers detained, beat and sodomized 22-year-old Emad Mohammad Ali in January 2006 before releasing him without charge. They recorded […]

Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur: a trip that was documented in a diary published in English on World Politics Review and that would see him eventually turning back from the border due to inadequate security conditions. In late October, Pelda returned to the region and crossed the border into Darfur, where he accompanied a Darfur rebel group. The diary of his trip was published on the NZZ Online in German, and World Politics […]